Igor - You will most likely need to cut it out. The optical quality of the transpaencies will probably affect the final focus... just like if you were to put a less expensivefilter on your EP, focus, and then remove it.
Ron - He added the ability to dictate how many lines there would be in the mask. All in all this should not effect the diffraction spikes much. This biggest issues fewer cutouts would cause would be to decrease the light and therefor not able to focus on dimmer stars. Personally I like having as much light coming through as possible. Thats one of the big pluses over the traditional Hartmans.