I found the problem with FreeType on my machine. The pike module never selects any CharMap, and in this freetype version the default seems to be "no charmap", i.e. FT_Load_Char() will interpret the argument as a glyph number.

This patch fixed the problem for me, could somebody who _already has a working FreeType module_ try it out and see if it breaks anything for them?

Index: src/modules/_Image_FreeType/freetype.c =================================================================== RCS file: /pike/data/cvsroot/Pike/7.4/src/modules/_Image_FreeType/freetype.c,v retrieving revision 1.13 diff -u -r1.13 freetype.c --- freetype.c 2002/11/29 20:56:46 1.13 +++ freetype.c 2003/01/15 13:45:03 @@ -199,6 +199,8 @@ static void image_ft_face_create( INT32 args ) { int er; + FT_Encoding best_enc = ft_encoding_none; + int enc_no, enc_score, best_enc_score = -2; if( !args || sp[-args].type != T_STRING ) Pike_error("Illegal argument 1 to FreeType.Face. Expected string.\n"); er = FT_New_Face( library, sp[-args].u.string->str, 0, &TFACE ); @@ -206,6 +208,22 @@ Pike_error( "Failed to parse the font file %s\n", sp[-args].u.string->str ); else if( er ) Pike_error( "Failed to open the font file %s\n", sp[-args].u.string->str ); + for(enc_no=0; enc_no<TFACE->num_charmaps; enc_no++) { + enc_score = 0; + switch(TFACE->charmaps[enc_no]->encoding) { + case ft_encoding_symbol: enc_score = -1; break; + case ft_encoding_unicode: enc_score = 2; break; + case ft_encoding_latin_1: enc_score = 1; break; + } + if(enc_score > best_enc_score) { + best_enc_score = enc_score; + best_enc = TFACE->charmaps[enc_no]->encoding; + } + } + er = FT_Select_Charmap(TFACE, best_enc); + if( er ) + Pike_error( "Failed to set a character map for the font %s\n", + sp[-args].u.string->str ); pop_n_elems( args ); push_int( 0 ); }