Hand-held labelers have been used to print bar codes as well as human readable information on a label that is applied to an article to designate price, department number, etc. When more than one piece of information, such as a plurality of bar codes, are to be entered into known labelers, data entry has been accomplished via a keyboard or a host computer. Bar codes typically include an information portion of the code plus guard codes. The guard codes are disposed at the start and end of the information portion of the bar code as well as in the middle thereof where the middle guard code identifies the direction that the bar code should be read. For keyboard data entry, an alphanumeric representation of the information portion of the bar code is entered via the keyboard and a digital representation thereof is stored in a list in the labeler's memory. In the case of data entry via a host computer, a digital representation of the information portion of the bar code is downloaded from the host computer and stored in a list in the labeler's memory. To select information such as a particular bar code from the stored list, a user may step through the list by actuating a key on the keyboard of the labeler while the labeler displays human readable representations of the code information stored in the list. Once code information is selected for printing the labeler assembles a digital representation of a bar code by adding guard codes to the code information. After assembling the code, the labeler may print it on one or any number of labels. Data entry via a keyboard of a large group of codes can be very tedious, time consuming and unreliable. Although data entry via a host computer is generally reliable and efficient, it is not always possible. Hand-held labelers are often used in stores where a user is required to enter information already printed on a shelf label into the labeler so that the same information can be printed on articles to be placed on the shelf. In this type of situation data entry via a host computer is generally not possible.
Hand-held labelers are also known to include an optical reader or scanner such as a light pen for use in inputting data to be printed on a label. U.S. Pat. No. 4,652,317 shows such a hand-held labeler wherein the light pen is used to scan a code. The code may be printed on a label secured to a shelf that is intended to support articles to be labeled with information corresponding to the shelf label. Data representing the scanned code is stored in a RAM and remains there until a subsequent label is scanned. After a single label is scanned, one or more labels may be printed with the scanned information. Although the task of data entry is considerably eased by the scanning operation of this labeler, as opposed to those limited to manual data entry via a keyboard, the labeler is still limited in that only one label may be scanned and stored at a time.