> I need to label some packages I will be shipping, both the bags the
>> boards are in and the boxes. There will be several fields on the labels
>> and each field has a bar code, CODE128. I may also try to label the
>> individual boards, but there isn't much room for a label, maybe on top
>> of the FPGA. I found some software that is supposed to work with Open
>> Office, but I haven't figured out quite how to make it work (I'll spend
>> a little more time with it later today). I want to print onto the
>> pre-cut label sheets of a couple of different sizes.
>>
>> In case the Open Office software is a bust for me, I wondering what
>> others use for this? I don't think I will be using this more than once,
>> so I'm not looking to spend a bunch on it.
So much of this depends on the context. From the mention of OpenOffice I assume that this is a one-off hand-assembled document rather than programmatic ouput from a DB or whatever. I've only had an occasional use for that and I've always found a suitable web-based generator to paste in from, e.g.
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That seems to be among the better online options in that it has a wide choice of formats and the option of EPS output - I'm not overly inclined to trust low res bitmaps for something like this.
Formatted printed output from programs generally means Postscript in any event (for a Unix shop at least ;-) ), so inserting a barcode generation function in the header and then calling it with the right options later is no big hassle. I wrote a Postscript EAN-13 generator a few years back - it only took about an hour and I'm far from a Postscript expert, but I notice the same author as above has a far more comprehensive library at
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which looks promising, although I have no direct experience of it.