Howdy ! Ilmari Heikkinen and I have created Ruby bindings for the FTGL library. FTGL is a C++ library that uses the freetype2 library to render true type fonts in OpenGL using various methods. (Outline, Polygon, Texture, Bitmap, Pixmap, and Extruded.) Screenshots: http://tastyspleen.net/~billk/ruby-ftgl-test1.png http://tastyspleen.net/~billk/ftgl-extruded-font.png The latter extruded font screenshot is from the FTGL C++ demo. I haven't ported the demo to ruby yet, but the ruby bindings needed should all be there. The ruby-ftgl project page is at: http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-ftgl/ The bindings are released under the Ruby license. If anyone needs an alternate license let me know. The underlying FTGL and freetype2 libraries have their own licenses, which appear to be compatible with both open source and closed source development. (IANAL) The ruby-ftgl extension currently builds on win32 and linux. We anticipate minimal effort required to get it to build under OS X. For win32, because building the underlying FTGL and freetype2 libraries was kind of a pain, we've included pre-built versions of the .dll's and their corresponding header files. So building the fuby-ftgl extension on your win32 system should be as simple as downloading the following .zip file and doing "ruby setup.rb" http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/5010/ruby-ftgl-0-1.zip For linux, pre-built versions of FTGL and freetype2 are not included; but you should have no trouble obtaining and building them on your linux system. The following archive contains ruby-ftgl bindings only: http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/5011/ruby-ftgl-0-1.tgz Enjoy! Regards, Bill