Why doesn't GD2 render russian characters on apache server?

Question

PHP

There is a simple script on GD2 - puts inscriptions on the buttons. The site is made on win-1251. The problem is that on localhost this script works fine under PHP 5.6.2. However, on the server, he does not want to render Russian letters. Those. Latin goes with a bang, and Russian - breaks the picture (only a cross remains) and nothing! The question is: what needs to be tweaked on the server to make it work? This script has been thrashing me for 10 years so far.

Answer 1

First, use UTF-8.
Secondly, do not rely on the default font, but explicitly specify the path to the TTF file with the font (after making sure that it supports Cyrillic).

Answer 2

The picture breaks most likely due to errors that are sent instead of or along with the picture.
Probably the font was not found or GD2 itself.

Answer 3

Try converting to unicode:

function unicode_russian($str) {
     $encode = "";
     for ($ii=0;$ii<strlen($str);$ii++) {
         $xchr=substr($str,$ii,1);
         if (ord($xchr)>191) {
             $xchr=ord($xchr)+848;
             $xchr="&#" . $xchr . ";";
         }
         if(ord($xchr) == 168) {
               $xchr = "&#1025;";
         }
         if(ord($xchr) == 184) {
               $xchr = "&#1105;";
         }
         $encode=$encode . $xchr;
   }
     return $encode;
}