Image of zero length with True Type fonts

One of the other issues mentioned problems with a specific font. I tried the Gentium fonts and they did not work.

GD has 'FreeType Support' => false despite setting it on in WHM. I will investigate.

What sort of license is needed to include a font with Image captcha?

What sort of font file and licence needed to include in PHP?

There are a lot of people making free fonts under various licences. The Bitstream Vera true type font, http://www.gnome.org/fonts/, has a BSD style licence allowing both inclusion and redistribution. You could include the font by renaming the text files to Vera.*, for example readme.txt to Vera.readme.txt, or you could include the whole Vera directory as a subdirectory and include fonts from subdirectories.

I think the built in PHP fonts you mention are probably the fonts built into GD. You could generate the text as an image then double the text size using imagecopyresized then apply the distortion.

GD provides a bit mapped font load system but they chose to use a weird file definition that stops the file working on all computers. Supplying an external bitmap for a larger font is not an option unless you create the font in at least two formats.

The ISP WHM settings problem is passed to our ISP. Cpanel will not let me report the problem direct so I have to tell the ISP then wait. I will result the result here for anyone with the same WHM/Cpanel settings problem. A short explanation so VPS and Cpanel users will understand the problem.

When you rent a VPS and choose Cpanel, the first part is WHM to control all the sites. You compile PHP in WHM, not Cpanel, and the settings apply to every site in the VPS. Cpanel is the control software you see when you enter an individual site and gives you control over some settings for the site but not over the options compiled into PHP. WHM has an Apache update option that also compiles PHP. You choose PHP settings then PHP advanced settings then switch on GD and switch on TTF (FreeType). Many people switch on GD but not TTF because TTF is labelled FreeType instead of True Type.

In my case TTF is switched on but the setting is not working with GD to switch on the GD True Type option. If I manually compile PHP, I lose the automated WHM compilation. I also had the same setup on a VPS at a different ISP and on their server, the True Type fonts used to work. Perhaps it is an error in the latest Cpanel code.

My mistake or a browser/javascript/mouse error. I changed the setting in WHM then compiled Apache/PHP and the change did not occur. I was also changing some other settings and somehow the TTF setting did not stick. I went back and changed just that one setting, compiled, and everything worked.

On the font side, I used DejaVuSerif with the default settings and 5 characters appeared crisp and clean. 6 characters just fit. I had to remove a couple of characters because they were too easy to confuse with numbers. The Bitstream Vera font works beautifully with the default setting and should be considered for the default inclusion.