3.4 Render

These functions render text using a TTF_Font.
There are three modes of rendering:

Solid

Quick and Dirty
Create an 8-bit palettized surface and render the given text at fast quality with the given font and color. The pixel value of 0 is the colorkey, giving a transparent background when blitted. Pixel and colormap value 1 is set to the text foreground color. This allows you to change the color without having to render the text again. Palette index 0 is of course not drawn when blitted to another surface, since it is the colorkey, and thus transparent, though its actual color is 255 minus each of the RGB components of the foreground color. This is the fastest rendering speed of all the rendering modes. This results in no box around the text, but the text is not as smooth. The resulting surface should blit faster than the Blended one. Use this mode for FPS and other fast changing updating text displays.

Shaded

Slow and Nice, but with a Solid Box
Create an 8-bit palettized surface and render the given text at high quality with the given font and colors. The 0 pixel value is background, while other pixels have varying degrees of the foreground color from the background color. This results in a box of the background color around the text in the foreground color. The text is antialiased. This will render slower than Solid, but in about the same time as Blended mode. The resulting surface should blit as fast as Solid, once it is made. Use this when you need nice text, and can live with a box.

Blended

Slow Slow Slow, but Ultra Nice over another image
Create a 32-bit ARGB surface and render the given text at high quality, using alpha blending to dither the font with the given color. This results in a surface with alpha transparency, so you don't have a solid colored box around the text. The text is antialiased. This will render slower than Solid, but in about the same time as Shaded mode. The resulting surface will blit slower than if you had used Solid or Shaded. Use this when you want high quality, and the text isn't changing too fast.

Solid

3.4.1 TTF_RenderText_Solid		Draw LATIN1 text in solid mode
3.4.2 TTF_RenderUTF8_Solid		Draw UTF8 text in solid mode
3.4.3 TTF_RenderUNICODE_Solid		Draw UNICODE text in solid mode
3.4.4 TTF_RenderGlyph_Solid		Draw a UNICODE glyph in solid mode

Shaded

3.4.5 TTF_RenderText_Shaded		Draw LATIN1 text in shaded mode
3.4.6 TTF_RenderUTF8_Shaded		Draw UTF8 text in shaded mode
3.4.7 TTF_RenderUNICODE_Shaded		Draw UNICODE text in shaded mode
3.4.8 TTF_RenderGlyph_Shaded		Draw a UNICODE glyph in shaded mode

Blended

3.4.9 TTF_RenderText_Blended		Draw LATIN1 text in blended mode
3.4.10 TTF_RenderUTF8_Blended		Draw UTF8 text in blended mode
3.4.11 TTF_RenderUNICODE_Blended		Draw UNICODE text in blended mode
3.4.12 TTF_RenderGlyph_Blended		Draw a UNICODE glyph in blended mode