Re: how to generate transparent pdf output

From: Rick Brownrigg <brownrig_at_nyahnyahspammersnyahnyah>
Date: Wed Jan 08 2014 - 10:22:04 MST

Hi Joe,

I can confirm that workstation "oldpdf" produces a document with a transparent background, where as the current "pdf" driver has a white background, as you point out. That difference is not always apparent, as many (most?) PDF viewers paint the document onto a white background. But evidently, Powerpoint does not and the Mac's Preview can be made to not to pre-color the background.

The change in the meaning of which driver was referenced by "pdf" was introduced in v6.1.0 , so if your admins had indeed upgraded to 6.1.2 from an older version, that would explain the change you saw.

The only downside to using "oldpdf" is that it does not use the newer color model, which provides for more than 256 colors, translucency, etc. If you have many scripts that use "pdf", rather than change them all, you can get "oldpdf" workstations by setting the environment variable NCARG_OLD_PDF to any arbitrary value, e.g.:

   export NCARG_OLD_PDF=1

Also, in the soon-to-be-released v6.2.0, there will be a new resource to directly control the background of plots.

Hope that helps…
Rick

On Jan 7, 2014, at 5:59 PM, "Santanello, Joseph A. (GSFC-6170)" <joseph.a.santanello@nasa.gov> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> A few months ago I generated PDF output from NCL and the plots had a transparent background (not the white box behind the plot). Now, when running the same script I have the white background present in all output and I cannot get rid of it. I need it transparent as before. Running NCL 6.1.2 now and I'm unsure if that has changed since the previous set out transparent output was produced, but if it did it was an incremental NCL update only.
>
> Also, I did nothing to specify the transparent output initially, it just worked out that way.
>
> Thanks,
> Joe
> -----------------
> Joseph.A.Santanello@nasa.gov
> http://neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov/hsb/personnel/index.php?id=182
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Received on Wed Jan 8 10:22:16 2014

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