Re: coloured shadowboxes

[Jeffrey Howard Kingston]

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Mike Dowling wrote:
 
> I was wondering if it were possible to even enable the user to define
> his own boxes for pages using postscript.
> 
> It is almost trivial in postscript to draw ones own shadow or curved
> boxes in every possible colour.  More interesting, and difficult, would
> be to define a path instead of a box, and to write text around that
> path.  For example, instread of stroking (sorry, postscript-speak) a
> curved box, we could write "This is a box" repeatedly around it.
> Presumably, size parameters would then have to be made known to lout,
> namely the thickness and positioning.
> 

Anything you can do in PostScript you can dump into Lout via the
@Graphic symbol from the Expert's Guide.  However Lout cannot
infer sizes from the PostScript, so you have to work them out
yourself and explain them to Lout by adding bits of white space
here and there where you know something is going to go.  Also Lout
only understands rectangles oriented horizontally and vertically,
so if you draw something at an angle it is not really possible to
give Lout an accurate idea of its extent (e.g. see the @Rotate
symbol in the Expert's Guide for this effect in action).

There is also a long discussion towards the end of the @Diag
chapter about defining new shapes in ways compatible with @Diag.

Jeff Kingston