On 9/29/05, Tom Epperly <tepperly@...1012...> wrote:
I wonder if you've considered an interim solution to generating better
EPS files and PDFs for Inkscape drawings with transparent bitmaps. I
would like to run and idea past you. I am unfamiliar with Inkscape from
a developers perspective, so it may be worthless. In case it's not, here
goes.
As far as I understand from your description, what you suggest is
changing the way we treat bitmap objects on export to PS - is this
correct? If so it is possible, but it will fix only a small part of
all problems with transparency in PS. Regular vector objects with
transparency are much more common than transparent bitmaps.
As I already said here, my personal view is that it's not worth it to
spend effort on improving PS export with regard to transparency (any
such improvements are bound to be more or less hacks). Instead, it's
better to spend the same resources on supporting PDF with native
transparency.
I did a little WWW searching, and I see that "PostScript 3 technology
delivers support for transparent artwork in PDF 1.4 and 1.5 and support
for JPEG 2000 and layers in PDF 1.5." I know Postscript up to level 2,
but I can't seem to find any detailed (non-marketing) descriptions of
what operators they added in level 3.