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

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Peter Dyballa wrote:
>
> Am 05.06.2011 um 14:06 schrieb Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd):
>
>> What am I missing, please ?
>
> Mac OS X's deprecated xdv2pdf.

And yet, Tikz/PGF can achieve transparency using the default driver 
(xdvipdfmx (0.7.8)),
as Matthew Skala kindly pointed out and went on to demonstrate.  So how 
is it, I am
forced to ask, that an add-on package can achieve something that the 
underlying
engine cannot ?  This seems very odd to me.

Andy Lin wrote :

> IIRC, the fontspec manual mentions that font transparency through font
> loading commands is only available on Macs because it requires the
> xdv2pdf driver.
>    

Unfortunately fontspec is targeted solely at (Xe)LaTeX users, whereas Will
Robertson's "/X/?/TEX reference guide/" is targeted at all users of 
XeTeX and
makes no mention under the entry for the extended syntax of \font that
some of the options are not universally applicable, whence my confusion.

Philip Taylor
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/attachments/20110605/a1f2e409/attachment-0001.html>