Re: [lmi] Showing better icons in high DPI

[Greg Chicares]

On 2022-02-16 20:03, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
[...]
>  If I chop off the most problematic icons, I can even post the screenshots
> publicly, so let me do it here: attached are 3 screenshots showing lmi on a
> high DPI (200% scaling) screen. The first one shows lmi using the current
> wx version from lmi repository (~3.1.4). It doesn't look too bad here, but
> the bitmaps are noticeably blocky and, probably worse, all text except for
> the "lmi" in the title bar, which is rendered by OS itself, is not very
> sharp. Not shown here, but things like checkboxes (i.e. anything with thin
> lines) also look blurry.

That's what I use every day. I don't really notice the blockiness or
fuzziness of the icons. This is perfectly serviceable nonetheless.
Making icons gorgeous is an extravagance that might be justifiable
for an application with 10^9 users and a corresponding budget, but
lmi's not there yet.

>  The second screenshot shows how lmi looks when built with the latest wx
> (~3.1.6) and DPI awareness enabled. Everything looks sharp now (except for
> the icon in the title bar which is not available in the required 64x64
> size, but I'll change this), but the toolbar bitmaps are too small. We

Yes, that's the way some GNU/Linux desktop software behaves. The
icons are way too small; they're much better in the first screenshot.

> could, however, change icon_monger code to scale them up, but then we'd get
> about the same appearance as in the first screenshot (maybe not exactly the
> same as the OS might do a better job of scaling than wxImage code).

Okay, so that would constitute useful incremental progress: the text
is much more legible. Text rendering is important; icons, not so much.
The second screenshot, modified to magnify the icons (however crudely),
is optimal: you've improved the text clarity, and costly further
changes to retouch the icons don't seem worth the effort.

>  The final screenshot shows lmi with the same wx version and my extra
> changes to icon_monger to use SVG icons from Gnome theme.

Of course those icons have a more refined appearance. OTOH, for
"File | New", even this would be plenty good enough:

  +--\
  |  L\
  |   |
  +---+

There's nothing at all wrong with the "retro" icon in the first
screenshot. It's unambiguously recognizable; that's what matters.
The folded corner, to me, is more evocative than the little yellow
star that I have to squint to see.

> IMO they look
> well enough even if the "Save to PDF" one (which I made myself by
> overlapping an existing item with a PDF emblem) is noticeably worse than
> the others.

That's why I copied the "PDF" graphic element from some other icon:
the squiggly triangle is too subtle. The aesthetic choices already
made have the virtues of familiarity and consistency.

> GC> Going by the narrative description only, it
> GC> sounds like this could take a great deal of effort,
> 
>  To me, yes, but just because I have neither the artistic talent to draw
> something decent myself nor technical competences needed to use Inkscape to
> combine the existing items to make something reasonable. But it's, of
> course, only my own fault and I should probably take some time to learn to
> use Inkscape rather than just winging it.

Is the GIMP not adequate for this task? I have no wish to learn another
graphics program.

> [...] to ask you whether you'd be going through all these
> images yourself anyhow, in which case I probably shouldn't try too hard to
> make them better, or if you'd be happy with my versions if I did do my best
> to make them presentable?

Neither. The grainy "magnified" icons in the first screenshot are
perfectly adequate. Recreating them in SVG format is just too much
work. Our end users are a static group of individuals, who are used
to the way things are; they don't need us to prettify the icons.

> GC> yet produce results that aren't really satisfying.
> 
>  If these screenshots are not good enough, we should provide more sizes for
> the PNG icons. Of course, the simplest way to do it would still be to take
> Gnome SVG icons and just rasterize the appropriate versions of them in the
> smaller sizes (what I use now is the biggest version, with the most
> details).

That's still far too much work, IMO, for no worthwhile gain.

> GC> Should we consider dropping the idea, and just keeping what we have?
> 
>  I think the current icons look very noticeably scaled in the first
> screenshot and wouldn't want to use them in high DPI.

I use them every day. They're good enough. Making them more attractive
won't increase anyone's productivity, but it would take a lot of work.

> Using SVGs also has
> the extra advantage of allowing to adapt the icon sizes exactly to the
> expected size, even when using 150% or 250% or other weird DPI scaling (and
> it turns out that people do use 125% and 175% and even 350% in practice).
> With PNGs, unless we provide them in all those sizes, the bitmaps would be
> smaller than needed at 125% scaling and bigger than needed at 150% because
> wx prefers to use the wrong size rather than scale them (which is really
> the best thing to do, as scaling by a factor different from 2 looks very
> ugly).

That's a valid point, but it doesn't change the cost-benefit tradeoff.

>  But please let me know what do you think and, notably, whether you have
> any plans to work on these icons yourself or not.

If I never edit another icon as long as I live, that'll be too soon.