country flags have different sizes

[Andy Fawcett]

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".

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.

Andy


-- 
Andy Fawcett                                     | andy at athame.co.uk
                                                 | tap at kde.org
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