The problem with PCL (or at least PCL5 which I've worked with) is that it doesn't support clipping [1]. Clipping makes these things a lot easier. In the absence of clipping capabilities, you'd basically have to emulate the clipping in the painter code rather than in the print processor which complicates things. One relatively simple possibility would be to paint the background image to an in-memory buffer, clip there and then paint the resulting bitmap using PCL means but that costs a lot of performance and memory. A little more advanced would be to keep track which tile actually gets clipped and process the tiles individually. Obviously this hasn't been done, yet. Help is definitely welcome.
[1] HP/GL2 actually supports clipping but often doesn't help to efficiently overcome the limitations of PCL. Note also that many Windows PCL printer drivers just paint a single big bitmap for the whole page instead of using the various PCL capabilities. For complex pages this produces perfect quality but it comes with a cost: In-memory build up of the page may be slower and and the resulting print files are often bigger. However, with FOP's Java2D capabilities it would actually be relatively easy to write a second PCL renderer which just generates a bitmap image of each page and converts that to PCL. The user would then have the choice between accuracy and speed. On 28.02.2008 17:08:43 David Gerdt wrote: > I'm finding a difference in how background images for table rows are rendered > in PDF versus PCL. When producing a pdf, the image will fill only the row and > be clipped where it runs outside the bounds of the row. This is what I want. > However, when producing PCL which is really my ultimate goal, the whole image > is displayed and overflows the bounds of the row. > > This behavior occurs in both 0.94 and Trunk. I have tried applying the > background-image attribute to the table-row, table-cell, and the block each > individually, with the same results. > > I am not sure exactly what the intended behavior should be (clip the image or > let it go) but I'm more confused by the difference between the PDF and the > PCL which are rendered from the same fo file. > > What I'm really trying to do is create a white background for a table row > when rendered in PCL. The background-color attribute produces this effect in > a PDF but not in a PCL file. I'm trying to work around this by setting the > background-image to a plain white gif, but am running into the problems above. > > Any insight on these issues? I can provide a fo file if you like, but I > figured these issues were broad enough to not require the specific fo. > > Thanks! Jeremias Maerki --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
