Re: New Wallpaper Properties Dialog

[Rodney Dawes <dobey free fr>]

On Hën , 2003-10-27 at 06:52, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Rodney Dawes">
> 
> > The main feature is the storage of meta-data and the list of available
> > wallpapers, in an XML file in ~/.gnome2/. For each individual image, the
> > filename, a descriptive name, image scaling type, background color type,
> > and background colors are all stored. There is no DTD yet, but one will be
> > written for the next release.
> 
> What is the metadata for? Why not simply show image thumbnails in known
> system directories, as well as a list of user-chosen images?

To store individual settings for individual wallpapers, so that you
don't have to go switch the background colors, or scaling type every
time you pick a different image. It will pull from a system directory.
The goal is to allow ISVs to ship their set of wallpapers, with their
default settings for those wallpapers, rather than just pulling in a
directory listing of images. Another side-goal is to encourage people
to provide better meta-data inside the wallpaper images they create, and
to get the GnomeThumbnail code to support much more of the meta-data
than it currently does.

> When choosing an image for wallpaper, it is unlikely that the user will care
> to give the image a special name, figure out its file size (particularly in
> K, I would understand having the size in dimensions, but even that seems
> like overkill), know what kind of image format it is, or even care what the
> file name is. Surely the primary use case is "go in, find something pretty
> and make it so", nothing more...?

The code/behavior of the capplet is not to expect the user to care to go
in and hand-edit the XML to set the pretty name, file size, format, or
width and height. The entire point is to "make it pretty" for users, and
to encourage the artists/developers to use more meta-data in their
wallpapers and the thumbnails that get created. The thumbnail spec
states several pieces of meta-data in the document, that are entirely
unused in GNOME and I imagine more places as well.

-- dobey