Every tutorial and thread I've read about implementing text to the display through fonts seems to have been written before this deprecation occured.  When I look up Slick Util's TrueTypeFont class it says to use UnicodeFont instead, but the UnicodeFont class doesn't seem to exist with the libraries I have and there are no references to it.

Can somebody tell me what the current standard is for using fonts as far as lwjgl and opengl is concerned?

Even though TrueTypeFont is marked as depreciated it can still be used.

UnicodeFont isn't yet part of Slick-Util, so to use it you'll need to use the Slick2D Jar (slick.jar).

Basically its an issue for the Slick developers to fix, either they should un-depreciate TrueTypeFont or replace it with UnicodeFont in the Slick-Util package.

Additionally, I would highly recommend using AngelCode bitmap fonts instead:

• They load much, much faster.
• You can ensure that all of your font gets contained on a single texture, which will cause rendering to be much faster.
• You can modify the font image in advance, in a program like gimp. This is actually really useful if you want a stylized font (texture on the lettering, edging, blur, etc).

An example of a modified font image: