The fellow that writes the GD interface to PDL, PDL::IO::GD, (Judd Taylor) has upgraded the PDL cvs to fix the module to use FreeType fonts. SO... yippie... you can do away with the writing of the temp 2d image files to disk, and use inline memory images.

To get the cvs version of PDL

 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@pdl.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pdl co 
+-P PDL
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then there will be a PDL directory in your homedir.

If built succesfully, the following improved image cube will run. Generic.ttf is any truetype font file in the local dir. I copied arial.ttf in.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use PDL::LiteF;
use PDL::Graphics::TriD;    # Need this to display
use PDL::NiceSlice;
use PDL::IO::GD;

my $image = PDL::IO::GD->new( { x => 200, y => 200, true_color => 1 } 
+);

# Allocate some colors:
#
my $black  = $image->ColorAllocate( 0,   0,   0 );
my $white  = $image->ColorAllocate( 255, 255, 255 );
my $red    = $image->ColorAllocate( 255, 0,   0 );
my $green  = $image->ColorAllocate( 0,   255, 0 );
my $blue   = $image->ColorAllocate( 0,   0,   255 );
my $yellow = $image->ColorAllocate( 255, 255, 0 );
my $grey   = $image->ColorAllocate( 200, 200, 200 );

my %pdls;
my %color = (
   1 => [ 'white',  $white ],
   2 => [ 'red',    $red ],
   3 => [ 'green',  $green ],
   4 => [ 'blue',   $blue ],
   5 => [ 'yellow', $yellow ],
   6 => [ 'grey',   $grey ],
);

foreach my $num ( keys %color ) {
   $image->FilledRectangle( 0, 0, 200, 200, $color{ $num }[ 1 ] );

# Add some text:
   my @brect;
   $image->StringFT( \@brect, $black, "./Generic.ttf", 120, 0, 50, 150
+, $num );

   $pdls{ $num } = $image->to_pdl();
}

nokeeptwiddling3d();
hold3d();

# side 1 of space
imagrgb3d $pdls{ 1 }->mv( 2, 0 )->( :, -1 : 0, : )->float / 256,
 { Points => [ [ 0, 0, 1 ], [ 0, 0, 0 ], [ 1, 0, 0 ], [ 1, 0, 1 ] ] };

#side 2 of space
imagrgb3d $pdls{ 2 }->mv( 2, 0 )->( :, -1 : 0, : )->float / 256,
 { Points => [ [ 0, 1, 0 ], [ 1, 1, 0 ], [ 1, 0, 0 ], [ 0, 0, 0 ] ] };

#side 3 of space
imagrgb3d $pdls{ 3 }->mv( 2, 0 )->( :, -1 : 0, : )->float / 256,
 { Points => [ [ 1, 1, 0 ], [ 1, 1, 1 ], [ 1, 0, 1 ], [ 1, 0, 0 ] ] };

#side 4 of space
imagrgb3d $pdls{ 4 }->mv( 2, 0 )->( :, -1 : 0, : )->float / 256,
 { Points => [ [ 1, 1, 1 ], [ 0, 1, 1 ], [ 0, 0, 1 ], [ 1, 0, 1 ] ] };
+    #good

#side 5 of space
imagrgb3d $pdls{ 5 }->mv( 2, 0 )->( :, -1 : 0, : )->float / 256,

#      {Points => [[0,0,0],[0,0,1],[0,1,1],[0,1,0]]};
 { Points => [ [ 0, 1, 1 ], [ 0, 1, 0 ], [ 0, 0, 0 ], [ 0, 0, 1 ] ] };

#side 6 of space
imagrgb3d $pdls{ 6 }->mv( 2, 0 )->( :, -1 : 0, : )->float / 256,
 { Points => [ [ 1, 1, 1 ], [ 1, 1, 0 ], [ 0, 1, 0 ], [ 0, 1, 1 ] ] };

keeptwiddling3d();
twiddle3d();
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