Major Step Forward For SVG in the Desktop

Ur@eus writes "SVG the w3c format for Scalable Vector Graphics is seen as many as the future of desktop icons as it allows for scaling icons etc. without loss of quality. Dominic Lachowicz has been working hard on fixing bugs in librsvg over the last few days. The result is that librsvg now renders all available SVG icons perfectly. Not only do it render them, but it renders them faster than libpng renders the same images in png format. Together with the gdkpixbuf plugin librsvg offer it means GNOME 2.2 will be able to use SVG images not only for icons or desktop backgrounds, but also for the GUI widgets themselves and the graphics of the window manager. Dom's announcement can be found on the librsvg mailinglist. The librsvg site also offer a GNOME 2.2 metatheme using mostly SVG icons including a nice screenshot."

Comments

Re:Just more OSX themes.

[rseuhs]

Unlike most eye candy, this makes the desktop faster, so I don't see anything wrong about it.

Also, the more it will be used, the faster it will hopefully become available in browsers out of the box so we can finally ditch flash...

Re:odd

[jordan_a]

Icons are only a small part of what SVG Graphics are about. However being the most common images used on the desktop it is a logical starting point for SVG graphics.

Re:I just don't care!

[realnowhereman]

And I want mine to be the same size regardless of my screen resolution. So I'll be happy and you can still use bitmaps.

Bloody hell - there is "the glass is half empty" and then there's "I hate glasses and really don't see what use they are to me or the rest of the planet".

Re:A better way to clone the OSX look and feel?

[GauteL]

You seem to be under the impression that the OSX-icons are SVG. This is not true. They are just resource forks containing several different sized icons so that they seem to scale "magically".

They might be drawn with Vector based drawing, but they ARE converted before used as icons. KDE does the same thing. The excellent Crystal Icons are SVG-based, but they are converted to PNG for KDE, hence the incorrect assumption that KDE supports SVG. KDE is supposed to get SVG-support in KDE 3.2.

Re:I just don't care!

[Atzanteol]

Bloody hell - there is "the glass is half empty" and then there's "I hate glasses and really don't see what use they are to me or the rest of the planet".

I couldn't have put it better myself. Have you noticed the massive influx of people with a "New technology? Bah!" attitude? Every time someone develops something new there's one idiot with a "My aunt Tilly doesn't use it, so I don't see how it could be of use for anybody." attitude.

I am not your aunt Tilly people!

Re: Stateful Icons?

[IamTheRealMike]

Personally I suspect there's not a great deal of point in making icons vector: 128x128x32 with a decent scaling algorithm (and an optional set of pre-scaled images at smaller sizes) seems to cover pretty much everything.

Covers everything at this time. Max resolutions have gone up year on year, but most people don't use the full capabilities of their card/monitor because the screen elements become too small. So having a resolution independant desktop would be a good way of solving that issue (though obviously you still get these issues with the web).

Re: Stateful Icons?

[Ed Avis]

It's a step towards what we should have had long ago: a desktop where you don't need to know what resolution it's running at, things are just scaled to the correct size. It's crazy that changing to a higher resolution display (eg from 800x600 to 1024x768 on the same monitor) makes all the window decorations and icons smaller. Fonts are supposed to remain the same size, but often they don't.

Obviously for really low resolutions the scale might need to be increased to keep things readable, but a 3200x2400 desktop should look identical to 800x600 except for increased sharpness and detail. (You can still choose really tiny icons if you want them, of course.)