Re: Fwd: [gnome-love] Participate to the GNOME Goals and feel the love!

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006, Esben Stien wrote:

> Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 02:13:42 +0200
> From: Esben Stien <b0ef esben-stien name>
> To: desktop-devel-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: Fwd: [gnome-love] Participate to the GNOME Goals and feel
>     the love!
>
> Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> writes:
>
> > GTK+ does support SVG icons.
>
> I mean using them in the upper left corner of the window. The gtk
> window icon.
>
> > http://jimmac.musichall.cz/weblog.php/Artwork/ScalableIcons.php
>
> I don't agree;). If you make a simple big one and scale it down, it'll
> still look good. You don't make an icon small; at least in my view and

In theory at least that might work if an artist has gone to great efforts
to draw an icon to represent a concept instead of putting too much
effort in the details (for example traffic signs like (X) or /!\ can be
draw to scale rather well).

In practice it takes an excessive amount of time to produce an SVG which
looks good at smaller sizes (i.e. less than 36x36 pixels).  There is an
outside chance you can prove us Wrong and I welcome you to do so and
contribute artwork but think the time constraints will prove it is more
hassle than it is worth.

Also icons which look good at really small sizes end up looking a bit
tedious when scaled up to ten time larger (a few well placed gradients can
help break the monotony).


The Inkscape developers are currently planning how best to implement the
<switch> element which might allow parts of a drawing to be omitted at
different sizes.  Combined with careful use of predefined styles in the
SVG it might become slightly less arduous to achieve what you propose but
I do think it would still be a whole lot of work.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/