How can I generate GIFs on the fly from my CGI scripts?

If you want to generate GIF images on the fly as part of your application, examine the gd library (URL is: http://siva.cshl.org/gd/gd.html ). Hint: your HTML page and your inline images are separate documents with separate URLs. Generate them in response to separate requests! (Yes, there are tricks to speed this up, but be careful not to break inline images on HTML pages you didn't write that refer to your gd-generated image.)

Adaptations of gd are available for Tcl, Perl, and other languages. See the gd page, listed above, for more information.

Perl users may also be interested in World Wide Web FAQ