Re: Imager::Font examples

[domm]

First, you'll need some true type library like Freetype or T1lib properly installed and Imager compiled to use it. You can check what libraries you've got using this snippet (from Image::Font's POD)

use Imager;
print "Has truetype"      if $Imager::formats{tt};
print "Has t1 postscript" if $Imager::formats{t1};
print "Has Win32 fonts"   if $Imager::formats{w32};
print "Has Freetype2"     if $Imager::formats{ft2};

And than, do something like

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Imager;
use Imager::Font;
use Imager::Color;

my $font_file='path/to/font.ttf';

my $text="Foo Bar!";

# create image
my $img=Imager->new(xsize=>200,ysize=>50);

# set colors
my $white=Imager::Color->new("#ffffff");
my $black=Imager::Color->new("#000000");

# change background to white
$img->box(color=>$white,filled=>1);

# create font object
my $ttfont=Imager::Font->new
            (
              type=>'ft2',
              file=>$font_file,
              color=>$black,
              size=>16,
             );

# draw text
$img->string(font=>$ttfont,text=>$text,
             x=>5,y=>22,aa=>1);

# write file
$img->write(file=>"image.png") or die 
      "Cannot write $imgfn: ", $img->errstr;

Hope this helps!

--
#!/usr/bin/perl
for(ref bless{},just'another'perl'hacker){s-:+-$"-g&&print$_.$/}

[neilwatson]

Thanks. A couple of questions:

How would you determine the size of the image file automatically, if the font size was dynamic, without reserving a large image size?

How do I send the image to a web browser without saving the file first?

Neil Watson
watson-wilson.ca

[domm]

How would you determine the size of the image file automatically, if the font size was dynamic, without reserving a large image size?

Hmm, never done that. One idea: Generate a very large image, draw the text, use $font->bounding_box to get the dimensions of the drawn string, and finally crop the image accordingly.

How do I send the image to a web browser without saving the file first?

Try something like this:

my $img_data;
$img->write(data=>\$img_data,type=>'png')
  or die "Cannot dump image: ", $img->errstr;

Now you've got the image in $img_data, so you can print it to STDOUT (or via CGI). If operating under CGI, don't forget to set the proper content-type.

--
#!/usr/bin/perl
for(ref bless{},just'another'perl'hacker){s-:+-$"-g&&print$_.$/}