Compiling this MWE with xelatex produces a PDF file without transparency: \documentclass{article} \usepackage{fontspec} \usepackage{pgf} \begin{document} \fontsize{48}{48}\selectfont \fontspec{Arial} {\special{pdf:code q} \pgfsetfillopacity{0.5} {\color{red}X}\kern-1ex {\color{green}Y}\kern-0.8ex {\color{blue}Z}\kern-0.8ex Dummy text. \special{pdf:code Q} } \end{document} Compiling the same code with lualatex produces a file with transparency. I've originally reported that upstream ( https://github.com/pgf-tikz/pgf/issues/1078 ), thinking that it was a general issue, but as it turns out this issue is only reproducible on Gentoo systems. Reproducible: Always
Same issue here. Gentoo on TexLive-2021-r1 discards transparency when running xelatex, but everything is normal with Luatex. This happens with the MWE provided by Mihai as well as several other documents I created.
