We use GD for generating images. Due to the LZW compression patent issue there is no GIF support (by default), however PNGs are essentially equivalent in that they support the same features as a GIF and are well supported by by browsers. This is straight out of the DOCs.

NB I have never had cause to do it but I understand you can compile in GIF support into GD. RTFS if you want to know how.

    use GD;    # create a new image
    $im = new GD::Image(100,100);
    # allocate some colors
    $white = $im->colorAllocate(255,255,255);
    $black = $im->colorAllocate(0,0,0);       
    $red = $im->colorAllocate(255,0,0);      
    $blue = $im->colorAllocate(0,0,255);
    # make the background transparent and interlaced
    $im->transparent($white);
    $im->interlaced('true');    
    # Put a black frame around the picture
    $im->rectangle(0,0,99,99,$black);
    # Draw a blue oval
    $im->arc(50,50,95,75,0,360,$blue);
    # And fill it with red
    $im->fill(50,50,$red);
    # make sure we are writing to a binary stream
    binmode STDOUT;
    # Convert the image to PNG and print it on standard output
    print $im->png;
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cheers

tachyon

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