The ftgl_pic is a Debian "feature" and doesn't come with FTGL. I don't think that the renaming is a good thing and having two versions (-ftgl and -lftgl_pic) just complicates things and helps in only very few cases.
Anyhow, the gem configure should check for -lftgl_pic and if this is not available use -lftgl, just like the tcl/tk stuff in pd does.
On my system it doesn't work like this and just _use_ -lftgl, so the build stops with the above error.
the simple solution to your problem is to edit the Make.config and
change "-lftgl_pic" to "-lftgl"
So, despite Günter's doubts, I tried to change the Make.config. Gem got built, but when I try to load the library in PD, I get the following error>>
/home/kliger/cvs_20051128/Gem/src/Gem.pd_linux:
/home/kliger/cvs_20051128/Gem/src/Gem.pd_linux: undefined symbol: glUniform4iARB /home/kliger/cvs_20051128/Gem/src/Gem: can't load library
Oh well. When I have the time, I'll consider using Debian so that I have the same system as the Gem dev people. But until then, I need text rendering in Gem so I'll continue using my old Gem (but without gemlist_info which I've grown to like). So unless anyone has a brilliant idea, thanks anyway. /Brad.