Printing Barcodes from Ruby

[listrecv]

I'd like to be able to generate barcodes from Ruby (to a PDF document).
What is the best way to do this?

Does it suffice to just get some barcode fonts, and use those, or do I
need special libs? Any help appreciated.

 

[OliverMarchand]

I suggest to:

- install GNU barcode from
http://www.gnu.org/software/barcode/barcode.html
- use Latex to import postscript files generated by GNU barcode
- use ruby to glue those tools

have fun,
Oliver

 

[Csaba Henk]

- install GNU barcode from
http://www.gnu.org/software/barcode/barcode.html
- use Latex to import postscript files generated by GNU barcode
- use ruby to glue those tools

You might as well try to use GrailTeX (

http://tipogral.hu/index.rbx/site/projects/grailtex

), a new, compact, web-centric TeX distribution with support for
package management (for the TeX/CTAN packages included). It comes with
everything you need for barcode generation, as the online demo on the
referred page shows.

Regards,
Csaba

 

[Bojan Mihelac]

I'd like to be able to generate barcodes from Ruby (to a PDF document).
What is the best way to do this?

Does it suffice to just get some barcode fonts, and use those, or do I
need special libs? Any help appreciated.

I think you can embed some font (I am not sure what is name of font) to
PDF and write directly in it.

best regards,
Bojan

 

[listrecv]

I think you can embed some font (I am not sure what is name of font) to
PDF and write directly in it.

That would certainly be the easiest - easier than converting from
PostScript. I could do the whole thing as a PDF form.

Does anyone know more about this?

Also, does anyone know if there are any libs with Ruby bindings which
can apply a FDF/XFDF to a PDF? (I don't think Pdf::Writer can - am I
correct?)

 

[Bojan Mihelac]

That would certainly be the easiest - easier than converting from
PostScript. I could do the whole thing as a PDF form.

Does anyone know more about this?

Also, does anyone know if there are any libs with Ruby bindings which
can apply a FDF/XFDF to a PDF? (I don't think Pdf::Writer can - am I
correct?)

I see there are plenty of barcode Code 39 true type fonts available and
some are free as well a litle googling would do.

I had some troubles embeding fonts with Pdf::Writer so please write if
you get it working with Pdf::Writer.

 

[Rob Kaufman]

Right now we're using the method described here ->
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoGeneratePDFs under the
heading PDF Form Fill. It calls pdftk externally, it is not a ruby
binding or anything. Don't be put off by this being a Rails link, the
technique works just fine without Rails installed.

Rob Kaufman

 

[listrecv]

Right now we're using the method described here ->
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoGeneratePDFs under the
heading PDF Form Fill. It calls pdftk externally, it is not a ruby
binding or anything. Don't be put off by this being a Rails link, the
technique works just fine without Rails installed.

Rob,

I took a look at that. Looks good, except that FDF generator looks
very hackish. Is there a cleaner way of doing this, perhaps using
XFDF?

(Also, how did you generate the PDF initially - just using a word
processor, and adding form fields in Acrobat?)

 

[Rob Kaufman]

I agree with you that the create_fdf method is kind of a "magic" hack,
but it allows you to very simply take hash data to fill in a form.
I'll be honest, though I understand how it works, I didn't create this
method or do much to change it. Using pdftk makes a lot of since to
me, since leveraging a separate tool increases the debugging base.

We're using Acrobat to create our form template.

Rob Kaufman

 

[Guido Sohne]

Probably not what you are looking for, but I wrote a barcode
(DataMatrix) generation thingy in JavaScript.

See http://sohne.net/semafox

-- G.

 

[Austin Ziegler]

I'd like to be able to generate barcodes from Ruby (to a PDF document).
What is the best way to do this?

Does it suffice to just get some barcode fonts, and use those, or do I
need special libs? Any help appreciated.

I hope to be able to add this to PDF::Writer in the future. Don't hold
your breath for it; I'm on vacation and *way* behind on PDF::Writer
development, but note that it is planned for the future inasmuch as I
can make it happen.

-austin

 

[listrecv]

I hope to be able to add this to PDF::Writer in the future. Don't hold
your breath for it; I'm on vacation and *way* behind on PDF::Writer
development, but note that it is planned for the future inasmuch as I
can make it happen.

Great, I really appreciate that.

 

[Paolo Guzziii]

Hi to All,
i'm italian and I must generate a barcode into a PDF file.

I'm using
O.S: Windows XP Professional
Ruby: 1.8.5
Rails: 1.2.1

... I found a ruby gem (barcode-0.2.gem) to do this, at least I think
).
Is it the right way to do it?
Where can I find some documentation?

Paolo