17. The method of claim 12, further comprising the steps of: receiving a plurality of scan codes; parsing the plurality of scan codes; and determining a plurality of character codes based on the parsed scan codes.
12. A method of encoding a data string into a symbol, the method of encoding comprising the steps of: receiving the data string comprising a plurality of character codes selected from a first set of character codes, wherein the first set of character codes map to a first set of data characters, and wherein a second set of data characters form a subset of the data characters in the first set of data characters; converting each of the plurality of character codes corresponding to data characters contained only in the second set of data characters into a first defined number of symbol values; converting each of the plurality of character codes corresponding to characters in both the first and the second sets of data characters into a second defined number of symbol values, the second defined number of symbol values being greater than the first defined number of symbol values; and outputting the converted symbol values.