Maarten van der Velde wrote:
Oh! I can't WAIT to Inkscape again...
So, Jasper, actually the real problem is not realy the transparancy an sich, but gradients with transparency, isn't it? And it get's realy tough when transparency gradients overlap. Inkscape can handle it, but the rest of the world can't.
Indeed, in illustrator, one CAN set the transparency value of any object.
It's like this: Inkscape (and some other programs) support transparency (more or less as part of a color). However, this is relatively new and not all programs and formats understand this. So what you often need is a way to convert a drawing with transparency to a drawing without transparency that looks exactly the same.
Creating a bitmap copy is one way to achieve this, but if you have a vector drawing it's usually not the best way. Consider the attached file, the top shape consists of two overlapping transparent circles, the bottom shape of three non-overlapping opaque paths. It is possible to create a tool which applies such techniques to drawings of arbitrary complexity. Only areas with transparent gradients (or, obviously, where a bitmap is used) may have to be converted to a bitmap.
The main problem is that someone has to implement it, and it's quite a bit more complicated than a bitmap copy.