Even larger icon support in Tracker

[jscipione]

This ticket adds support for 96x96 and 128x128 icon sizes to Tracker.

In addition to adding the menu options to Tracker this ticket also adds a scale3x and scale4x algorithm to scale up old BeOS bitmap icons making them look a bit nicer (although, really, still not very good). HVIF based Haiku icons look excellent at these sizes of course.

[jscipione]

Patch that adds support for 96x96 and 128x128 icons to Tracker as well as scale3x and scale4x algorithms to scale up bitmap based BeOS icons

[jscipione]

Bitmap based BeOS icons in Tracker at 128x128

[jscipione]

HVIF based Haiku icons at 128x128

[axeld]

The BeOS icons indeed don't really look good. I could imagine it would look actually better if you would just enlarge the pixels.

Anyway, I think the size menu is slowly getting too large and I wonder if there isn't a better solution to this.

[Disreali]

I love having big icons, especially on big wide-screen monitors. Excellent work.

I don't want to discourage anyone who works on Haiku, but the enlarged BeOS icons look weird. Is it really worthwhile to enlarge and scale old BeOS icons it they don't look good?

Would id be possible to break up the patch into 2 parts, one for the Haiku icons and one for the BeOS scaled icons?

I agree with Axel's concern regarding the IconView menu. How do other OS's/DE's handle that?

[jscipione]

Replying to Disreali:

I love having big icons, especially on big wide-screen monitors.

me too :)

I don't want to discourage anyone who works on Haiku, but the enlarged BeOS icons look weird. Is it really worthwhile to enlarge and scale old BeOS icons it they don't look good?

Yes, the enlarged BeOS icons look weird -- of course they do, they are 32x32 bitmaps scaled up to 128x128. There is no magical scaling algorithm (that I have the code for anyway) that will turn 32x32 bitmaps into 128x128 bitmaps without sacrificing quality. That is one of the reasons why stippi developed HVIF in the first place! I have hope that someday we can use the techniques in the "Depixelizing Pixel Art" paper from Microsoft Research to scale BeOS icons up better, but that is all I have right now, hope, no code.

Would it be possible to break up the patch into 2 parts, one for the Haiku icons and one for the BeOS scaled icons?

I can break the patch up into 2 parts, but let me first say that scaling up the BeOS icons using bilinear scaling is going to look /even worse/ then it does using scale3x/scale4x. I know this because I compared the 2 closely when I implemented scale2x for 64x64 icons. You can see the different between scale2x and bilinear scaling for 64x64 BeOS icons by looking at the images attached to #7130.

I agree with Axel's concern regarding the IconView menu. How do other OS's/DE's handle that?

Mac OS X uses a slider to adjust Finder icon sizes. Windows 7 puts the options in the View menu of Explorer like Haiku, but has fewer options ​Windows 7 icon size. I like the slider, it accommodates more sizes.

[Disreali]

Replying to jscipione:

Yes, the enlarged BeOS icons look weird -- of course they do, they are 32x32 bitmaps scaled up to 128x128. There is no magical scaling algorithm (that I have the code for anyway) that will turn 32x32 bitmaps into 128x128 bitmaps without sacrificing quality. That is one of the reasons why stippi developed HVIF in the first place! I have hope that someday we can use the techniques in the "Depixelizing Pixel Art" paper from Microsoft Research to scale BeOS icons up better, but that is all I have right now, hope, no code.

I may have used the wrong terminology here. I know that the BeOS icons at 128x128 are going to look odd. I was questioning whether _having_ scaled/enlarged BeOS icons was worth while at all. Why highlight old pixelated icons, especailly ones for which we already have HVIF icons? The idea of "Depixelating" sounds neat and I hope you have time to investigate it. Though, I realize that your current solution may be good, I just would rather not have to use the old BeOS icon.

I can break the patch up into 2 parts, but let me first say that scaling up the BeOS icons using bilinear scaling is going to look /even worse/ then it does using scale3x/scale4x. I know this because I compared the 2 closely when I implemented scale2x for 64x64 icons. You can see the different between scale2x and bilinear scaling for 64x64 BeOS icons by looking at the images attached to #7130.

Again, I may not have been clear in my question and used the wrong term. I suggested that the patch be broken up so that the Haiku part could be applied quickly. It would then allow you, or anyone else, to see _if_ there was another solution for the BeOS icons, such as as Axel's about enlarging the pixels.

Mac OS X uses a slider to adjust Finder icon sizes. Windows 7 puts the options in the View menu of Explorer like Haiku, but has fewer options ​Windows 7 icon size. I like the slider, it accommodates more sizes.

Thanks for the link. I definitely like the slider option. One of the few places where I think a slider would be ideal. It would de-clutter the menu, which is good.

[jscipione]

This patch adds 96x96 and 128x128 icon size support to Tracker only.

[jscipione]

This patch scales BeOS icons to 96x96 and 128x128 using scale3x and scale4x algorithms only.

[jscipione]

Replying to Disreali:

I may have used the wrong terminology here. I know that the BeOS icons at 128x128 are going to look odd. I was questioning whether _having_ scaled/enlarged BeOS icons was worth while at all. Why highlight old pixelated icons, especailly ones for which we already have HVIF icons?

This scale3x/scale4x patch is meant for old BeOS apps that you want to look at in Tracker at 96x96 and 128x128 icon sizes. I don't want to replace HVIF icons with BeOS icons, it is just a way to bring those legacy app icons forward.

The idea of "Depixelating" sounds neat and I hope you have time to investigate it. Though, I realize that your current solution may be good, I just would rather not have to use the old BeOS icon.

Again, this is for when you are looking old BeOS application icons, in other words, legacy.

The "Depixelating" alogorithm could make legacy app icons look a bit nicer than scale2x/scale3x/scale4x, but, you are right, the end goal is to phase them out in favor of proper HVIF icons.

Again, I may not have been clear in my question and used the wrong term. I suggested that the patch be broken up so that the Haiku part could be applied quickly. It would then allow you, or anyone else, to see _if_ there was another solution for the BeOS icons, such as as Axel's about enlarging the pixels.

I have now broken the patch into 2 pieces, investigate away. What axeld means about enlarging the pixels is to use a different bitmap scaling algorithm (I think). That could happen someday by me or someone else but scale2x/scale3x/scale4x is good for now. I don't see a good reason to leave it out.

I definitely like the slider option. One of the few places where I think a slider would be ideal. It would de-clutter the menu, which is good.

Yeah, a slider would be good, in fact I've already done some work on adding an icon size slider for my Deskbar icon size patch which can imported into Tracker someday when it is ready.

[jscipione]

Feature added in hrev44422. I am currently in the process of redoing the interface in Tracker to use a slider instead.