PHP kerning problem with imagettftext () and imagefttext () functions

Question

Our dev server has recently been updated to PHP v5.2.13. With this update, we found that our png images have problems with kerning (letter spacing). We tried many fonts and have not yet found a solution.

We create images using the GD library and write text to images using font files and imagettftext () or imagefttext () functions.

Has anyone else come across this? Am I misunderstanding something, or should it be sent to PHP as an error? Are there any cool workarounds that I haven't thought about?

Here is an example of a new and new fat tachoma. Other fonts (bold and non-bold) have the same problem. Some letters and numbers seem off-center or something like that.

Bad - New PHP

Good old PHP v5.2.11 (the words are slightly different, because this is our development server, and the other is a live server)

Answer 1

"Tracking" is a similar term for how to set hard or loose text. For this, you may need more luck, for example this result .

Answer 2

Kerning did not work for us because of the font we used, so we had to introduce manual kerning for specific letter combinations, such as AV, AW ... etc.

/** * This function lets you write a string with your own letter spacing ($t) * and kern specific letter combinations like AV * * @param type $im An image resource, returned by one of the image creation functions * @param type $size The font size. Depending on your version of GD, this should be specified as the pixel size (GD1) or point size (GD2). * @param type $angle The angle in degrees, with 0 degrees being left-to-right reading text. Higher values represent a counter-clockwise rotation. For example, a value of 90 would result in bottom-to-top reading text. * @param type $t Letter Spacing * @param type $k Kerning Spacing * @param type $x The coordinates given by x and y will define the basepoint of the first character (roughly the lower-left corner of the character). This is different from the imagestring(), where x and y define the upper-left corner of the first character. For example, "top left" is 0, 0. * @param type $y The y-ordinate. This sets the position of the fonts baseline, not the very bottom of the character. * @param type $color The color index. Using the negative of a color index has the effect of turning off antialiasing. See imagecolorallocate(). * @param type $font The path to the TrueType font you wish to use. * @param type $text Text to write/print to the image */ function ImageTTFTextWithSpacing($im, $size, $angle, $t, $k, $x, $y, $color, $font, $text) { $numchar = strlen($text); for($i = 0; $i < $numchar; $i++) { # Assign character $char[$i] = substr($text, $i, 1); //Top is wider than bottom of character $up = ['Y','V','W']; //Bottom is wider than top of character $down = ['A']; //From the second letter on if( $i > 0 && //check whether we have TOP and BOTTOM type character //next to each other so we need to adjust spacing ((in_array($char[$i], $up) && in_array($char[$i-1], $down)) || (in_array($char[$i-1], $up) && in_array($char[$i], $down)) )) { $w -= $k; } # Write character imagettftext($im, $size, $angle, ($x + $w + ($i * $t)), $y, $color, $font, $char[$i]); # Get width of character $width = imagettfbbox($size, $angle, $font, $char[$i]); $w = $w + $width[2]; } }