country flags have different sizes

[Andriy Rysin]

Andy Fawcett wrote:
> On Monday 06 March 2006 04:40, Andriy Rysin wrote:
>   
>> I've posted this question once several years ago and I don't believe
>> I saw an answer so I'll try again :)
>> Currently we have 228 country flags:
>> - 135 of them are 21x14
>> - 38 of them are 21x10
>> - a lot of others are in other sizes
>>
>> Also some of the flags are just smaller png (like "yu") and some of
>> them have smaller flag padded by gray color in png (like "si").
>>
>> I know there are some flags that have different aspect than others
>> but I still believe some unification is still needed.
>> We might want to bring most of them to 3x2 aspect (i.e. 21x14) and
>> remove gray padding to be consistent.
>>
>> Currently I have 2 problems with that in kxkb:
>> 1) the flags look different in the list :)
>> 2) the layout label height sometimes does not fit into the flag area
>> (currently "yu" with flag will look like "vu"), so to fix that I'd
>> have to create Pixmap larger than the flag and bitblt flag there and
>> only after than draw the text. But I'd prefer to fix flag sizes
>> rather than making workaround.
>>     
>
> http://www.flagart.com/flag-sizes.htm
>
> To quote directly:
>
> Which One to Use?
> Although there is no absolute rule, the basic guidelines mentioned above 
> are a good starting point: When many flags are displayed together, use 
> a uniform (3:5) size ratio. When displaying a single flag, use the 
> Official sized version.
>
>
> As I understand it, you just want to display a single flag at a time, so 
> the guideline would seem to be to use one with the official 
> proportions.
>
> Also, changing the aspect would lead to some weird displays. For 
> example, the official dimensions for the Union Flag (United Kingdom) is 
> 2:1 but Switzerland is 1:1. Qatar on the other hand is a massive 28:11 
> ratio. This seems to be a case of "one size does not fit all".
>   
well, in kxkb as I believe in many other places there are uses for 
single flag (as in tray) and multiple ones (as in tray context menu or 
kcm module with layout lists). So either we have to keep two versions of 
the flags (one of common aspect ratio and one for official) and then 
displaying will be quite different in configuration/menu and in tray 
(for kxkb). Or we can have official sizes and scale when we have to, but 
there are two problems with scaling:
1) with small size icons scaling quality is pretty poor
2) with flags like CH where 1:1 should be followed we have to omit scaling

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_sovereign_state_flags is also a 
> useful page when it comes to the dimensions.
>
> I seem to recall that some flags are legally only permitted for use when 
> displayed with the exact specification, but I might be misremembering 
> this.
>   
well then it's quite complicated issue and as we did not follow this 
rule for years for now I'd like to fix some problems I have with 
different flag sizes and gray padding. So unless there's strong 
objections for 3.5.2 I'd fix several flags which look bad in kxkb (i.e. 
sizes: am,  kg, lt, mn, tj, yu and gray padding: hr, cz,  dk, fr, it, 
nl, pt, sk, gb) by replacing them with non-padded 21:14 version from 
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=26296

Please let me know if you have any ideas and/or suggestions.
Andriy