Re: [lmi] Showing better icons in high DPI

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:58:14 +0000 Greg Chicares <gchicares@sbcglobal.net> 
wrote:

GC> On 1/11/22 11:05 PM, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
GC> > 
GC> >  One of the important new features in (the still not released but really
GC> > close to being to, this time for real) wx 3.1.6 is the possibility to
GC> > define bitmaps of different sizes for the same "logical" bitmap in
GC> > different resolutions. I.e. instead of scaling up a 16x16 bitmap by a
GC> > factor of 2 when using 200% DPI scaling or, worse, scaling it up by a
GC> > factor of 1.5, which looks really ugly, when using 150% scaling, the
GC> > application can define 16x16 bitmap, 32x32 bitmap and 24x24 bitmap and the
GC> > appropriate one will be selected during run-time
GC> 
GC> BTW, in gwc/16/ and gwc/24/ we have gnome originals of various icons
GC> that have been copied or adapted for lmi. Their provenance is given in
GC> 'README'; perhaps gnome has SVG versions.

 Following up on this turned out to be much more interesting (in the
notorious Chinese proverb sense) than I could have imagined. I have no idea
what happened with Gnome icons theme or with Tango icons theme that
predated it, as at least the former is clearly still being used, but I
couldn't find any recent versions of it. Worse, the ones I did find (last
updated several years ago, but maybe it is the most recent version and the
icons are just considered to be perfect and not needing any further
improvements) switched to using a scheme with SVGs containing several
images of different sizes inside them (the idea being that SVGs don't scale
perfectly and so it's better to have different versions of them appropriate
for the desired bitmap size) and using a couple of Perl scripts to generate
the PNGs by cutting out the part of the SVG corresponding to the requested
size. I thought about adding support for this to wx SVG loader, but finally
decided that this was too peculiar and Gnome-specific to be worth it. OTOH
I do have to admit that scaled SVGs do look worse than PNGs produced from
Gnome SVGs using their script -- but IMHO not unacceptable worse.

 So, finally, I decided to cheat and just take the normal Gnome SVGs (as
opposed to those multi-resolution ones) from Wikimedia Commons[1]. I've
also supplemented them with a couple of Tango ones from the same source[2]
and, finally, the PDF logo[3], which I had to use instead of "PDF" text
label because the SVG renderer currently used in wx doesn't support text at
all. Using all this and after some painstaking adjustments in Inkscape
(which I don't know how to use effectively and which keeps crashing all the
time, which doesn't help at all) I've finally managed to produce somewhat
readable SVG replacements of all the icons. But I have to say that I've
already spent inordinate amount of time on this and the result is still not
great, i.e. I'll need to change a few more things. I don't know how much
sense does it make to try to improve the icons beyond the "not absolutely
unacceptable" level, however -- would you like me to try or would you
prefer to improve them later yourself?

[1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Desktop_icons
[2]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons
[3]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PDF_file_icon.svg

GC> > and, if you would, should I do it together with the wx update or later?
GC> 
GC> On that last issue, I have no opinion.

 I now believe that it definitely makes sense to do both together because
the current icons really don't look good when scaling them up, so all the
improvements from actual high DPI support at wx level in the new version
risk being overshadowed by their ugliness if we don't change them.

 However once I finish with the SVG-ification of the icons (putting more
or less effort into it depending on your answer to the question above), I
think I should be able to finally update both wx and the icons and ask you
to test the latest version.

 But for now I'll get back to trying to figure out why some of my SVGs are
not centered...

 Best regards,
VZ

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