DevOps, CI/CD and Automation

Hello everyone,

I looked through the forums and I didn't find this particular question asked anywhere.

My organization has an Oracle DB application which we use to schedule work and keep track of employee hours and customer billing. Everything goes through it. What I'd like to do is start encoding the work order numbers in bar codes on printouts rather than just text. They are only uppercase letters and digits, so Code 3 of 9 would work nicely. These print outs are generated by Oracle Reports 10gR2 running on a Linux platform, and the text I'd like to replace actually already prints bracketed with asterisks so all I would need to do is change the font. (Code 3 of 9 barcodes are bracketed with *'s so that a scanner can tell the beginning from the end.)

What I've heard, however, is that such a solution would require installing the bar code font on every printer we use, which would be a giant pain. I took a look at a PDF generated by the application for the screen and it appears that it doesn't have any fonts embedded, just references to Courier and Helvetica. I've also been told that there may also be some sort of compatibility issue with Linux and TTF fonts. I am by no means a Linux expert. The application produces these reports through an automated process and prints them to the appropriate locations. Is there a difference in the backend process involved in generating a PDF report for the screen and sending a report directly to a printer? Would there be a simple (or at least not extremely difficult) way to embed the font in these reports, like maybe wrapping it up as a PDF, before sending them to print?

Thanks in advance.

Chris