Re: New Wallpaper Properties Dialog

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Mark Finlay">

> The reason we choose to store metadata for images is mostly to do with
> the fact that for any given image only one or two of the scaling types
> make sense, and for translucent images it's useful to have a background
> color/background type associated with it.
> 
> This will have two major benefits IMHO:
> 1. For the default wallpapers we ship with Gnome(/Ximian/Redhat etc...)
> we can choose the scaling type, and for the transparencies we ship, we
> can choose nice background colors to go with them.

OS X autodetects which scaling method to use and allows you to override it
if you wish. Colours and transparency are an added bonus, but I honestly
didn't know this worked until late 2.1.x. Probably something to relegate to
cool distro and power user tricks.

I'd question the merit or usefulness of saving these, however. Seems like
overkill for something that could be handled dynamically without extra work
for the user. Same goes for distro settings - they'll be shipping a preset
wallpaper, and probably providing a few others just for fun. Is there a
great need to store super-duper-amazing metadata to make a background image
do the right thing when a user clicks on it?

> 2. When a user adds an image/transparency they only have to set the
> scaling/background colour once.

I guess I'm not convinced that this is so deeply troubling that we need to
apply clever magic to it. ;-)

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2004: Adelaide, Australia         http://lca2004.linux.org.au/
 
    Ye shall be cursed to fall in love so easily, and yet be so cold of
                       heart as never to express it.