Forgive my grumpiness, but I've spent the last several hours trying to install GD, etc.
Let's be honest. PHP needs built-in support for creating dynamic images. JSP already has this. Heck, you could even make it a configure option. As it stands now, you have to do the following: -- Install GD -- Install all of GD's numerous dependencies -- Install zlib -- Install freetype -- Install libttf THEN you have to compile PHP with all of the requisite options to enable GD here and Freetype there, and PHP often won't compile without specifying /path/to/various/options, so you have to dig around your system to find out where everything was installed. This results in a long and unwieldy configure statement which often does not work. PHP needs to have a simple configure option called --enable-dynamic-images or something similar. This should use built-in libraries that are downloaded with the PHP source to create PNG images. Images can then be created with standard PHP functions. This would be much more useful than relying on several third-party solutions which do not easily work with each other. This would also have the benefit of being more portable -- as I plan to release my code to several different people running different types of servers, I would like to minimize compatibility issues. If anyone has a better solution, feel free to email me. As it stands, I am very frustrated with this, and I haven't yet seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks, Erica -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
