[mgp-users 01383] Annotating transparent figures

[Marc Baaden <baaden@smplinux.de>]

  Hi,

I encounter some problems trying to prepare figures for use with
mgp. The figures are for example line graphs, where the background
should be transparent, and where some of the lines need to be
annotated with specific text. The transparency in itself is not a
problem, but getting the text in a decent quality is.

I tried several things:

  * with gimp, adding the text is possible, but the final quality
    is rather mediocre. In particular it heavily depends on the
    resolution.

  * using eps format with transparent background seems a bit better,
    but the problem is it seems the eps are based on having a white
    background, as with my dark (blue) background the antialiasing
    is somewhat "the other way round" and thus wrong.

  * using native text within mgp. Qualitatively this is the best and
    absolutely nicest solution. The problem is placing the text at the
    right positions (which in addition will change if you change the
    positions of the figure on the slide) ! I currently use area, which
    is quite a nightmare to get by trial and error and then properly
    calculate the 4 values for positioning a single word.
    Are there any other (better) ways ?

    (what I was thinking of would be a tool that lets you query positions
    on the slide - like with the "x" option, but indicating the location -
    and ideally also create a code line to position you there)

    Taking it one step further, the ideal thing would be an mgp command
    to place text at specific positions relative to an image. These positions
    should be easy to get from a given slide or the image itself. (Maybe
    with an option to overlay a grid or something)

Any additional hints or magic "procedures" would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
  Marc Baaden

-- 
 Dr. Marc Baaden  - Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Paris
 mailto:baaden@smplinux.de      -      http://www.marc-baaden.de
 FAX: +33 15841 5026  -  Tel: +33 15841 5176  ou  +33 609 843217