[OS X TeX] White vs. Transparent?

[V.Yu.Shavrukov]

On Mar 29, 2006, at 15:40, William Adams wrote:

>>>> I'd be curious to learn of a situtation
>>>> where you needed more than one and this wouldn't be an option
>>>> though.
>>
>> Using something like pgf one can continuously vary the colour of an
>> element (which could be a glyph, a paragraph etc.).  This would
>> require more than one spot colour but as far as I can see a single
>> profile would be sufficient.
>
> You don't need more than one spot colour to do this, if the colour
> change is a tint.
>
> If you do need multiple spot colours you need to consult with your
> printer over this and screen angles &c.
>
> Even so, you're not likely to have more than 2 or 3 spot colours in a
> given job, so it should be manageable (the largest number of spot
> colours in a job I'm aware of is Edward Tufte's _The Visual Display
> of Quantitative Information_ which has 23 (over the entire book --- I
> think there're fewer than 4 spot colours per signature).
>
> Or do you mean something other than a specific printer ink colour
> when you say spot colour?

My terminology may indeed not be quite kosher.  I am in first  
instance looking for reliable device-independent colour, so by spot  
colour I mean identification of solid colours by pantone names or  
equivalent rather than inks and screening angles.


>>>>> Or one can adapt my technique from TUG2003 to access spot
>>>>> colour .eps
>>>>> files in a virtual font.
>>
>> Do I look for that technique in TUGBoat 2003?
>
> Yes, it's in the issue after the Proceedings issue.
>
> http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb24-2/tb77adams.pdf

Exciting read.  As far as I understand this involves carrying  
InDesign colour settings over to TeX on a per-font basis.  I suppose  
in (pre)press world one does whatever it takes.  I personally don't  
even have InDesign.


>>>> I meant sRGB vs AdobeRGB vs ProPhotoRGB etc.  rather than  cmyk vs
>>>> rgb vs hsv...
>>>
>>> Oh. Well presumably you'll only be needing one such tag for the
>>> vector and text elements which TeX will create --- just post-process
>>> the file to assign such a colourspace tag --- this could be set up
>>> using OS X's pdf Services.
>>
>> Thanks.  Are you saying one can assign a profile to the whole pdf
>> that will apply to all elements that don't already have a profile
>> (spot colour tag etc.) of their own?
>
> Yes.

I've looked into Quartz Filtres in ColorSync Utility.  The only  
documentation I found was ColorSync help and "Color Management on  
Tiger Techology Overview".  Both are somewhat cryptic on filtre  
composition.  As a result I may not be fully appreciating the  
difference between appointing a default profile and assigning a  
profile, nor do I have any understanding of the correct order to  
apply filtering steps.  Do you know if one can find a more detailed  
coverage somewhere?

Even assuming I can get the quartz filtres to work the way I like,  
setting colour management details in post-processing is somewhat  
suboptimal.  Ideally I would like the colours that I see on my  
monitor to be close to what viewers/printers with adequately profiled  
hardware get.  I understand Adobe Reader, Preview (and hence  
TeXShop's and iTeXMac's pdf viewers?) respect icc profiles in pdfs.   
Yet the colours produced by pdf(e)tex commands like \color{rgb: 
0.5,0.5,0.7} apparently result in freefloat numerical data going into  
the pdf.  To fix its meaning I'd have to assign/appoint a profile in  
post-processing, so I'd have to make an extra step (can this be  
automated?) before seeing what these numbers mean.  I wish one could  
assign a profile from within pdftex by, say, specifying an option to  
some package.

Incidently, do you know how Preview/iTeXMac/TeXShop display non-color- 
managed colour?  The popular theory is that Preview uses the current  
monitor profile, yet this does not tally with what I see happening.

Fraser & al.'s "Real World Color Management" mention a free utility  
PDF/X Inspektor that would allow one to see what goes on inside a pdf  
file as regards profiles fonts etc.  However I failed to find it on  
www.callas.de.  Do you know where it went?


thank you,
sincerely,
Volodya Shavrukov
------------------------- Info --------------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/