Posted by Ben on 12/08/96 11:28

Does anyone have any experience using the TrueType bytecode interpreter
to display fonts in PHP under Windows? I'm running Windows XP, PHP
4.3.11, GD 2.0.28 with FreeType enabled. It all works fine, but it's
using the FreeType anti-aliased hinting rather than the clear Windows
non-antialiased (bytecode interpreter?) hinting.

I'm looking into converting my weather graph generator (at
http://harvest.com/w.cgi), which now uses the Win32 API to draw the
fonts, to use PHP and the GD library. To see a comparison of what I'm
getting now with the FreeType non-anti-aliased and anti-aliased
versions, check out http://harvest.com/images/truetype.png

Obviously the first (Win32 API) is the best. The second is yucky. The
last would do, but it doesn't look as nice IMHO, and produces bigger
output because it needs lots of extra colours.

I'm aware of the patent issues. I've tried recompiling FreeType with
bytecode support (as per http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Font-HOWTO/bci.html)
and that worked, but I realised I'd need to compile GD and libpng and
and all the rest, which I can't do at the moment.

Any ideas? Is there a Win32 version of PHP_GD2.DLL with the FreeType
bytecode interpreter enabled?

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