my $font = GD::Font->load($font_path) or die('cant load font');

$image->string($font,50,30,$content,$red);

exit;

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Cwd;
use Carp;
use GD;

my $font_arg ='/home/leo/misc/fonts/Suicide.ttf';
#/usr/share/fonts/ttf/unvr57w.ttf';
my $jpeg_quality=90;
my $content = `date`;
my $out = sprintf "/tmp/%s.jpg", time;
-f $font_arg or die; # just in case

my $font = GD::Font->load($font_arg) or die('cant load font'); # error here



# create a new image
my $image = new GD::Image(700,350);

my $red = $image->colorAllocate(255,0,0);      

$image->string($font,50,30,$content,$red); # not making it to this line

open(DATEI ,'>', $out) || die "could not write image: +$!";
binmode DATEI;
print DATEI ($image->jpeg($jpeg_quality));
close(DATEI);

warn "saved $out\n";

exit;


##</code><code>##

[leo@mescaline ~]$ file /home/leo/misc/fonts/Suicide.ttf
/home/leo/misc/fonts/Suicide.ttf: TrueType font data