I am still on the port of my windows game, i compleaded the grafik output except the text output.
Up to now i am using the windows fonts(like it is described at http://www.nehe.gamedev.net ) And now i am seaching for an way to do this on linux! I dont know, if there is an possibility to do it for windows and Linux. plz help me!
fonts are an OS-dependent thing. spefically, the windows/mfc api has functionality that is unique to windows. in X, it also handled differently. that said, seamless porting of your gl fonts aren’t likely [as far as I know, anyway]. however, there are bitmap fonts - basically a “picture” of fonts and you can simply create quads and apply the font texture on top of it. I recall http://nehe.gamedev.net/ having a tutorial on it.
This is a such a FAQ, there’s even a section on OpenGL font technologies on this site. Shouldn’t be difficult to find.
A FreeType-based solution will let you use real fonts in a cross-platform way. FTGL is probably the best of the ready-made FreeType-based libraries, but it’s not too difficult to roll your own code either if you want to. There’s an example of a different approach to FTGL’s on my site – check out font.c in http://onesadcookie.is-a-geek.net/svn/repos/RubyGameCommon