[softwarelist] Re: Transparent GIFs, PostScript and PDF

  • From: David Pilling <flist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: davidpilling@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 11:48:01 +0000

In message <ZxwslaAIlBPJFwXb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, David Pilling <flist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

In message <op.ulri30m77kyep4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Clive Bonsall <cbonsall@xxxxxxx> writes
on Sunday - give me time to think about what I have done. I'll say here when the new version is available.

This has, in the light of day, gone wrong. I've uploaded a new version to:

Just a few more thoughts on the subject of printing masked (transparent) images on Windows using the Windows PostScript printer drivers. The function which Windows provides to do this is called PlgBlt()

I've tried a few different PostScript drivers and none of them seem to implement PlgBlt() correctly - this is not a surprise because these printer drivers are probably built around MicroSoft's own PS driver code.

I did try printing a masked image from OpenOffice (to PostScript) and that worked.

Looking at the PostScript generated I would guess the image was printed as a lot of small tiles - a trick a bit like the one RISC OS uses.

I conclude from all this that I could do better, adopt the same technique as OpenOffice when printing using the Windows driver.

You can also conclude that OPW's direct postscript does a much better job than the Windows driver...

...and that MS have not been spending your billions of dollars on producing software 8-)



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David Pilling
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