Match on 10-carachters or space

[not_skeletor]

I have to make an image in GD based upon some text taken out of a DB. However, it has to be small enough to fit on one line, or wrap to the next.
The wordwrap will not work for this, obviously, as I have to pass a new variable to Imagettftext for each new line.
I can check the text for length, and if it is longer, use preg_split to split it at the spaces. But, it then splits EVERY bit of text after whatever I set my strlen to check.
Like this:
If I put in, say, David Bowie And The Stranglers, I would like it to see this string is more than 10-letters long. then, to break it up into seperate lines strings each of which are at maximum 10 carchters long AND break on a space.
The way it sits now, it looks like
David
Bowie
And
The
Stranglers
which is worse.
Any thoughts?

[sfullman]

I haven't worked much with GD. However it sounds like you need to get the width in pixels of each letter, in an algorithm something like this:

$str = "David Bowie and the Stranglers";

for($i=0;$i<strlen($str);$i++){

   $char=substr($str,$i,1);
   $char_width=char_width($char); #function you develop, needs to include inter-letter space

   #need to declare maxWidth somewhere
   if($total_width+$char_width < $maxWidth){
      $buffer .=$char;
      $total_width+=$char_width; #again, this includes inter-letter space
   }else{
      //print out the line with the word(s) in buffer
      //you develop function here


  //clear buffer and width
  $buffer='';
  $total_width='';
   }

}
//flush buffer remaining into print one last time if present

HTH,
Sam