If a letter is white on white background, does a printer see it?

Question

In preparation for press printing, I would like to produce a version of a document for printing a glossy varnish layer, where all the text is "missing", but the images and other elements are at the same position.

\color{white} sounds like a good solution, but since the text is still there, I'm concerned that the printer might still print some thin stray artefacts at the letter edges, or make similar mistakes due to antialiasing or some obscure stage in font rendering.

Or perhaps this is a non-issue?

Answer 1

You can \phantom{} out the text. The beamer package for slides makes text (and other stuff) dissappear routinely with its overlays, perhaps there are implementation tricks to be shamelessly pilfered...

I share your concern, in that it should end up printing white (think e.g. printing on pink paper, obnoxious perfume added for extra effect ;-)

Answer 2

It seems that implementing "disappearing" text on a general-purpose level would be rather complicated. (It would be interesting to understand how the beamer package does it)

So eventually I solved it with a conditional and a placeholder, just substituting the text with a (white) rule:

\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\newif\ifhidetext
\hidetexttrue

\newlength\tmp@height
\newlength\tmp@width

% #1 -- color of rectangle (optional, default white)
% #2 -- text or \includegraphics command
\newcommand\placeholder[2][white]{
\ifhidetext
\settowidth{\tmp@width}{#2}
\settototalheight{\tmp@height}{#2}
{\color{#1}\rule{\tmp@width}{\tmp@height}}%
\else
#2
\fi
}