Thanks teabag, but designating the type as 'ft2' didn't work. I managed to get an arial.ttf file uploaded to my cgi-bin, but still no dice. I'm surprised I getting a blank screen without any error messages, even if I substitute 'arial' for some font I know is not there. BTW, I'm getting a positive read with:

 print "Has truetype" if $Imager::formats{tt};
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Here's what I have now, for what it's worth:

my $font = Imager::Font->new(    
   file  => "arial",
   type  => "tt",
   index => 1,
   color => "444444",
   size  => 30,
   aa    => 1);
   
$img->string(    
   font => $font,
   text => "This is a test string",
   x    => 20,
   y    => 10);
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