Anyhow, if I hit http://localhost/myscript.pl?text=I+LOVE+MY+WIFE then it works. Going through a web form which then writes <img src="/myscript.pl?$text"> ($text being pulled by $text = $q->param("text") ) then it only prints the first letter, the I.

You are properly URI-escaping the code you print in $text, right? You can't just do this:

print qq{<img src="/myscript.pl?$text">};
[download]

because you need to re-percentify or plusify spaces, etc etc., as in:

use URI;
my $uri = URI->new("/myscript.pl");
$uri->query($text);
my $uri_string = $uri->as_string;
print qq{<img src="$uri_string">};
[download]

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker