Printing Barcodes from webapp?

[Burhan]

Hello Group:

  I am in the planning stages of an application that will be accessed
over the web, and one of the ideas is to print a barcode that is
generated when the user creates a record.  The application is to track
paperwork/items and uses barcodes to easily identify which paper/item
belongs to which record.

  Is there an easy way to generate barcodes using Python -- considering
the application will be printing to a printer at the client's machine?
I thought of two ways this could be done; one would be to interface
with the printing options of the browser to ensure that margins,
headers, footers are setup properly (I have done this before using
activex and IE, but with mixed results); the other would be to install
some small application at the client machine that would intercept the
print jobs and format them properly (taking the printing function away
from the browser).

  Does anyone have any experience or advice? Any links I could read up
on to help me find out how to program this?  Another way (easier
hopefully) to accomplish this?

Thanks for any advice.