In some ways the Apple API has regressed from the pre- OS 10 days. The PICT format filled this niche nicely in the past. I'm amazed there's no official, single replacement for this. Depending on whom I've asked, I've been told I should just use Postscript, or SVG. But neither seem to be a core API.
Apple really should add a standard vector format to their API, for both desktops and mobile devices. Rob On Jan 22, 2011, at 2:46 AM, Chris Adamson wrote: > Granted, most iOS developers I know think the @2x thing feels like an > atrocious kludge. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see it deprecated > a few years from now. > > The blog you link to points out that since the only problem is in the > places where you depend on bitmapped graphics, since shapes, strokes, > fills, and fonts scale up and down nicely. It calls out what seems > like an obvious solution: > > "In an ideal world icons would come in vector graphic form. That isn’t > the case on Android (the platform doesn’t support SVG, including in > the browser, which is a huge deficiency), but it is still shocking > that Apple, which usually takes the lead on such innovations, doesn’t > use them for iOS, as had been widely speculated as a given before the > iPhone OS was first released." > > That this is "ideal" is obvious, but is it "shocking" that Apple > hasn't followed suit? If we can't temporarily assume they're not > stupid, let me posit another possibility: they realize they magically > turn all the world's Photoshop wizards into Illustrator wizards > overnight. The Resolution Independence Guidelines for Mac (http:// > developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/ > Conceptual/HiDPIOverview/Introduction/Introduction.html ) do encourage > creating your original assets as vector art, but that's as hard as > they're pushing, for now anyways. > > --Chris > > On Jan 21, 10:00 pm, Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> wrote: >> Flexible layout managers are available everywhere, they are not what makes >> Apple's position challenging. The real problem is pixel independence and the >> fact that so far, they've been able to get away with using integer multiples >> of resolutions. Unsurprisingly, they have already hit a wall and experts >> seem to agree that doubling the iPad's resolution on both axes is not >> technically feasible in 2011. >> >> Apple simply can't escape the fact that they will have to introduce >> fractional increases in resolutions and densities, something that Android >> decided to tackle since day one. >> >> Here is a great article giving more details about the whole thing, and >> calling BS in particular on people who say that fractional increases will >> produce crappy results (e.g. John Gruber): >> >> http://blog.yafla.com/Apples_Embarrassing_Predicament/ >> >> -- >> Cédric -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
