[SOLVED] Copyright symbol in imagestring

[youknowho]

I am successfully watermarking images with imagestring, but have yet to get the copyright symbol to appear correctly. I've tried htmlspecialchars_decode:

 

$copyString = htmlspecialchars_decode('©', ENT_QUOTES) . date(Y) . ' My Company';
imagestring($image, 3, 80, 475, $copyString, $black);

 

I've also tried html_entity_decode:

 

$copyString = html_entity_decode("©") . date(Y) . ' My Company';
imagestring($image, 3, 80, 475, $copyString, $black);

 

which according to http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/PHP/Q_23295622.html works, but not for me.

 

I also set default_charset = "iso-8859-1" in php.ini on the chance that a different charset was being used for some reason. No matter what I try I get an "A" or "S" with markings above it (which I think are coming from another character set). Ideas?

[discomatt]

Perhaps chr(169); ?

[youknowho]

Thanks for the reply. I forgot to mention that I tried that yesterday as well. I get the same "S" with a mark over it, which makes me think it is a character set/encoding issue.

[discomatt]

Or possibly font issue.

[youknowho]

Geeze it is a font issue thank you. I assumed imagestring would support the copyright symbol but it doesn't. When I try:

 

imagefttext ($image, 15, 0, 160, 485, $black, '/usr/.../fonts/LucidaSansDemiBold.ttf', chr(169) . date(Y) . ' My Company');

 

it works fine. I was hoping to use imagestring because the freetype text looks really pixelated/muddled (even with png output). I've seen an Imagemagick solution but don't know if it's installed on the host. All I want is a clear copyright notice on my image!

[discomatt]

I don't think it's the function... it's more than likely the font you've used IN the function.

 

You're going to have to grab a gdf font that contains the copyright symbol in order to do it.

 

Alternately, use a TTF font!

 

<?php

$im = imagecreate( 80,50 );

$bg = imagecolorallocate( $im, 255, 255, 255 ); 
$txt = imagecolorallocate( $im, 0, 0, 0 ); 

imagettftext( $im, 12, 0, 15, 30, $txt, 'C:/windows/fonts/arial.ttf', chr(169).' 2008' );

header('Content-type: image/png');

imagepng($im);

?>

[youknowho]

I can use true type fonts with imagettftext and imagefttext but as I mentioned, the quality is horrible. I made an arial gdf font and it looks equally bad.

 

I did notice in the imagestring documentation that the encoding is latin2, so I'm going to work on changing that for the string printed to the image.

 

Thanks.

[youknowho]

After more testing, creating a gdf font with a lot of experimentation to find its' sweet spot for size and character width, used with imagestring worked. Thanks again.