while the largest shape is theoretically the whole tag itself for example a macrodot comprised of many printed dots in both dimensions an ideal generic tag definition structure allows the generation of an arbitrary printed shape from each bit of data given an original number of bits of data and the desire to place those bits into a printed tag for subsequent retrieval via a reading scanning mechanism the original number of bits can either be placed directly into the tag or they can be redundacy encoded in some way the exact form of redundancy encoding will depend on the tag format the placement of data bits within the data area of the tag is directly related to the rendundancy mechanism employed in the encoding scheme data bits may be placed together in 2d so that burst errors are averaged out over the tag data thus typically being correctable for example all the bits of reed solomon codewords would be spread out over the entire tag data area to minimize the potential effect of a burst error since the data encoding scheme and shape and size of the tag data area are closely linked it is desirable to have a generic tag format structure this allows the same data structure and rendering embodiment to be used to render a variety of tag formats the tag format.