Re: new image-type: composite, or not

[Stefan Monnier]

> lately I started to develop an isearch mode for PDF files, since being
> able to search a document effectively is one of the few things that
> lets me start-up xpdf, while writing LaTeX.

Would be very nice, indeed.  A print command would also be welcome
(especially one that can print a subset of the pages).

> That way a new image type came to live, which I ingeniously called
> `composite'.

Sounds good.

> It looks a bit uglier than the convert version, because of non-fuzzy
> masking of the background, but is totally usable, regarding
> performance.

What does it look like?  E.g. can you highlight the text without
obscuring it?

> Alas, all this made me realize, that maybe a simpler approach would
> suffice.  Something like a single function
> (mark-image foreground background &rest edges-list)

I'm not sure exactly how that would work, can you give some details?

> which does not have the side-effect of reloading the image.

Why does the composite type need to reload the image?

> Though I don't know if this would be useful for anything else, besides
> doc-view.  Maybe selecting a slice of some image...

Selecting a slice in image-mode is indeed an obvious candidate.
Not sure what other candidates there can be, neither for mark-image nor
for a composite image.


        Stefan