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List:       kde-artists
Subject:    Re: K-ARTIST: I don't like this SVG idea...
From:       Ante Wessels <vitanova2 () softhome ! net>
Date:       2004-01-22 11:10:27
Message-ID: 200401221126.19179.vitanova2 () softhome ! net
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On Jueves 22 Enero 2004 00:11, Casey Allen Shobe wrote:
> There's been some discussion on SVG recently, and what I've seen are
> lower-quality icons entering some applications as a result of generating
> PNGs from SVG, so I thought I'd offer my opinion.
>
> Vector graphics are *not* suitable for such a diverse size range (16x16 to
> 128x128, IMHO; because too fine of detail will result in a horrible 16x16
> image, with too high of contrast and no solid borders and everthing
> blurring together; and too little detail will result in an ugly undetailed
> 128x128 icon.

It has always been known you can not scale down images to very small sizes, at 
a certain point every pixel counts, you can not leave that to an application. 
Why then svgs? At a certain moment kde had about 1700 icons, after that new 
sizes were added. It is impossible to maintain so many icons. With svgs you 
can render the bigger sizes with scripts, provided you have the sources. The 
smaller ones need to be optimized by hand. Every icon now has 3 incarnations, 
the 16, 22 and svg source. This should be maintainable.

There are a few conditions that have to be met though.

1 You need the sources. KDE has accepted icons in png format, without source. 
The main problem in this respect is, unfortunately, Everaldo. He 
created/creates .ai files that can not be rendered to svg. He never 
distributed sources. I hope Lindows will have learned from this and will be 
strict with him about this.

Since svg is an evolving standard, the original source is needed. Artists 
working with illustrator should also release the .ai source. At the moment 
these files can be rendered to correct svgs, they can be re-rendered, thus 
creating a correct svg base.

KDE has been sloppy on the sources, many are missing. I hope kde will be more 
strict on this. It is the only way to keep the project maintainable.

2 You indeed need a style guide. Many artists seem to forget icons need to be 
rendered to small sizes too. May be follow the Ken's idea and ask for both a 
128 and 16 svg.

Cordialemente,

Ante

>
> The most I would ever like to see is some SVG theme that is *NOT* the
> default in KDE, because frankly, crystalSVG is ugly and inadequate for
> small icons, and I don't want to have to have big icons to have a usable
> desktop.
>
> However, judging by the fact that all I see in kcontrol --> Appearance -->
> Icons is the Crystal SVG beta1 theme, it's apparently forced as the default
> and I don't even have any option to change it without going and hunting
> down whatever packages might have the usable icons in them.
>
> I think this is a bad decision :-\.
>
> Furthermore I don't see why KDE should have native SVG support at all.
> Rendering would be very slow, and a theme author, should he want to use
> SVG, still can, using the svg2png or whatever script (and then hopefully
> fix the ugly icons before calling the theme done).
>
> Vertu sæll,

-- 





******
The most up to date info for kde artists can be found at the wiki:

http://kde.ground.cz/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+Artists

Scripts for kde artists, like svg2png4kde, add border, add drop shadow, change 
filename, file conversion:
http://home.uwnet.nl/~vita/linux/index.html

Web course italian, poem generator, poetry, stories and visual art:
http://home.uwnet.nl/~vita


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