On Wednesday 18 May 2005 10:58 am, Chris Cannam wrote:

> Um, are you offering to do the real transparency and proper
> antialiasing?

Why yes, of course.  It's rather pointless to just s/xpm/png/g and leave it at 
that, isn't it?

> Yes.  The only functional reason we use them is that it's handy to be
> able to edit them in a text editor (in fact that's how I made them).
> XPM was probably the more common format back then too.

They look nifty on the reports from the bug list too, for that matter.

> Because of that faint advantage of XPMs, I think it's not worth the
> bother to convert them into PNGs that are then going to remain exactly
> the same as the original XPMs.  It's absolutely worth the bother if we
> can get PNGs with proper alpha transparency out of it -- that would be
> great.  And it's marginally worth the bother if there's even a vague
> expectation that having icons in PNG form might make someone more
> inclined to fix them for proper transparency later.

I'm inclined to just do everything at one shot.  It will be easier to do a 
bulk wholesale conversion first, and then go back and doctor up individual 
icons as needed, case by case.

Eventually a great majority of them stand to benefit from this treatment, and 
it's certainly my intention to carry the thing through over the span of time, 
starting with the worst and working toward any little pixel by pixel cleanups 
of the already better looking ones in time.

The net result will almost certainly be that some icons have been converted 
which probably did not really stand to benefit (such as the move track icons, 
right off hand, and surely others) but the time saved doing the conversion in 
an automated fashion is worth paying this price I think.

I don't remember if I stated this or not, but another thing we want to do is 
nod toward the high contrast white-on-black color scheme, and try to come up 
with something that will come out OK on that as well as more standard looking 
ones.  We're thinking perhaps a faint border on the solid black notation 
elements, although now that I think about it the morning after, it might well 
be worth incorporating a contrasting background right into the icons 
themselves.  Perhaps a background of very translucent white to give the 
necessary hint of contrast in such stark environs.

Also, while I'm writing, I'll throw out what else I'm working on.  Alexandre 
has been pushing for the idea of replacing our nice verbose text labels with 
tooltipized icons for the SPB/IPB for a long time.  I can see the need for 
this to conserve space, but I can also see how it's decidedly less intuitive 
and inviting.  What I'm playing at is a way to do both, with a toggle.  I'm 
not there quite yet, but it's encouraging so far.  I think what I'm coming up 
with will make everyone happy.  I hope to commit it and start that branch in 
the next week or two.

-- 
Michael McIntyre  ----   Silvan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek;  registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/


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