Re: Icons of program

[Toshio Kuratomi <badger prtr-13 ucsc edu>]

On Thu, 23 Apr, 1998 at 10:00:04PM +0200, Stefan Nobis set free these words:
> Toshio Kuratomi <badger@prtr-13.ucsc.edu> writes:
> 
> > don't see anyone jumping up and down to implement it in their image editor.
> 
> This problem is easy to solve: Let the icon/metainfo editor import
> other pictures. I think this has to be able in whatever mechanism is
> used, because all the people out there donīt want to repaint all their 
> pictures but they want to reuse them.
> 
That's quoted out of context.  I'm not saying it's a problem for us to create
the icon files (an app that uses imlib with support for raster's idea of a
good new icon format would handle that) -- I'm saying that a new icon format
won't jump up and strike people outside the gnome community as something they
need to implement in their image viewer (because it fills a very specific
niche.)  And because of that, editing icon files will only be able to be done
using apps that use imlib (until a second gnomeian decides to code the same
sorts of routines.)

This is not a show-stopping objection, but I think it is a very reasonable
one.  It seems preferable to me to be able to edit my images with as wide a
variety of tools as I want rather than be tied to the limited number that
have the support built in via imlib.

Also -- by defining a very specific icon file format, we are tying ourselves
to a specific set of features.  Maybe we put everything we think we could
possibly want into the image file -- but ten years from now (When everyone is
actually using GNOME :-) we may find that there's something new that we want
-- Maybe there's a new way to do 3D modeling that's small enough to make
sensible icons or a new compression algorithm that is just world's better --
and if our "icons" just contain pointers to the real image, (that is then
decodable by some general image library like imlib..)  then all we have to do
is start defining pointers to the new image type.  If we put the image data
into the icon file along with the rest of the meta-info, we have to scrap the
icon format and define version-2 (and 3 and 4....)

-Toshio
-- 
badger  \"The Difference between today and yesterday is not so much what has
@prtr-13 \ changed between then and now as what I hope to change by tomorrow."
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