LATEX
Oh I see, Latex is like an advanced mark-up language (what the basis of HTML should have been, really). Any recommendations for a latex package?
TRANSPARENCY & FILL
I figured out the gradient transparency: make a muti-color gradient and adjust the opacity of individual colors in the gradient.
Mesh fill is similar to the mesh warp tool except that instead of altering the SHAPE of the object, it maps and affects multiple gradient fills within the shape of the object.
Warping the mesh changes the shape of the fill's gradients. Each intersection of the mesh is used to map the starting point of a color gradient, as are the lines and the center of each quadrant of the mesh.
this tool allows for complex shading: for instance if I shape a polygon into a vine the mesh is constrained
PERSPECTIVE
Corel Draw 12 has two types of perspective:
Method One, the main type, operates similar to shear and is included as a tool option along with shear, rotate, freehand, scale... Perspective "squeezes" or "separates" two corners on one side in relation to each other, on a square this would result a trapezoidal shape... this method does not affect the content though
(in fact the way they do it: single click selects the object, once selected, each additional single click changes the transfom mode: Scale>shear>perspective>rotate>freehand >back to scale... the corner handles change style to indicate the current mode, you can always use the mouse to move the object laterally in all these modes by grabbing the center handle of the object)
Method Two is a Perspective rendering tool:
it allows the artist to map an object and it's content to a 3D plane. the UI for this is similar in function to the above method (grab and drag a rectangle corner) but it overlays a grid to indicate the perspective change. It retains the original vectors in case you want to undo it... once you do this though it locks the object and you are not allowed to modify it's shape unless you remove the perspective.