How do I render text on to a square (4 vertices) in OpenGL?

Question

I'm using Linux and GLUT. I have a square as follows:

glVertex3f(-1.0, +1.0, 0.0); // top left
glVertex3f(-1.0, -1.0, 0.0); // bottom left
glVertex3f(+1.0, -1.0, 0.0); // bottom right
glVertex3f(+1.0, +1.0, 0.0); // top right

I guess I can't use glutBitmapCharacter, since this is only ideal for 2D ortho.

Simple enough, I'd like to render "Hello world!" anywhere on said square. Should I create a texture and then apply it to the vertices using glTexCoord2f?

Answer 1

Indeed rendering to a bitmap is a solution. There's a decent tutorial on how to do it here on GameDev.