I tried a different free font with allegro4.9/examples/ex_ttf.c and the 12 point font was a mess of little blurry triangles. Increasing the size to 14 points fixed it, but suppose you're trying to use ttf fonts on the user's computer? Is there some variable that lets you know the smallest usable size?

I stuck this font in the paperclip if anyone else wants to fiddle with it.

There is no minimum size, 1x1 pixels is fine. Instead, this is some kind of bug. [edit:] Fixed in SVN.

I downloaded allegro-4.9.9-r11766.tar.gz, then said

tar xf allegro-4.9.9-r11766.tar.gz
cd allegro-4.9
mkdir build
cd build
cmake
make
make install (as root)

and it still does the same thing. Do I need to make clean first for the older 4.9.21?

11766 is an ancient revision, you can get the newest one directly from SourceForge or from here: http://alleg.strangesoft.net/

(edit: 13767 as of right now)

I'm assuming a transposition typo from 13676, trying that now. Thanks!

[EDIT]

Yes! it works!