Generating images with text in them

[phil hunt]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 02:44:03 -0500, Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
>On Wednesday 20 July 2005 11:59 pm, phil hunt wrote:
>> I am trying to generate some images (gifs or pngs) with text in 
>> them. I can use the Python Imaging Library, but it only has access 
>> to the default, rather crappy, font.
>
>On the fly, or just during development?

Just during development.

>In any case, you should be aware of the Skencil vector graphic
>program which is written in Python (with some C extensions),
>and which is also, of course, a python vector-graphics library.

I may look that up, if I don't get joy with PIL or Tkinter.

>Unfortunately, getting it to work in a server environment might
>not be too pretty (requires GTK, etc, even if you don't actually
>use it).  I tried to make a stripped down version that didn't
>require the desktop stuff, but it hasn't worked out so well yet.

I'm runnnig a desktop environment. For example Tkinter works fine.

>> Alternately, is there a good source of PIL font files (.pil files)
>> somewhere?
>
>I believe there is a utility for converting other types of fonts, you
>might have to go through a couple of different conversions from
>the font files you have.

I'm aware there's a utility, and I wish to avoid the hassle of
"go[ing] through a couple of different conversions from the font
files you have"

>> If the writers of the Python Imaging Library are reading this, may I 
>> suggest that they add more fonts to it. Yes, that would increase 
>> the size, but these days disk space is cheap and programmer time
>> expensive.
>
>While bitmap font files are not copyrightable, there are license issues
>with most of the "nicer" fonts you are probably talking about.

Oh? I can understand them being copyrighted; but if they are not 
copywritable, what licnese issues are there? In any case, there 
presumably are not license issues with the fonts that come with a 
standard GNU/Linux distribution such as SuSE 9.1, which is what I am 
using.

> That
>complicates bundling them with the software. The PIL site does
>actually have some additional fonts for download, though, IIRC.

Do yuo have a URL?

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