php-4.1.2 gd-2.0.1 and freetype-2.0.8 SOLUTION

There was recently a thread on this list discussing the installation of php 4.1.x with gd-2.0.1 and freetype-2.0.8. The conclusion of this discussion was that php-4.1.x requires gd-2.0.2 which has not yet been released. I have obtained a copy of a patch to gd written by Wez Furlong (who also maintains PHP's gd interface). With this patch I have successfully compiled php-4.1.2 with gd-2.0.1-patched and freetype-2.0.8. In order to perhaps save others the grief I have been through over the last couple of days, I am making this patch and my config available. Instructions: Get freetype 2.0.8 from http://freetype.sourceforge.net/ and install it (or install a package if your system has one). Get the gd-2.0.1 tarball from http://www.boutell.com/gd/ Get Wez's patch from: http://mel01.juggernaut.com.au/patches/gd/gd-2.0.1.patch.wez.gz Make sure you don't have any old gd libraries installed on your system. If you have gd-1.8.4 installed PHP might not find the new 2.0.1 installation. Track down old libraries with: find / -name "libgd.*" -print Build gd with the patch and install it: gzip -d gd-2.0.1.patch.wez.gz tar -xzf gd-2.0.1.tar.gz cd gd-2.0.1 patch -p1 < ../gd-2.0.1.patch.wez # edit Makefile if desired - by default it installs into /usr/local make install Now continue with your PHP build in the normal manner. My relevant PHP configure options are: --with-gd --with-jpeg-dir=/usr --with-png-dir=/usr --with-zlib-dir=/usr --with-freetype-dir=/usr --enable-gd-native-ttf --enable-gd-imgstrttf If you don't have these libraries all installed under /usr, make the appropriate changes to these directives. And a quick test PHP script: <?php Header("Content-type: image/png"); $im = ImageCreate(400, 100); $black = ImageColorAllocate($im, 0, 0, 0); $white = ImageColorAllocate($im, 255, 255, 255); ImageFtText ($im, 20, 0, 10, 20, $white, "/usr/local/lib/ttf/Helve.ttf", "This is a test 1234", array()); ImagePng($im); ImageDestroy($im); ?> Note the array() as the last argument to ImageFtText(). It appears that you can pass a multi-line string to ImageFtText, and the array may contain an option to control line spacing. e.g. ImageFtText ($im, 20, 0, 10, 20, $white, "/usr/local/lib/ttf/Helve.ttf", "This is a test\r\ntest\r\ntest\r\ntest\r\ntest\r\ntest", array("linespacing" => 0.5)); generates a block of text with half the normal line spacing. Thanks to: Wez Furlong for maintaining PHP's GD interface Boutell.com for the GD library (even if updates are slow :) Ernie Dipko for his help resolving this problem. ...Richard.