RE: [iText-questions] Re: transparency and itext

[Paulo Soares]

> -Original Message-
> From: Carsten Hammer [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 21:06
> To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  [iText-questions] Re: transparency and itext
> 
> 
> 
> Leonard Rosenthol schrieb:
> > I would be VERY surprised to find a printer that perform 
> > transparency flattening - since none of the current printer description 
> > languages (PS, PCL, HPGL, etc.) support the concept of transparency.  
> > that's why Acrobat has to perform the flattening BEFORE sending to the 
> > printer.
> 
> There are printers where you have Acrobat built in. However these are 
> more or less always printers for bigger workgroups or production printing.
> 
> Paulo, is transparency supported in itext or are you going to support it?
> 
Not in the near future.

Best Regards,
Paulo Soares

> Best regards,
> Carsten Hammer
> 
> 
> 
> 
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[iText-questions] Re: transparency and itext

[Carsten Hammer]

Leonard Rosenthol schrieb:
I would be VERY surprised to find a printer that perform 
transparency flattening - since none of the current printer description 
languages (PS, PCL, HPGL, etc.) support the concept of transparency.  
that's why Acrobat has to perform the flattening BEFORE sending to the 
printer.
There are printers where you have Acrobat built in. However these are 
more or less always printers for bigger workgroups or production printing.

Paulo, is transparency supported in itext or are you going to support it?

Best regards,
Carsten Hammer


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[iText-questions] Re: transparency and itext

[Leonard Rosenthol]

At 7:45 PM +0100 2/26/03, Carsten Hammer wrote:
It actually takes place in Acrobat, but yes, depending on what 
type of printer you have OR the complexity of the transparency 
effect.

Ok, in some of the printers of the company I work for this takes 
place inside of the printer.
	I would be VERY surprised to find a printer that perform 
transparency flattening - since none of the current printer 
description languages (PS, PCL, HPGL, etc.) support the concept of 
transparency.  that's why Acrobat has to perform the flattening 
BEFORE sending to the printer.


However there works an Acrobat (on a sparc) too.
You send raw pdf,tiff,pcl,postscript or afp or whatever files to 
these printers. You do not neccessarily go through Acrobat on your 
windows,linux,whatever pc there.
	The only printers that can handle a native PDF are Adobe-made 
Postscript Level 3 printers.  Any other type of printer MUST use 
workstation based software to rasterize the PDF or other convert it 
to some other format that can be handled (eg. PCL or Postscript). 
That is normally Acrobat, but could well be Ghostscript, Mac OS X's 
Preview, etc.

	And in the case of both of the other applications above, (GS 
and Preview), they also do transparency flattening BEFORE sending to 
printer - though MUCH LESS INTELLIGENTLY than Adobe does.


Some of the older machines that do not understand PDF 1.4 (which is 
the first version supporting transparency) do have problems with 
transparency.
	Correct.  Those older RIPS (and client software products) 
will end up ignoring the transparency operators and simply rendering 
all objects opaque.


Are you telling me that InDesing and Illustrator are performing fast 
for  transparency effect rasterizing? This would be interesting.
	Transparency flattening - yes.  Both of those products will 
flatten or printing faster than Acrobat does.


Ghostscript does all the pdf rendering using postscript programms and has
some serious bugs when it comes to transparency.
	It most certainly does!   Raph did a great job on attempting 
to support transparency in GS8, but it's quite imcomplete - esp. when 
it comes to printing the stuff.  It just rasterizes the whole page 
and sends a bitmap :(.


I would not recommend to use transparency effects in high speed printing
environments but however this might change at the time the rasterizers are
improved.
	Completely agreed.

Leonard
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[iText-questions] Re: transparency and itext

[Carsten Hammer]

Hi Leonard,

Leonard Rosenthol schrieb:
At 4:00 PM +0100 2/25/03, Carsten Hammer wrote:
But if you print them you see your printer rasterizing a long time if 
it  is able to do it at all.


It actually takes place in Acrobat, but yes, depending on what type 
of printer you have OR the complexity of the transparency effect.

Ok, in some of the printers of the company I work for this takes place 
inside of the printer. However there works an Acrobat (on a sparc) too.
You send raw pdf,tiff,pcl,postscript or afp or whatever files to these 
printers. You do not neccessarily go through Acrobat on your 
windows,linux,whatever pc there. Why everybody thinks the whole world is 
windows based?... :)
Some of the older machines that do not understand PDF 1.4 (which is the 
first version supporting transparency) do have problems with transparency.

But yes, Acrobat may have to perform "transparency flattening" of 
the document before being sent to the printer. Unfortunately, the 
version of the "Adobe Graphics Manager" used by Acrobat 5.0.5 is dated 
compared to the one in InDesign and Illustrator and doesn't perform as 
well on complex transparency effects.

Are you telling me that InDesing and Illustrator are performing fast for 
 transparency effect rasterizing? This would be interesting.

Ghostscript does all the pdf rendering using postscript programms and has
some serious bugs when it comes to transparency.
I would not recommend to use transparency effects in high speed printing
environments but however this might change at the time the rasterizers are
improved. If you know products that dont have performance problems I 
would be glad to hear about them.

However it would be nice to be able to add transparent xobjects using itext.

Best regards,
Carsten Hammer




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[iText-questions] Re: transparency and itext

[Leonard Rosenthol]

At 4:00 PM +0100 2/25/03, Carsten Hammer wrote:
Why do you they would be slow?

Just try them out. The Acrobat SDK contains a Watermark plugin example.
You can easily add transparent text using it.
	You can indeed.  It's a nice sample.


But if you print them you see your printer rasterizing a long time 
if it  is able to do it at all.
	It actually takes place in Acrobat, but yes, depending on 
what type of printer you have OR the complexity of the transparency 
effect.

	But yes, Acrobat may have to perform "transparency 
flattening" of the document before being sent to the printer. 
Unfortunately, the version of the "Adobe Graphics Manager" used by 
Acrobat 5.0.5 is dated compared to the one in InDesign and 
Illustrator and doesn't perform as well on complex transparency 
effects.


The pdf transparency effects need the raster engine to hold the full 
page in memory twice and they seem to be not very optimized most of 
the time.
	That's not what is happening, but yes, it can be painful...

LDR
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[iText-questions] Re: transparency and itext

[Carsten Hammer]

Leonard Rosenthol schrieb:
At 10:29 PM +0100 2/24/03, Carsten Hammer wrote:

Does itext allow one to setup the transparency of a text?


Do you the Acrobat 5 full transparency model?  If so, no it doesn't.


Yes I mean exactly this. The transparency color model that Adobe 
introduced with the latest pdf standard.

I want to use it for high quality (slow as hell) watermarks..


Why do you they would be slow?

Just try them out. The Acrobat SDK contains a Watermark plugin example.
You can easily add transparent text using it. Of course Acrobat is not 
free.
But if you print them you see your printer rasterizing a long time if it 
 is able to do it at all. The pdf transparency effects need the raster 
engine to hold the full page in memory twice and they seem to be not 
very optimized most of the time.


And are you planning on these for onscreen or print (or both)?

I used them for text watermarks in print sometimes although they are 
slow (for the printer, not for the application that adds them) because 
of their superior quality on suitable printers.

LDR
To answer the question of Paulo:
the full transparency color model allows to put a grey text(or whatever) 
on the top of your pdf page. This "overlay" can then be not completely 
opaque but modify the color of the underlying pixels by an configurable 
algorithm. It looks like looking through colored glass.
This color model is completely different than the cmyk color model of 
offset print.

If you would like to get some examples look at
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/pstrans.pdf
Best regards,
Carsten Hammer


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