Re: start-here page's icons

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Michael Meeks">

> On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 10:19, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > SVG is generally inappropriate for icons because, whilst they scale up very
> > well, they do not scale down in an appropriate manner (nor contain pixel
> > hints). If we were to go with SVG icons, we'd have to provide PNG formats
> > for 16x16 through to at least 36x36.
> 
> 	Of course - if we had an SVG extension [ surely this XML stuff is
> supposed to be extensible ? ] - whereby we could 'hint' an SVG icon to
> render well at low res it'd be great to switch everything to svg.
> 
> 	How tough can that be ?

Heh. Okay, so, let's establish first that font hinting is fucking hard, very
font-specific, and a shitload of work. But it is domain-specific, and you
can generalise on roman characters (most systems do).

Now apply that to the many different shapes (a piece of paper, a folder, a
yellow button, a star, a computer monitor, etc) and messages behind the
images (the paintbrush in the background icon is important, etc)...

Whoa. I think it would make for an excellent PhD thesis. :-)

- Jeff

-- 
    "... Of course, compared with Holly Valance, who has beams of light     
     shooting from her nipples, it all seems rather quaint now." - Rove     
                       McManus on Olivia Newton-John