Drawing text on screen with GLUT not working at all - perl

Question

I don't know what i'm doing wrong, this is perl but it's language agnostic(methinks):
This example draws a lot of snowmans from an example i've found in the web:
(I ported it to perl)
The problems is that there's no sign of the text being rendered.
sub renderScene{
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
gluLookAt( $x, 1.0, $z,
$lx,1.0,$lz,
0.0,1.0,0.0);
glColor3f(0.5, 0.2, 0.4);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
#Draw ground
glBegin(GL_QUADS);
glVertex3f(-100.0, 0.0, -100.0);
glVertex3f(-100.0, 0.0, 100.0);
glVertex3f( 100.0, 0.0, 100.0);
glVertex3f( 100.0, 0.0, -100.0);
glEnd();
for ($i=-3; $i<3; $i++)
{
for ($j=-3 ; $j<3; $j++)
{
glPushMatrix();
glTranslatef($i*10.0,0,$j*10.0);
drawSnowMan();
glPopMatrix();
}
}
glColor3f(0.5, 0.5, 0.0);
glRasterPos2f(0.5, 0.5);
my $strin = "Viva peron carajo!";
my #string = split('',$strin);
for my $char(#string){
glutBitmapCharacter(GLUT_BITMAP_HELVETICA_18, $char);
}
glutSwapBuffers();
}

Answer 1

Your code is incomplete. $x, $z, $lx and $lz are undefined and there are no calls to set up the projection matrix. As such, I can only give suggestions:
glRasterPos coordinates are world/model coordinates. Did you really mean to put the text close to the origin, possibly inside the center snowman?
If you want to work in screen coordinates, you should set up an appropriate orthogonal "2D" projection matrix. Remember that you can push/pop/play around with the projection matrix in between drawing commands.
Also, start by rendering a triangle/quad in the text position.