PHP - Problem With Imagettftext()

I need to draw various font sizes onto a canvas to create a web service. Wanting to protect my HD assets, the intent is to use PHP to populate the image with the necessary text, and then scale down the image before presenting it to the user.

A similar service already exists, a tool to allow the public to make user generated content for a card game.

The problem ever, is that PHP does not seem to handle font sizes very well. I created this sample code to demonstrate my issue.
Here is a sample output from the code below
 

<?php
    $img = imagecreatetruecolor(750, 530);
    
    $black = imagecolorallocate($img, 0, 0, 0);
    $gray = imagecolorallocate($img, 125, 125, 125);
    $white = imagecolorallocate($img, 255, 255, 255);
    
    $font = realpath('../fonts/micross.ttf');
    
    $size = 12;
    $spacing = 20;
    
    for ($x = 0; $x <= 25; $x++) {
        $box = imageftbbox($size + $x/10, 0, $font, "The longer the phase the more apparent the size difference should be");
        $boxWidth = $box[2] - $box[0];
        
        imagefilledrectangle($img, 5, $x*$spacing+5, $boxWidth+5, ($x+1)*$spacing+5, $gray);
        
        imagefttext($img, $size + $x/10, 0, 5, $spacing*($x+1), $white, $font, "The longer the phase the more apparent the size difference should be Font Size ".($size+($x/10)));
    }
    
    imagejpeg($img);
    imagedestroy($img);
?>

You can see how despite the font size steadily increasing by 0.1, it sporadically jumps at what seem at first like random intervals, however if you increase the number of loops and log the data, you can see that it alternates between increasing every 0.7, and 0.8. Unfortunately that doesn't help me any, just some insight.

if($last != $boxWidth)
{
    $last = $boxWidth;
    echo $boxWidth." ".($size+($x/10))."<br>";
}

This outputs the current width and font size each time the text width changes.
I've compiled a sample output for you guys to look at here

Hopefully I've provided enough information to get some help, this has been very frustrating.

Guys thanks for helping me solve the problem i had but now i have another problem and i am lost. i have included the code below for you to have overview.

On the home page the url shows how it should be: http://localhost/board/italian.php?country=Italian
BUT 
When you mouse over the NEXT link to go to next page you get this : http://localhost/board/?page=1&country=Italian  and then an error 404 when you click on the link
page = 1  no matter if you are mousing over link for page 5 or 2

This is the code:

<table style="width:100%; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto">
        <?php    
            
            $items_per_page = 5;//how many records/rows to display per page
                        
            $page_url      = "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
                                    
            $cleaned_current_page_country = htmlspecialchars($_GET["country"]);
                        
            $page_number = (isset($_GET['page']))? filter_var($_GET['page']) : 1;
            //$page_number = filter_var($_GET['page']);
            //$page_number = $_GET['page'];
                
            $selected_restaurant_type = $_GET['country'];
                                                            
            // find number of rows in the db
                $query = "SELECT * FROM menu_update WHERE special_of_theday = 1 AND restaurant_type = '".$selected_restaurant_type."' ";
                $query_result = mysqli_query($connection, $query); 
                $row_count = mysqli_fetch_array($query_result);
                $total_rows = mysqli_num_rows($query_result);
                                                
            $expected_number_of_pages = ceil($total_rows/$items_per_page); //expected number of pages 
                                                
            $page_position = (($page_number - 1) * $items_per_page); //get starting position to fetch record
                        
            //fetch a group of records using sql LIMIT clause
                $query = "SELECT * FROM menu_update WHERE special_of_theDay = 1 AND restaurant_type = '".$selected_restaurant_type."' LIMIT " .$page_position. ',' .$items_per_page;
                $query_result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);
        ?>
                        
            <table width="100%" border=0>
                <tr bgcolor = "#cccccc">
                    <td>Meal</td>
                    <td>Meal name</td>
                    <td>Meal Price</td>
                    <td>Order Now</td>
                    <td>Full Menu</td>
                    <td>Our Gallery</td>
                    <td>Find Us</td>
                    <td>Our Chef</td>
                    <td>Our Manager</td>
                </tr>
        <?php
                while($row_count = mysqli_fetch_array($query_result)){
                    echo "<tr>";
                        echo"
                            <td style ='width:200px; text-align:center; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'><a href='meal_fullPic.php'><img src= ".$row_count['img']." /></a></td>
                            <td style ='width:119px; text-align:center; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'> ".$row_count['meal_name']."</td>
                            <td style ='width:100px; text-align:center; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'>".$row_count['price']."</td>
                            <td style ='width:100px; text-align:center; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'><a href='order_processor.php'><img src= ".$row_count['order_now']." /></a></td>
                            <td style ='width:100px; text-align:center; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'><a href='full_menu.php'><img src= ".$row_count['full_menu_img']." /></a></td>
                                    
                            <td style ='width:170px; text-align:center; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'><a href='restaurant_gallery.php'><img src= ".$row_count['restaurant_pic']." /></a></td>
                            <td style ='width:100px; text-align:center; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'><a href='restaurant_location.php'><img src= ".$row_count['location_pic']." /></a></td>
                            <td style ='width:119px; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'> ".$row_count['chef_name']."</td>
                            <td style ='width:119px; height:120px; background:#eaedf2'> ".$row_count['admin']."</td>
                        "; 
                    echo "</tr>";
                }
                mysqli_close($connection);
        ?>    
            </table>
        <div class="board_pagination">
        <?php
            //display the links to the pages
            for($current_page = 1; $current_page <= $expected_number_of_pages; $current_page++){
                 if ($page_number != $expected_number_of_pages){
                    $data = array(
                        'page' => $page_number,
                        'country' => $cleaned_current_page_country,
                    );
                    $the_query = http_build_query($data);
                    $page_url .= '?' . $the_query;
                    echo '<li><a href=" '.$the_query.' ">'.$current_page.'</a></li> ';
                }
            }
        ?>
        </div>
    </table>