Plugin vs. icon sizes.

[Stefan Stuhr]

lør, 09 09 2006 kl. 19:47 +0200, skrev Jasper Huijsmans:
> 2006/8/13, Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer at unix-ag.uni-siegen.de>:
> > Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> > > Hey all,
> > >
> > > This is especially important for plugin writers. I'd like to hear your
> > > opinion about something.
> > >
> > > In bug #2084 benny notes that icons will become ugly when they have to
> > > be scaled and it would be nice if we would use commonly available sizes
> > > (48,32,24,...) even if the size is not exactly that value. This makes a
> > > lot of sense and is what gtk does when it selects icons from an icon theme.
> > >
> > > Right, now let's think about how this could be implemented in the panel.
> > > The panel of course doesn't know anything about the plugins and simply
> > > passes on the size the user requested on to the plugins.
> > >
> > > The easiest way to handle this, I think, is to change the interpretation
> > > of the plugin size to mean "icon size". This may be a bit awkward when a
> > > plugin doesn't use a button + icon, but shouldn't be too hard to handle.
> > >
> > > The panel could even restrict the size to the common 'good' values and
> > > theme-dependent values for [xy]thickness and focus-padding, would not
> > > have any effect on icon size (and quality).
> > >
> > > So, what do you think? Would this work?
> 
> >
> > Yes, that sounds like the best solution to this issue, tho it might be
> > tricky to get the size of other plugins like the pager correct.
> >
> 
> Due to personal circumstances I haven't been able to work on this at all :(
> 
> In view of the code freeze for 4.4.0 and the fact that this affects
> every plugin, I think that this should wait until after the 4.4.0
> release. Can everyone live with that or should I still try to get this
> in now?

I am against this.
      * It would make panels less flexible.

      * I want to decide the size of my panels, and I don't want my
        choice to be restricted to a few predefined (and/or theme
        dependent) values.

      * Not all plugins have icons, and most of those which does,
        doesn't use all the plugin space (the button border for
        launchers, menu buttons, etc. makes the icons smaller than the
        panel size).

      * If people want their panels to have sizes that fits with icon
        sizes, then they can configure their panels to have such sizes,
        and they can do it *now*.

      * More and more icon themes uses SVG icons, which scales well.

      * Please do not change the API/ABI again! (Additions are all
        right, but it wouldn't be a good idea, IMHO, to make it a
        tradition to change the existing API in every minor version.)

A few (conflicting) suggestions:
      * Use a GtkSpinButton to choose panel size, instead of the current
        GtkHScale.

      * Use a GtkComboBox with predefined icon size values (or
        corresponding text) to choose panel size. Have a "Custom Size"
        item in the GtkComboBox, which opens a dialog with a
        GtkSpinButton that allows people like me to happy.

>         Jasper

Thanks,
Stefan