[mapserver-users] Problem with truetype labelling in php mapscript

[Dylan Rawlins]

Hi,

I experienced a problem in displaying truetype labels under php 
mapscript 3.5 and was advised to upgrade to 3.6.1. We have now 
upgraded but are experiencing the same problem. By changing the 
labels to bitmaps the system works perfectly so we have narrowed 
the problem down to the Freetype compilation.

We are experiencing difficulties in installing the older freetype
libraries on the server (as described in
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PHPMapScriptRH72):

.. edit Makefile to compile with Freetype1... Mapscript seems to 
have problem loading fonts when using gd compiled with Freetype2 
on RH7.x ...

Our current server configuration is as follows:

Linux version 2.4.9-31
Red Hat Linux release 7.1 (Seawolf)
Apache/1.3.19 (Unix)
PHP/4.2.1  and PHP/4.0.6 (used by Ensim)
freetype-2.0.1-4
gd-1.8.3-7

Installing the older gd and freetype1 libraries is causing 
dependencies problems with our existing PHP installation (not only 
PHP 4.2.1, but also PHP 4.0.6 which is being used by the Ensim 
control panel).

I've also found the following:

http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/doc/phpmapscript-install-howto.html

Q: Why can't both PHP and MapScript be compiled with Freetype 
support?

A: You cannot have Freetype enabled in both PHP and MapServer 
because of a conflict with the gdttf.c and gdcache.c files that are 
included in both PHP and MapServer but are not identical. We may 
try to fix that conflict in the future, but in the meantime, one of PHP 
or MapServer has to be compiled using --without-ttf. This is 
especially important with PHP4 because it includes TTF support by 
default.

This brings us back to the fact that Mapscript/Mapserver does not 
seem to be simple to install when it is used in conjunction with 
PHP 4.x on a Linux server.

So it seems that Mapscript does not work with Freetype2, is this 
correct? Any advice on what I can do to enable Truetype labelling?

Many thanks
Dylan