Hi,
I'm working on https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/3393 and poking around at _alpha, _forced_alpha, _rgb, and _orig_color members of GraphicsContextBase. I see quite a number of issues:
1) "_rgb" is (almost) always a 4 tuple which may be better named "_rgba".
2) "_orig_color" takes on many different value types -- I think it can be deleted and the "_rgb" variable used in the one place it is needed.
3) "get_rgb" documents that it returns a 3 or 4 tuple. In fact, I think it returns a 4-tuple (see point 1). backend_ps.py is a particularly scary example of the 3 tuple interpretation being taken with-out further thought.
4) I suppose there is a good reason for the existence of "_forced_alpha" and "_alpha", but I don't understand it. Since "_rgb" is a 4-tuple in common (all?) usage, why can't "set_alpha" merely set "_rgb[3]"?
I'm going to be pushing something more to my branch at https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/3393 -- deleting "_orig_color" and renaming "_rgb" to "_rgba". But even with these changes, the points above give me pause.
(I'm also sitting on irc right now asking these same questions).
Joel