really ugly code to generate text within an transparent imagine of a given width without running over the borders (only pixel fonts are supported because of the fixed width)

return image with text formatted to fit within given width.php

function formattextimg( $text, $width = 960, $color = array( 0, 0, 0 ), $font = 2 ) {
	$width = ( ( isset( $width ) && is_numeric( $width ) ) ? ( ( $width >= 100 ) ? (int)$width : 100 ) : 960 );
	$text = str_replace( array( '<b>', '</b>', '<strong>', '</strong>' ), '|', $text );
	$text_b = preg_split( '/\|/', $text, -1, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE );
	foreach($text_b as $k => $tb){if($k%2!=0){$textbold[($tb[1]-1)]=$tb[0];}}
	$text = str_replace('|','',$text);
	for( $i = 0; $i < strlen( $text ); $i++ ) {
		if( $string_c >= ( $width - ( (int)(imagefontwidth( $font ) / 2 ) ) ) ) {
			$space = strrpos( $string, ' ' );
			$string_sub = substr( $string, 0, $space );
			$i = $i - ( strlen( $string ) - $space ) + 1;
			$strings[] = $string_sub;
			$string = '';
			$string_c = 0;
		}
		$string .= $text{$i};
		$string_c += imagefontwidth( $font );
	}
	$strings[] = $string;

	$im = imagecreatetruecolor( $width, ( imagefontheight( $font ) * ( count( $strings ) ) ) );
	imagesavealpha( $im, true );
	$trans = imagecolorallocate( $im, 255, 255, 255 );
	imagefill( $im, 0, 0, $trans );
	$color = imagecolorallocate( $im, $color[0], $color[1], $color[2] );
	$black = imagecolorallocate( $im, 0, 0, 0 );
	foreach( $strings as $pos => $string ) {
		imagestring( $im, $font, 0, ( $pos * imagefontheight( $font ) ), $string, $color );
	}
	$len = 0;
	foreach( $strings as $pos => $string ) {
		$len += ( strlen( $string ) + 1 );
		if( count( $textbold ) > 0 ) {
			foreach( $textbold as $cpos => $word ) {
				if( $cpos <= $len ) {
					$wpos = strpos( $string, $word );
					if( $wpos !== false ) {
						imagestring( $im, $font, 
							( $wpos * imagefontwidth( $font ) )+1, 
							( ( $pos ) * imagefontheight( $font ) ), 
							$word, $color
						);
						unset( $textbold[$cpos] );
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}
	return $im;
}

header( 'Content-type: image/png' );
imagepng( formattextimg( $text ) );
exit;