note 33440 added to function.imagettftext

Here's the reason why you (sometimes) have to use absolute filenames for the 'fontfile'-parameter: The libgd extension for PHP searches for TTF fonts in the following order: - If an absolute path is given, GD opens that font. - If the font cannot be found and the environment variable GDFONTPATH is set, GD looks for the font in these folders. - If the font still cannot be found, GD searches the font in DEFAULT_FONTPATH, which has been set to C:\winnt\fonts (or something similar for un*x platforms). Note that this path is statically compiled into the extension! This means that only users, who installed Windows to c:\winnt, are able to load fonts without using absolute filenames. To solve this problem, set the GDFONTPATH environment variable to your real windows font dir. (Windows NT: Start->Settings->Control Panel-> System->Advanced->Environment Variables) Now you can use short filenames, such as "times.ttf" or even "times" and GD finds the correct font :) Here's the responsible code from php/ext/gd/libgd/gd.h: (Note: I had to wrap the line for unix because it was too long) #ifndef WIN32 /* default fontpath for unix systems */ #define DEFAULT_FONTPATH "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF: /usr/share/fonts/TrueType: /usr/share/fonts/truetype: /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1:." #define PATHSEPARATOR ":" #else /* default fontpath for windows systems */ #define DEFAULT_FONTPATH "c:\\winnt\\fonts;." #define PATHSEPARATOR ";" #endif And here's an interesting note about the true meaning of the space character (also taken from gd.h): /* * The character (space) used to separate alternate fonts in the * fontlist parameter to gdImageStringFT. */ Actually, fontfile is a space-separated list of filenames. GD tries to open the first file, if it fails, GD tries to open the second file, and so on. For example: imagettftext($im, 20, 0, 10, 20, $black, "tahoma.ttf arial.ttf", "texttexttext"); GD will try to open tahoma.ttf. If tahoma is not available, GD will try to load arial.ttf. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a way to escape the space character, so you cannot use it in fontfile. However, you can use as many spaces as you wish in GDFONTPATH ;) I hope this helped to clarify some things, as there didn't seem to be any previous comment about this. ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imagettftext.php Edit Note -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+33440 Delete Note -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+33440&report=yes Reject Note -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+33440&report=yes