Hello again, Maxim replied on the AGG list and advised to implement this on a lower level (below scanlines). But it seems AGGTextRenderer uses scanlines and renderers even when using a FT bitmap. I'm thinking it might be useful to bypass AGG totally in this case--since the functionality is all there in FT--and just blend the FT alpha bitmap to the screen buffer in DrawString() or some new class I create. My question is, thus, where does the screen buffer actually get written, and how could I access its values in order to do the blending? I must admit I'm proposing this alternative because I'm still having major difficulties figuring out AGG and Painter and where they intersect. You said in the README that you wrote a news article explaining the basics--where can I access this? In any case, it seems as though the relevant parts of AGGTextRenderer boil down to only a few functions, and unfortunately it seems agg_font_freetype and AGG itself are rather committed to the idea of gray8 and mono, nothing else. Thanks again. -Claudio