[Nautilus-list] [Fwd: Re: SVG icons

[Jakub Steiner <jimmac ximian com>]

I forgot to cc: this discussion to the nautilus list, since that's the
way to get this thing implemented ;)

Using SVG for icons has TREMENDOUS potential (automatically
generated/modified icons, using icons as a regular display output etc).
Apart from the speed issues mentioned in the attached mail, I am having
following difficulties with SVG implementation in nautilus.

        * <text/> does not render
        * relative dimensions for specifying the text area for
          previewing text files (I'm confused with the bahaviour for svg
          icons right now - what size should I match against?)
        * combination of bitmap/svg icons (having i-regular-48.png and
          i-regular-96.svg doesn't seem to work)...

I am amazed by the quality of the SVG render output. This is probably a
libart thing, but I'm very thankful for implementing this in nautilus.
Very very cool feature. One wishlist-feature would be to have only an
outline object when scaling the icon, but that's probably not a simple
hack.

God bless all the cool nautilus hackers. You guys rock.

http://jimmac.musichall.cz/screenshots/gorilla4.png (just a peek on how
sexy SVG can be)

Jakub 
-- 
-[ jimmac ximian com ]-[ http://jimmac.musichall.cz ]-

"even a stopped clock gives a right time twice a day"

--- Begin Message ---

• From: Jakub Steiner <jimmac ximian com>
• To: Joakim Ziegler <joakim ximian com>
• Cc: "Plum Age (gfx)" <plumage ximian com>
• Subject: Re: [Ximian Plumage] status report
• Date: 24 Sep 2001 16:55:00 +0200

On Po, 2001-09-24 at 15:30, Joakim Ziegler wrote:

> I agree. I was very excited about them when I first heard Nautilus would
> have them. However, I'm wondering how speed is when using a lot of them
> (and a lot of different ones). My gut feeling says it'll be slower than
> pixmaps, especially if the geometry is complex.

You are right unfortunately. This does not have to stay that way.
Nautilus should (and to some extend it does, but it's broken from my end
user view ;) keep the bitmap rendering of the icon in buffer, so it
feels like a regular bitmap icon. My idea is it should:

        * load the theme and render the default zoom interpretations
          (maybe one size lower and one higher for fater zoom views)
        * render only pixmaps from the buffer. it should perhaps check
          the state of the icon in ~/themes/, dunno.

That way the load time would be slower. It might be wise to render only
the basic set of icons, ie, not care about the MIME-type stuff and
render those once it's needed, but definitely keep the buffer. I'm not
sure how much memory would be wated like this, but it would even make
sense to save to disk, and load later, instead or rendering.

jakub
-- 
-[ jimmac ximian com ]-[ http://jimmac.musichall.cz ]-

"even a stopped clock gives a right time twice a day"

--- End Message ---