Paulo Soares wrote:
> 0XFF is the white index? Probably not.

The original poster has been working on his 'problem' for at least
a month now. I wonder why he chose 'fastsolutions' as his mail address.

 From the start, it was very clear that 'answers solutions' doesn't know
much about images, PDF and probably about programming in general:
http://www.nabble.com/how-to-create-layers-by-using-itext-libraries-td17858731.html#a17858731
See also http://www.nabble.com/user/UserPosts.jtp?user=1259452

"Nomen est omen?" Not in this case; not only did 'answers solutions'
have a very hard time explaining his 'problem', he also didn't
understand the answers he received. *SIGH*

At some point however, he DID understand that his ignorance and his
inability to understand the solutions we were offering were getting
annoying, so he changed his name/alias/mail address to hari bhogu:
http://www.nabble.com/user/UserPosts.jtp?user=1260591

The reason for changing his e-mail address was probably these questions:
http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-parameters-for-Image.setTransparency()-p18004893.html

Hari Bhogu has had every opportunity to answer these counter-questions:
- are you an offshore developer?
- what company are you working for?
For some reason, he didn't reply to these questions.

His refusal to answer and his sudden 'change of identity' can only
mean that he's one of the under skilled, underpaid developers that
destroy the F/OSS business by annoying F/OSS developers as long as
possible until they give in and give them the answer he's paid for.
Their strategy is almost identical to what SPAMmers do: they annoy
many, many people, but as long as one person out of ten thousand
replies, it makes sense to continue sending SPAM.

Some say the solution to avoid SPAM would be to introduce a 'stamp'
for mails: it wouldn't hurt 'normal people' f every mail costs $0.001,
but it would hurt the criminals that send out billions of mails.
Should we close down this list and only answer questions from people
that pay for iText to get rid of people like Bhogu?

You may argue that it's sad that people like Bhogu are underpaid,
but I don't believe this 'business model' is ethical. People like
Bhogu are exploited and in return these people abuse the goodness
of people who have high ethical standards. That makes me very angry.

Out of respect for the many silent subscribers of the mailing list,
I AM going to answer this and one of Bhogu's previous questions:
http://1t3xt.info/examples/browse/?page=example&id=411
I hope that will stop him creating all this noise on the list.
(But I fear it won't, see below.)

The GIF has a color palette that can hold 256 colors; however,
the color palette of the GIF Bhogu sent us, mainly contains black
and white. The 'black' that is used the most in his image has
value 0x5C. Don't ask me why, Bhogu made the image that way.
You should ask him why he did it that way (chances are that he
doesn't have a clue). In my example, I made everything transparent
except the values between 0x5B and 0x5D (that's why the text has
small white borders).

Based on his previous questions, I think Bhogu originally worked
with JPEG images. First he tried converting these Jpegs to Gifs,
simply by changing the extension .jpg into .gif. Go figure how
much skilled he is. Anyway: I told him his GIF was in reality
a JPEG. He received an answer on the list saying that transparency
doesn't work in JPEGs, but I replied that you could work around
this by using java.awt.Image. That's also illustrated in my example.
It's not rocket science, but somehow Bhogu wasn't able to combine
the answers given into a simple example.

I realize that by answering this question, I am an accomplice to
an immoral business model. So be it; I hope this mail explains why
my answers sometimes give the IMPRESSION that I'm treating people
as idiots. I think Bhogu can't deny the fact that he's not the
right developer for this job. I mean: you shouldn't be apply for
a job as a developer if you assume that it's possible to change
a JPEG into a GIF just by changing the extension (and that's just
one of his many mistakes; read the threads I mention above for
the full picture). Bhogu is incompetent, but he's not an idiot;
he's a victim of the way our Western companies do their dirty business.

However: I refuse accepting that as an excuse. If Bhogu really wanted
something to change, he should tell us who his employer is. If he did,
I wouldn't feel as powerless as I am now.

Maybe some people will react that I don't have respect for the people
on this list when I say somebody is 'incompetent' (this has happened
in the past), but at least give me the right for political incorrectness
and grant me the right to express my sincere conviction. The reasons for
my 'rudeness' goes much deeper than what can be seen on the surface.

Bhogu, you're probably going to read this mail and only respond to
the technical aspect: how do I find out that 0x5C is the value for
black; how do I define/determine the range that can be made transparent.
If those are indeed your next questions, I can answer in advance that
1. you're a very predictable person, and
2. you won't get an answer because these questions are off-topic.

best regards,
Bruno

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