kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/19/19 5:27 PM, John Beard wrote:
> Hi Seth,
> 
> I know what you mean. Our icons are not really designed for high DPI,
> the truly correct solution is to have a whole set of more detailed icons
> that don't look as chunky when rendered out at 52x52px.
> 
> The next best IMO is to render the (vector) icons at double resolution,
> so they stay aligned, just a bit chunky and under-detailed wrt the
> physical pixels.

We talked about providing a image library with multiple sized bitmaps to
handle high dpi displays but I'm not sure this is worth the effort given
that SVG handling is built into wx3.1 which is already available on most
if not all platforms.  However, if someone were to code this I wouldn't
be opposed to it.

> 
> The lowest level is what we do right now, which is render at 1x and then
> blow them up to 2x (we use bilinear interpolation). This looks pretty
> bad, especially when there are high frequencies in the image data.
> Blurry lines upscale a bit better than sharp ones, which is probably
> what you are seeing. But that's pretty much as good as it gets using
> 26px raster source data.
> 
> I'm unsure if we can feed our SVG files into WX directly, which would
> get us scalable icons for free, and avoids the fiddly render-to-png step
> (though we can still embed the binary data if wanted). Failing that,
> rendering all icons twice, once at 26 and once at 52, is possible, but
> takes quite a bit more building (doubles the icon count).

Direct SVG rendering is available in wx3.1.  I don't think we will be
ready to make wx3.1 the minimum until after v6.  There are far too many
platforms where wx3.0 is the default.

> 
> The absolute best is to have a set of more detailed icons (52px with 1px
> lines) which look perfect on Retina. But that needs rather more artistic
> talent than I have to get the best results.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> John
> 
> On 19 March 2019 20:23:03 GMT, Seth Hillbrand <seth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>     OT: I'm reminded of watching a Yankees game the first time they 
>     broadcast in high definition and feeling really bad for Joe Torre's 
>     dermatologist.  That is to say I second Jeff's take; some things look 
>     better blurry.
> 
>     That said, if you pixel align these icons, we can require pixel 
>     alignment for any future, v6 icons.  The next design round can size the 
>     graphical elements for alignment.
> 
>     -S
> 
>     Am 2019-03-19 16:14, schrieb Jeff Young:
> 
>         The blurry ones actually look better on a Retina display, but I’m OK
>         with the others if they look better everywhere else.
> 
>         Cheers,
>         Jeff.
> 
> 
>             On 19 Mar 2019, at 19:54, Wayne Stambaugh
>             <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>
>             wrote:
> 
>             Whew! I was starting worry about my vision there for minute :)
> 
>             On 3/19/2019 3:52 PM, John Beard wrote:
> 
>                 D'oh, yes! Sorry, new ones on the right, I changed it
>                 and didn't
>                 change the text.
> 
>                 Cheers,
> 
>                 John
> 
>                 On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 7:50 PM Wayne Stambaugh
>                 <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>                     Hey John,
> 
>                     Are you sure the new icons aren't on the right? The
>                     ones on the
>                     left
>                     look blurry to me. Either may eyes are totally gone
>                     or the icons on
>                     the
>                     right are the aligned ones.
> 
>                     Cheers,
> 
>                     Wayne
> 
>                     On 3/19/2019 3:43 PM, John Beard wrote:
> 
>                         Hi,
> 
>                         I plan to pixel align the module icons in
>                         Pcbnew, as they are
>                         currently blurry (and not even consistently
>                         blurry) - they're
>                         probably
>                         the worst offenders left for blurriness. Getting
>                         these aligned at
>                         26px
>                         will be a good step towards hiDPI-aware scalable
>                         icons, as they
>                         will
>                         also be aligned at 2x resolution.
> 
>                         However, due to a quirk of the number 26, it's
>                         impossible to have
>                         the
>                         current fat-ish pins, keep the pins and module
>                         centred in the icon,
>                         and have 3 pins to a side, and keep them all
>                         pixel aligned (which
>                         is
>                         why even the most-sharp current icon has blurry
>                         middle pins). So
>                         the
>                         pins are now a bit skinnier. Hence a quick check
>                         that these icons
>                         are
>                         acceptable.
> 
>                         Comparison image attached (new icons on left). I
>                         haven't changed
>                         any
>                         metaphors or the pin colours.
> 
>                         Cheers,
> 
>                         John
> 
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