Tips & Tricks

Best Helpful Tips

• Create temporary instances of TextRender by setting the time.

TextRender("hello world!", "time:3000 color:MintCream")

• Use object notation when working with variables.

MyColor := "Blue"
TextRender("Alert!", {time:3000, color: MyColor})

• Object Notation extends to nested elements as well.

tr := TextRender("Und über uns ziehen lila Wolken in die Nacht"
   , {color: "#F9E27E"}
   , {font: "Century Gothic"
    , size: 60
    , color: "#F88958"
    , outline: [5, "Indigo"]
    , dropShadow: {horizontal: 5
                 , vertical: 5
                 , blur: 0
                 , color: "#009DA7"}})

• Methods can be chained, as in tr.Draw("1").Draw("2").Render("3") for short one liners.
• Reduce memory usage by over 60% with FreeMemory(). Best if called after Render().
• Stop text from being cut off? Use RenderOnScreen() instead of Render().
• 2x Speed Up: Place SetBatchLines -1 at the top of your script. (AutoHotkey v1 only)

Text Style

• Setting the quality of the text to ClearType will improve the overall look of the text on mostly opaque backgrounds. By default, ClearType is only enabled when the background color is completely opaque. Example: q:5
• Increase the readability without increasing font size, by setting the outline stroke to 1. This creates a pseudo-bold effect. For small font sizes, it will decrease the space between letters, saving you on-screen real estate! Example: outline:(stroke:1px) or o:(1px)
• Use an alternative rendering process by setting the outline stroke to 0 pixels. Whether this is an improvement depends on the font and font size used. Example: outline:(stroke:0px) or o:(0px)
• Speed up text rendering by setting the text quality to 0. This will disable anti-aliasing. Create a cool stencil effect with quality:0 color:None outline:(stroke:1px color:Black)!
• Avoid using the glow parameter in outline. It's very slow and will delay your render time. If you must use it, choose an number less than 5px. Anything more will slow down your script exponentially.
• Create a interesting effect by making the text "eat" through the background. Use color:Delete or color:Erase as the text color.
• If the text color is omitted, it defaults to white or black depending on the background color!
• The text position can be independent of the background. Use x and y to position your text off the background box.

Background Style

• If you want to set the background to be transparent, you can use c:None, c:Off, c:Clear, or c:Transparent. Don't use w:0 or h:0. Even though they work - they act weird changing your x and y positions.
• A random color can help keep your background boxes fresh. Try color:Random2 for a random solid color.

Methods and Properties

• Although text cannot be rendered off screen with Render(), the whole picture can be recovered with Save(), RenderToBitmap(), and RenderToHBitmap().
• RenderOnScreen() will render the entire canvas. Although it preforms slower than Render(), it is optimized to fall back to Render() when the entire object is in the visible screen area. It's the best of both worlds!
• Using RenderOnScreen() may cause objects to be mispositioned. That's why Render() is the default.
• Save() must be called after Render(), or subsequent drawing operations will have cleared what is being saved.
• The window handle can be retrieved with tr.hwnd.
• tr.x, tr.y, may be inaccurate when it comes to off screen coordinates. To retrieve the exact coordinates try WindowLeft, WindowTop, WindowRight, WindowBottom, WindowWidth, and WindowHeight. If the user has moved the window you will have to use WinGetPos instead.
• Use Flush() to finalize the graphics buffer without displaying to the screen.
• You must clean up any pointers returned by CopyToBitmap() and RenderToBitmap() with DllCall("gdiplus\GdipDisposeImage", "ptr", pBitmap). Likewise for CopyToHBitmap() and RenderToHBitmap(), DllCall("DeleteObject", "ptr", hbm) must be called.
• Use tr.status to check if the graphics buffer has changed. Use tr.Hash() to check if two graphics buffer pixel data are identical.