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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Change in kicker behavior: Bug or feature
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () kde ! org>
Date:       2004-10-16 17:33:17
Message-ID: 200410161133.17234.aseigo () kde ! org
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On Saturday 16 October 2004 10:03, Dan Bullok wrote:
> On Friday 15 October 2004 14:29, Matt Newell spake unto us thusly:
> > On Thursday 14 October 2004 14:22, Frank Schmitt wrote:
> > > Hello
> > >
> > > In KDE 3.2 and below, a kicker size of 38 pixels and above resulted in
> > > application buttons of 32x32 pixels, a size of 39 pixels and below
> > > resulted in only one row in taskbar. That means that in KDE versions
> > > below 3.3 you could have big icons and only row in the taskbar by
> > > choosing a size of 38 or 39 pixels.
> > >
> > > Since 3.3, 32x32 pixel application buttons are used only if kicker is
> > > at least 40 pixels high while the point where the taskbar changes from
> > > one to two rows hasn't changed. That means that if you don't want to
> > > have two rows in the taskbar, you have to live with tiny application
> > > buttons which look lost on the relatively large kicker panel and are
> > > hard to hit.
> > >
> > > I reported this as a bug in late august
> > > (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88264) but didn't get any
> > > response, so I'm asking here: Does anybody know if this was changed by
> > > intention?
> >
> > What do you guys think about this patch.  It makes the icons always scale
> > with the size of the panel, then there is no need to worry about the
> > cutoff.
> >
> > Matt
>
> I think that scaling is a great idea.  I haven't checked your patch yet,
> but I agree to the principle, if not the implementation.  But I think that
> this needs to be optional.  I'm assuming that here are some good reasons
> not to want scaled icons, otherwise, they'd be used everywhere in KDE. 
> They usually look okay, but some people really hate them.  And they used to
> look bad in 8bit color (although I haven't checked lately, and I'm of the
> opinion that such people need a new video card).  I'm also not sure if
> there is a noticeable impact on speed (I can't tell on my machine, but some
> people are using 200Mhz machines).
>
> Aaron, what do you think of this?

i think this should follow the "Conserve Space" setting. additionally, the 
scaling should kick in only when the difference between the icon size and the 
panel space is sufficient.

e.g. if there are 32x32 and 48x48 icons, when the panel is 36 pix we should 
probably just use the 32x32. when the panel is 40 px we should use the 48x48 
icon scaled _down_ (it usually looks better than scaling up AFAIK?), and when 
we have, say a 52 or more pixel panel we scale up the 48x48 icon. this will 
prevent taking a 32x32 icon and stretching it to 34x34 which probably isn't 
worth the distortion =)

if ConserveSpace is on, then the scaling shouldn't occur at all.

this means we should continue to query the icon theme in preferredIconSizes as 
opposed to just inventing our own size all the time... we should also 
continue to use loadIcon rather than loading the image via QImage ourselves 
in conserveSpace.

> Is it okay to implement things that look really lousy on low-end machines?

preferably not =) 

p.s. i'm sub'd to kde-devel.. no need to CC me =)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
 
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