Posted by Spartanicus on 09/14/05 13:14

Jim Higson <jh@333.org> wrote:

>I don't know if the Windows icons are vector

As supplied with the OS Windows icons usually contain 2 bitmap images,
16x16 and 32x32. In addition many Windows applications draw their own UI
using bitmaps.

>, but they're redrawing them for
>Vista anyway, and are probably using vector tools.

The source format doesn't really matter in this context. What matters is
what the end format is, and if it's viable to have a vector rendering
engine continuously active to render the UI.

To cope with potentially future significantly varying screen resolutions
it would suffice to have the OS generate appropriately sized bitmaps for
example from a vector image base once. I'm not sure if there is a
compelling benefit to having a vector rendering engine painting the UI.

>Vector rendering isn't
>really any slower when you use the GPU anyway, see
>http://www.cairographics.org/introduction for an interesting read on this.

On the modern desktop systems the resource usage would probably not be a
problem. I doubt if that also applies to mobile platforms.

>> Apart from the OS UI elements, the effect of high resolution screens on
>> bitmapped content should also be considered. It may become necessary to
>> integrate high quality image resizing into the OS to handle the variety
>> of output resolutions. To get the benefit content providers such as web
>> authors may need to provide oversized bitmapped content, or make bitmaps
>> available in multiple sizes.
>
>Rather than provide one version for mobile devices, one for normal and one
>for high-res, I think I'd rather just give the client a gzipped SVG. That
>way any dot pitch, present and future is supported.

I referred to bitmaps such as jpeg photo realistic images used as
content on web sites, vector formats are not an option there.

--
Spartanicus

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