Nearly two years to do the day, I'm replying to my own node. This vexed me for ages; Type 1 is more widely used in design and print, and many of the best cuts of classic typefaces are only available in this format.

To use Postscript Type 1 format typefaces with GD, you need to make sure that gd (the c library which GD depends on] is compiled with support for Freetype, an Open Source font renderer. Specifically, it needs to be built linking to version 2 of Freetype, as version 1 only support TrueType. I've seen a few linux distro packages of gd (such as that for Slackware) that are linked to Freetype v1.

Once that's all set up, you should be able to use a Type 1 font in the normal way using GD::Text:

my $gd_text = GD::Text->new() 
    or die GD::Text::error();
# using TrueType
$gd_text->set_font('funny.ttf', 12) 
    or die $gd_text->error;
# using Type 1 - Bodoni Bold Italic
$gd_text->set_font('bpbi____.pfb', 12) 
    or die $gd_text->error;
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cheers
ViceRaid