title: How to getting started with magnetic stripe cards?
body: <p>I am newbie in the field of Magnetic-Stripe cards. But if I don't have any idea about the structure of these kind of cards, I can't develop software for them also.</p>
  
  <p>Searching a lot, gave me this information only : </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>This cards have 3 different Tracks named <em>Track-1</em>, <em>Track-2</em> and <em>Track-3</em> in their black bar. And the density of data on each Track is different from the others.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>The questions that I have :</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Is there any difference between Mag-Stripe card reader and writer? Or like smart cards reader, the reader do the writing also?</p></li>
  <li><p>Does all the readers[/writers] can read from[/write on] all the three tracks by default and we choose that which track is our target on the program? or some readers [/writers] are for <em>Track-1</em>, some other for <em>Track-2</em> and some other for <em>Track-3</em>? In the other word, does the device need three different head(Is it a head?) for working with different Tracks or a single head are for all the three Tracks?</p></li>
  <li><p>Are these three Tracks both readable and writable or some are only readable for example? </p></li>
  <li><p>Does we need fresh cards to writing data on them or we can clear an already used card and rewrite new data on its Tracks?</p></li>
  <li><p>There is a device named <em>Encoder</em> in the list of devices for Mag-Stripe card. What is this Encoder for? What's the difference between Encoder and Reader or Writer?</p></li>
  <li><p>Why the density of data and the type of data (Alphabetic or Numeric) is different for different Tracks?</p></li>
  <li><p>Any tool, document, specification, standard, library or tutorial for getting started?</p></li>
  </ol>