QR codes are great for printing machine readable URLs if you have a square space. But they look horrible if placed in a text as they are much taller than a line of text.
Is there a way I can have a 1d-barcode with the same functionality as QR code (URL being the most important feature) so it can be put as text in a normal paragraph without special formatting?
If yes: How do I generate those barcodes?
There're different barcode symbologies that can encode text. The main problem is how much text you want to encode and which apps are you going to use to decode the barcode.
If you're using an URL shortener and you want to stick to a 1D barcode, CODE128 is probably the best choice.
Another option could be a PDF417, it's a 2D barcode but is not square like QRCode. In this case you can encode more chars in less space and this symbology is supported by iOS and the major Barcodes library.