On 2008-07-03 02:44-0700 Jerry wrote:

> The alpha channel example, Example 30 e.g. x30c, generates Postscript
> files that do not display the transparency effect on my OS X machine.
> The first page has the colored boxes but without transparency; also,
> there is no black border.
>
> The second page shows only a single large red box with no alpha and
> with a black border only at the top and right. Also, there is a black
> hairline near the bottom of the red square which, when dissected with
> a graphics program, reveals that the big red box actually is two red
> boxes and the black hairline is a small gap between them. (Small gaps
> between abutting graphics shows up in other places such as in surface
> plots, so this might not be unique to this example.) The black
> hairline notwithstanding, dissection in a graphics program shows that
> the smaller colored boxes are in fact present but completely obscured
> due to lack of transparency in the red box which lies in front of them.
>
> The two pages of this example display the same on either Adobe Reader
> 8.1.2 or PDF viewers based on Apple's PDFkit such as Preview and
> Skim. However, I notice that Adobe Reader will not read Postscript
> files (has that always been the case?) and I converted the Postscript
> files to PDF using Preview, Apple's reader app; there could be a
> problem with the conversion that caused the Adobe Reader results to
> be the same.
>
> Safari 3.1.1 and Firefox 3.0 display the SVG files also without alpha
> and with a different set of other artifacts.
>
> The PNG file displays with no alpha and pastel (that is, faded, or
> reduced saturation) box colors from page 1. (Page 2 is not generated
> or does not display when I open the file.) The amount and nature
> (brightness) of the fading depends on what program I use to view the
> file.
>
> The JPEG file displays proper colors and borders for page 1 but no
> alpha.
>
> GIF looks same as JPEG.
>
> Short version: no alpha to be seen anywhere on my machine.

Are you running the gd-related driver (png, jpeg, gif) properly to get the
second page?  You need the "familying" option -fam.  For background on this
see the section entitled Family File Output in
http://plplot.sourceforge.net/docbook-manual/plplot-html-5.9.0/output-devices.html

Another comment is that relatively few drivers support alpha transparency at
this stage.  To see comments about the status of such support for various
drivers, use the svn log --verbose command in the drivers directory and look
for "alpha".  It appears from that log that _if you have the correct version
of libgd installed_ you should be getting alpha results for example 30.
Those results should look similar to those obtainable at
http://plplot.sourceforge.net/examples/demo30.php (which are the results
of pngcairo, IIRC).

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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