:.· Fonts in Webpage as PHP-Code

Thumbnails for Truetype fonts can be easily created with a PHP Script. This method is very handy for generateing thumbs for large font collections. (The thumbnails of The FontShack are created exactly the same way)

First, you have to read the directory in which the font reside:

$fontdir= "./fonts/";
$dir = opendir($fontdir);
while(false !== ($file = readdir($dir))) {
   if (eregi("\.". "ttf" ."$", $file)) {
         //do something: add to array or as option into a select-list.
      }
   }

Generating the thumbnails is done with the following snippet:

function create_png($f,$n) {
   global $fontdir;
   $bildpfad = $fontdir;
   $absolutpfad = getcwd(); //absolute Pfadangabe auslesen      
   $picpfad = "$absolutpfad$bildpfad";
   $file_body = str_replace(" ", "_", $n);
   $thumb_file = $file_body.".png";
   $name_file = $f; 
   $fontsource = "$absolutpfad$bildpfad$name_file";
   $breite = 250;
   $hoehe = 80;
   $img = imagecreate ($breite, $hoehe);
   $black = ImageColorAllocate ($img, 0, 0, 0);
   $white = ImageColorAllocate ($img, 255, 255, 255);
   $grey = ImageColorAllocate ($img, 192, 192, 192);
   $bordercol = ImageColorAllocate ($img, 239, 237, 222);
   imagefilledrectangle($img, 0, 0, $breite, $hoehe, $white);
   ImageTTFText($img, 20, 0, 5, 25, $black, $fontsource, $n);
   ImageTTFText($img, 20, 0, 5, 50, $grey, $fontsource, "Textzeile1");
   ImageTTFText($img, 20, 0, 5, 75, $grey, $fontsource, "Textzeile2");
   imagerectangle($img, 1, 1, $breite-1, $hoehe-1, $bordercol);
   imagefilledrectangle($img, $breite-4, 2, $breite-2, $hoehe-2, $white);
   imagefilledrectangle($img, 2, $hoehe-4, $breite-2, $hoehe-2, $white);
   Imagepng($img,"$picpfad$thumb_file",80); 
   }

Important here is the command ImageTTFText() which writes the text in the selected font into a bitmap. Imagepng() saves the bitmap to disk. Like we stated before you shouldn't generate JPG file, because of the lack of font clarity and the occurance of artefacts on the serifs.