[scribus] Icons again.

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 6:40 PM, john Culleton wrote:

>> > But a longer lasting solution to changing sizes would be to redo
>> > them in svg via Inkscape. Then any size png icon could be created
>> > as needed in the size needed by the developers.
>>
>> Unfortunately, no. You still have to draw versions for different
>> resolutions, because display graphics = pixel alignment. You can't
>> get that automagically by just scaling down things. So SVG only
>> allows to tweak things easier.
>>
>> See this for illustration: http://i.imgur.com/atDpC.jpg
>> The icon are: 256x256, 48x48, 32x32, 24x24, 16x16.
>>
>> I zoomed in so that you could see the differences introduced manually
>> to fit destination resolution.
>
> Another thought: prepare the initial icon in a large size and then
> downsize as needed in e.g., Gimp. IMO the icon need not be elaborate
> or have fine detail at any size. It is after all just a symbol. If we
> can upscale or downscale fonts more or leas without limit we should be
> able to do the same with a "font" of icons, similar to dingbats.

Let me introduce you to the beautiful world of applied semiotics.
Software icons ascend to pictography which partially gave life to
hierogliphic writing systems which, in return, often have so detailed
representations (symbols, as you say) of ideas, that e.g. many CJK
fonts (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) have embedded bitmaps tuned for
particular font size.

So no -- unfortunately your reference to fonts is not entirely
correct, and scaling things down won't help (there is no such thing as
hinting for icons). You still have to tune design for smaller size to
ensure pixel grid alignment.

OTOH, I'm pretty sure that many icons currently used in Scribus could
be redone in stencil/symbolic style. Here are current GNOME's symbolic
icons: http://i.imgur.com/vanfo.png

Please note, however, that stencil approach to icon design implies
using the icons at their original (small) size. If you start scaling
them up, you lose the appeal of symbolic style.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org