[Kde-games-devel] Hybrid svg graphics...

[Eugene Trounev]

On, but of course! You can use embedded images if you wish to. QT4 SVG 
renderer handles those natively. And you are right about speed. However, what 
are we to do when in about a year the all new 5000+X5000+ monitors from some 
now unknown Chinese Corp. will become mainstream? The whole point of using 
vectors is to remove the resolution restrains, and the problems they create. 

And yet, if you wish to use pixmaps, you are free to do so :) No one said - no 
pixmaps, we just wanted all the games to be able to read and understand SVG, 
that's all. But, as embedded pixmaps are a feature of SVG's why not do those 
as well?

On Sunday 20 January 2008 04:12:23 pm Luciano Montanaro wrote:
> Hi all,
> it's me again with some more controversial argument...
>
> An introduction, first.
>
> I installed the gnome games, to have a look at the status of gaming on our
> pointy-hat friend's platform.
>
> AisleRiot uses svg graphics too. They ship five decks of cards in svg
> format.
>
> Two of them use an hybrid approach where the indices and suits are vector
> graphics, while the court cards use pixmaps as the main graphics.
>
> The thing I did not know (or think about, actually) is that it's possible
> to embed the pixmap as base64 data. So it may be practical to create
> single-file card deck in svg format, if we want.
>
> Actually, switching to svg only themes should simplify the common card
> caching code Andreas is developing...
>
> The other thing I noticed is that Gnome ships a dondorf deck too...
> It is much smaller though, and much faster to load, and it uses pixmaps for
> the court cards.
>
> I think it looks better even when scaled up... though I've heard others
> whose opinion differs.
>
> Here is an image demonstrating the two decks...
>
> http://www.cirulla.net/listing/kde_stuff/vector-pixmap.png
>
> The one on the right is the pixmap version, on the left is the svg version.
> At normal screen resolutions, there should be really little difference...
> actually, the pixmap version colors should be more saturated.
>
> From my point of view, the smooth lines at normally unreachable resolutions
> is not worth the extra time it takes to load the theme...
>
> Another "interesting" thing in Gnome decks is that the numbers do not
> render with with the Qt renderer. It would be interesting to find out why.
>
> To conclude:
> maybe we should think a bit more about the "only vectors allowed" kdegames
> policy. I think there are places for old school pixmap images too...
> For example, pixmap images larger than any current screen resolution can be
> a solution where an svg file would be too slow to load quickly.
>
> Do not misunderstand me: vectors are great, and the current games use
> vector graphics very well. However, it makes little sense in my opinion to
> use automatic tools to convert pixmaps to vector, since the result is
> uneditable, it's slow to load and does not really look as good as the
> original anyway...
>
> Well, that's all for now.
>
> Ciao,
> Luciano
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