The following test works fine with ActiveState (build 623, their GD ver 1.27.2]. My guess is you are trying to print characters that aren't defined in the font you are specifying, except that doesn't seem likely with simple numbers. Anyway, there is nothing fancy about the string, to answer that part of the question.

use strict;
use warnings;
use GD;
        
my $im = new GD::Image(150,60);

my $white = $im->colorAllocate(255,255,255);  # UPDATE without this th
+e background 
                                              # will be the same as th
+e text colour
my $blue  = $im->colorAllocate(0,0,255); # might as well allocate this
+ too while I'm at it...

my @bounds = $im->stringTTF($blue,'c:/i386/Arial.ttf',22,0,0,36,'123 J
+aPh!');
if (!@bounds) {print "TTF error: $@\n";}
print join ':', @bounds;

open OUT, '>foo.jpg' or die "Couldn't open output: $!";
binmode OUT;
print OUT $im->jpeg;
close OUT;
[download]

Update: Aargh you're correct! I actually did test this but as part of a larger script which had already set some colours. I've corrected the above code as marked (thanks!). And for the record this was under NT4. I'll have to try it on a Win9x box sometime.

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser