Translucency??

[Ancient_Hacker]

Hi, I'd like to be able to draw with translucency using PostScript.

I've tried one bit of code I found on the net but it doesnt do
transparency (with ghostscript):

gsave
100 100 translate % set position on page
0.4 0.7 1 setrgbcolor % draw a pastel blue box
40 40 60 60 rectfill
0.3 .setopacityalpha
0.4 .setshapealpha
1 0.5 0 setrgbcolor % draw transparent orange
20 20 60 60 rectfill
grestore
showpage

[Mark T.B. Carroll]

Ancient_Hacker <gr...@comcast.net> writes:

> Hi, I'd like to be able to draw with translucency using PostScript.
>
> I've tried one bit of code I found on the net but it doesnt do
> transparency (with ghostscript):

(snip)

I'm afraid that PostScript fundamentally just doesn't do transparency,
although PDF does.

-- Mark

[Ancient_Hacker]

On May 10, 11:09 am, Mark.Carr...@Aetion.com (Mark T.B. Carroll)
wrote:

I think it's more complicated than that.

It goes something like this:

Adobe added some transparency widgets to PDF 1.4, but not to
PostScript per se. Which is ridiculous.

Ghostscript added a different set of transparency commands.
And those might not be turned on in the distributed Windows binary.

Pretty lousy situation if you ask me.

[Mark T.B. Carroll]

Ancient_Hacker <gr...@comcast.net> writes:
(snip)

> Adobe added some transparency widgets to PDF 1.4, but not to
> PostScript per se. Which is ridiculous.
>
> Ghostscript added a different set of transparency commands.
> And those might not be turned on in the distributed Windows binary.
>
> Pretty lousy situation if you ask me.

If you're willing to use non-standard extensions, e.g., those in
Ghostscript, what if you use Ghostscript's pdfwrite device, and then use
a PDF -> PS utility? It might be better than nothing, depending on your
need.

-- Mark