Assuming you have a suitable font installed on the computers that are
looking at the barcodes (e.g.
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Libre+Barcode+128 <- not an endorsement,
YMMV, etc.), the HTML

<span style="font-family: 'Libre Barcode 128';">12309809SA</span>

Should display the value inside the span as a barcode, falling back to
Winding as an obvious indicator that something has gone wrong. If you're OK
hard-coding the font-family value, that should be fairly straightforward to
put in an XSLT.  I'm not familiar with the particular context of Alma, but
if your custom barcodes arere in a "custom-barcode" element in the source
XML:

<xsl:template match="custom-barcode">
        <span class="barcode" style="font-family: 'Libre Barcode 128';">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        </span>
 </xsl:template>

might do the trick, although working out how to ensure that template is
matched in the right place might require more thought.

HTH,

AC



On Thu, Aug 3, 2023 at 9:49 AM Hammer, Erich F <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> We have barcodes embedded in a number of the "letters" (i.e. receipts)
> that Alma sends to patrons or ILL offices, but those barcodes are for
> material IDs that are normally input via barcode scanner and are referenced
> in the XSLT of the letter as a .PNG.  IOW, Alma holds/constructs an image
> of a barcode for the ID of the materials and makes it available to the
> email/receipt.  We have recently added/changed a letter to include another,
> long-number-string, ID and would like to have a barcode displayed for it as
> well.  Otherwise, someone has to read and manually enter the string which
> greatly increases the chance of error.
>
> I assume we can't convince Alma to construct a barcode image for any old
> number string, so we will need to modify the XSLT code of the letter to
> display that string in a barcode font.  This letter will be printed from
> specific machines, so it will be possible to ensure the font is installed,
> but I don't know how to embed the HTML/CSS code necessary into XSLT.
>
> Does anyone know how to do that?
>
> Thanks,
> Erich
>
>
> --
> Erich Hammer            Head of Library Systems
> [log in to unmask]         University Libraries
> 518-442-3891              University @ Albany
>
> "Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them."
>                                      -- Peter Ustinov
>