[Freetype] Possible to outline bitmap fonts?

[ryan77]

Hello,

I am using the FTGL wrapper to freetype to render text
on an offscreen image. The text needs to have an
outline so I render each string offset by one pixel in
each direction to represent the outline, and then I
render the string with the actual color in the middle.
It works great, however, I need to be able to render
100 strings (with outline) in under .10 secs on a low
end machine (400 MHz with equally crappy video card).

I'm thinking there must be a better way to render the
outline without actually calling FTGL multiple times
for each string?  I've experimented with outline fonts,
however they are not rendered as fast as bitmaps. 
Therefore, I was wondering if it would be possible to
draw a black outline on the actual bitmap glyphs at
font creation time?

Are there any other fast ways to achieve this effect?

Thanks,
Ryan

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