That did it. Here's the working GD code, in case anyone is insterested. Many thanks......Steve

use strict;
use GD;
my $image = GD::Image->new(200,100);
my $white = $image->colorAllocate(255,255,255);
my $black = $image->colorAllocate(0,0,0);
my $uparrow = "\x{2191}";
my $dnarrow = "\x{2193}";
$image->stringFT($black,'/windows/fonts/arial.ttf',12,0,80,50,"up: $up
+arrow  dn: $dnarrow");
open(OUT,">test.png") or die "Can't open output: $!\n";
binmode OUT;
print OUT $image->png;
close OUT;
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