Given how efficient the Amiga OS generally is, it seems kind of odd that our icons are getting larger & larger (with PNG being the latest increase). Compare this with Haiku, which now has an incredibly efficient vector icon format, which is typically smaller than bitmaps:
Haiku Icon Facts

Amiga OS has always been slow at displaying icons, and something like vector icons could help reverse this trend.

Further techy details on the icon format:
Why Haiku Vector Icons are So Small

Food for thought, and perhaps something Hyperion should think about for OS4.1 ...

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@ChrisH

PNG icons are often smaller than 256 color normal icons, because they are compressed.
And I think that showing WB icons is quite fast on OS4.

@ChrisH

OS4 is very quick at displaying icons. If you open a drawer you can see that there is some delay there. However, closing and reopening the same drawer displays them instantly, so I think this is just a disk access issue (using SFS here, so on the second attempt the .infos are all cached)

IIRC the latest beta icon.library has the ability to scale icons and supports 32-bit and plug-ins. Somebody could write a plugin for vector icons I would think.

One of the charms (and thus, problems) of AmigaOS is that icons don't have a fixed size. If you changed to a vector format, you would either be stuck with all the icons the same size (not good, I like having program icons bigger than all the supporting documentation etc in a drawer), or have to specify the size for each icon individually - which would be a nightmare to change the icon size of all icons. There would have to be icon size values and some sort of global scaling factor - but would the global scaling affect the bitmap icons as well?

Lots of things to think about.

Chris

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@ChrisH

Quote:

Food for thought, and perhaps something Hyperion should think about for OS4.1

I bet they already thought about it

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@ChrisH

Quote:

Amiga OS has always been slow at displaying icons,

As others have pointed out, with AOS4 this is not true anymore - I'm not saying it could not be even better, though; who knows, maybe the new icon system had improvements also in that area (BTW: can anybody in the know share any information about it).

Quote:

and something like vector icons could help reverse this trend.

Well, actually vector icons are likely to be slower because they have to be rendered on the fly by means of a much more complex process than a simple read-write (with alphablending). Of course, caching would help... but then you would end up losing the size advantage you like so much

saimo

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@saimo

The new icon.library written by Massimiliano Tantignone has a plug in system in order to add more icons format

So i think it could be possible to add even that format..

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@Timo

Quote:

PNG icons are often smaller than 256 color normal icons, because they are compressed. And I think that showing WB icons is quite fast on OS4.

I converted a 32 colour glowicon drawer image to the new 24bit format and the size went from 3763 bytes down to 878 bytes.

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@nubechecorre
Quote:

So i think it could be possible to add even that format..

It is possible.

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@saimo who said Quote:

Well, actually vector icons are likely to be slower because they have to be rendered on the fly by means of a much more complex process than a simple read-write (with alphablending).

No, if you read the Haiku articles, their icons are both smaller than bitmaps (so faster to read) and only need one pass to generate each pixel. Yes, vector would still take more CPU power than bitmap to render, but disk delays far outweight CPU delays on a vaguely modern system (even on A1s;).

Still, I haven't actually seen PNG icons in action on OS4, so maybe they are sufficiently fast & efficient that vector icons wouldn't be much faster.

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@ChrisH

Quote:

No, if you read the Haiku articles, their icons are both smaller than bitmaps (so faster to read) and only need one pass to generate each pixel. Yes, vector would still take more CPU power than bitmap to render, but disk delays far outweight CPU delays on a vaguely modern system (even on A1s;).

I read the articles, but couldn't figure out how they enforce that only one pass is needed. Did you understand it?

@ChrisH

Possibly maybe. There's been an awful lot of mac-oriented discussion on this subject recently - mainly due to OSX Leopard's new resolution-independent GUI features. There's a few problems with vectors:

- File size, though Haiku seems to have worked around that.

- Speed vs Complexity: They can get very complex indeed (when compared to a bitmap icon) and current GFX cards are much better at rendering bitmaps than vectors.

- Rendering at small pixel sizes: At something like 12x12, a complex vector won't be nearly as nice as a pixel icon developed especially for that size.

The consensus seems to be that creating a hybrid icon format would be a good way forward: It could contain pixel icons for a few smaller defined sizes (e.g. logical steps from 12x12 up to 128x128), then a vector icon that's used for bigger renderings.

TBH, I'd rather they got OS4 out the door, than trying to force a new icon format on developers at this stage. The rest of the GUI isn't exactly resolution independent yet anyway, is it?

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@gnarly

Thanks gnarly, I'll continue my discussion using these starting point of yours.

Quote:

- File size, though Haiku seems to have worked around that.

This has actually to be seen... how about complex icons (the ones shown in the screenshot, for example, are not)?

Quote:

- Speed vs Complexity: They can get very complex indeed (when compared to a bitmap icon) and current GFX cards are much better at rendering bitmaps than vectors.

Precisely. The CPU involvement is far superior.

In all, I think this discussion a bit baseless as there are not enough figures. What one would need is having the same icons (of varying complexity) in both bitmap and vectorial formats and test them on different systems with different filesystems and HDs.
With all the figures at hand, it would be easy to see when vector icons are convenient and when they are not.

saimo

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@ChrisH

Quote:

No, if you read the Haiku articles, their icons are both smaller than bitmaps (so faster to read) and only need one pass to generate each pixel. Yes, vector would still take more CPU power than bitmap to render, but disk delays far outweight CPU delays on a vaguely modern system (even on A1s;).

The point is that the size difference may be little to nothing ;)
- (not much) more in my previous post.

saimo

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@ChrisH

I'd like to see it rendering a screen full of much more complex icons before making a judgement. The screenshot given only has a handful of icons looking a lot like the original "newicon" style (which tbh, I really hated).

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@ChrisH

O.K. with me, sure. as long as we have an GlowIcon-ish style. I personally have a healthy dislike for the PNG types!

Sure a thing that Hyperion should look into and consider.

OldFart

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@OldFart
Quote:

I personally have a healthy dislike for the PNG types!

It isn't the PNG file format's fault for the icons. Fortunately, soon you won't care what format the icon is in and it will just magically work once we have icon modules for them.

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@ssolie

Quote:

Fortunately, soon you won't care what format the icon is in and it will just magically work once we have icon modules for them.

Something at hand?

OldFart

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