Producing graphical text using form input and font files

Showing the visitor their wording in their chosen typeface

[bellrj]

Does anyone know of a tool that will produce text in a specific (non-web standard) typeface as a graphic that can then be displayed on a web page? The idea is that someone types in their specific wording (say for a party invitation), then chooses a typeface, the tool produces a jpeg or gif file and the web page then shows that graphic so the site visitor sees how their wording would look in that typeface. I would like it to be able to handle Truetype and Adobe Type 1 fonts if possible.

My web host runs using Apache, mySQL, Perl, CGI, Chilisoft ASP, PHP4.

I've had a search through these forums but haven't found anything so far. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[hakre]

hi bellrj,
php can be extended by a module that can create images on the fly. and there is an extension to use ttf fonts for this (and others). look for GD or try php images on the fly [google.com] in google. there are a lot of howtos, examples and code-snippets available.

[bellrj]

Thanks for your reply - it was extremely helpful indeed! You were right of course, using those search terms turned up more links in Google than anyone could ever need. I don't know how I didn't come across them in the first place.

I've now got a PHP page accepting form input and displaying the words in any font I fancy. Superb! It's bringing a whole new look to the site I'm building. Thanks again.