SDL ttf

I am attempting to use SDL_ttf for writing text to the screen. Currently, I just use bmps and pings for the menu text, but that process really isn't going to work when I want to write variable data (like FPS, level complete time, etc) to the screen.

Installing Development Files

Again, I am using cygwin with the gcc compiler under Windows.

Download SDL_ttf-2.0.9.tar.gz from http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_ttf/

Rename to .tar.gz if Windows changed the extension to .tar.tar

  mv SDL_ttf-2.0.9.tar.tar SDL_ttf-2.0.9.tar.gz

Extract

 gzip -d SDL_ttf-2.0.9.tar.gz
 tar -xvf SDL_ttf-2.0.9.tar

If you get a permission denied error, then chmod the tar file

 chmod u+rw SDL_ttf-2.0.9.tar
 tar -xvf SDL_ttf-2.0.9.tar

Download the Freetype library at http://www.freetype.org

Select "stable release" and pick the Source Forge link

Download freetype-2.3.11.tar.gz

Unzip

 gzip -d freetype-2.3.11.tar.gz
 chmod u+wr freetype-2.3.11.tar
 tar -xvf freetype-2.3.11.tar

Build freetype

 cd freetype-2.3.11
 ./configure
 make
 make install
   

Build the SDL_ttf library

 cd SDL_ttf-2.0.9
 ./configure
 make
 make install

Not sure why, but it seemed like I had to run "make install" twice... or maybe I just forgot to run it the first time.

You can verify if it installed correctly entering the following:

 # ls -la /usr/local/include/SDL/SDL_ttf.h
 -rw-r--r-- 1 Foo        None 9829 Nov 22 15:27 /usr/local/include/SDL/SDL_ttf.h
 # ls -la /usr/local/lib/libSDL_ttf*
 -rw-r--r-- 1 Foo        None 85416 Nov 22 15:27 /usr/local/lib/libSDL_ttf.a
 -rwxr-xr-x 1 Foo        None 23440 Nov 22 15:27 /usr/local/lib/libSDL_ttf.dll.a
 -rwxr-xr-x 1 Foo        None   900 Nov 22 15:27 /usr/local/lib/libSDL_ttf.la

If something went wrong, then you will get a "No such file or directory" message

Write a simple test program that uses SDL_ttf.

Distributing

Download SDL_ttf-2.0.9-win32.zip from http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_ttf/

Extract the DLLs to the project directory