Reported by Grzegorz Siehie?: I've investigated the bug a little bit more, and I found that the problem is with the rotation method in Magick::Draw object. example source: require 'rubygems' require 'RMagick' canvas = Magick::ImageList.new canvas.new_image(300, 300) text = Magick::Draw.new text.font_family = 'helvetica' text.rotation = -90 text.pointsize = 52 text.gravity = Magick::CenterGravity text.annotate(canvas, 0,0,-1.5,-1.5, RUBY_PLATFORM) canvas.write("#{RUBY_PLATFORM}.png") images generated: Attached i486-linux.png Attached java.png executing the script (which is based on RMagick example form projects page) gives some warnings: dfenzvps:~# jruby t.rb /usr/local/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick4j-0.3.7/lib/rmagick4j/draw.rb:6 warning: `&' interpreted as argument prefix /usr/local/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick4j-0.3.7/lib/rmagick4j/image.rb:323 warning: `&' interpreted as argument prefix