there are at least two barcode fonts on ctan under (!) fonts/barcodes

willadt's version seems to be rather well documented and organised, but i've never tried using it.

there's also olsak's macros/generic/ean, which incidentally contains an update of the ocrb fonts (which he doesn't feel confident of replacing on the archive in their fonts/ position).

Robin Fairbairns

> there's also olsak's macros/generic/ean, which incidentally contains
> an update of the ocrb fonts (which he doesn't feel confident of
> replacing on the archive in their fonts/ position).

they're very nice. i use them with a true orc-b (type 1) and i modified them to be more accurate at low resolutions (simply made the basic dimens an integer multiple of a 1in/300 dot)

The codes output on a deskjet were easily recognized.

Thierry Bouche

> What tools (not necessarily restricted to TeX) can you
> recommand?

There are two problems in printing barcodes:

I faced this problem when I designed my envlab package (see CTAN or my home page). It printed barcoded postal indexes according to the US Postal Service rules. I implemented there methods for automatic extraction of zip codes, calculating checksums and printing. I think a barcode printing package based on these methods is relatively easy to implement---especially for such TeX guru as Joerg Knappen.

Boris http://www.plmsc.psu.edu/~boris/

> I am looking for *free* tools to print bar codes.

In case you're talking about ean-codes, have a look at

ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/macros/generic/ean/*

works fine

Jan

Thanks to all who have replied to my query.

We finally decided to use the ean package (tex-archive/macros/generic/ean).

J"org Knappen