[XeTeX] "Options for all fonts" : colo[u]r, and the transparency byte

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Sun, 5 Jun 2011, Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
> However, experimenting with all possible values from "00" to "FF"
> for the transparency byte seems to have zero effect, in that the
> second element laid down completely obscures whatever lies
> beneath it.  What am I missing, please ?

Transparency depends very much on the output driver and its settings. I
have used it successfully with xdvipdfm, by way of the "opacity" optin in
TikZ; but the resulting output files are version 1.5 PDFs which not every
printer supports.  If you're using some other driver (for instance,
anything that goes to Postscript instead of PDF), or if your printer
doesn't like transparency, there may be problems.  It is possible to use
Ghostscript to resolve the transparency (convert to a non-transparent PDF
or Postscript file that still looks at it should) but it appears to
accomplish that by rasterizing the file, which may not be suitable for
your purposes.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/