Subject: Re: [ardour-dev] Re: [linux-audio-dev] Ardour : features page
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Sun Oct 15 2000 - 17:37:03 EEST
In message <20001015134514Z37536-29914+15878_AT_nic.funet.fi>you write:
>>This is an interesting point. Resizing is out of the question (one of
>>the downsides of using pixmap-based GUI's, but distinct windows would
>>be very easy. Its now on the TODO list. Thanks for the alert.
>
>That is not a good approach. Resizing is possible when the pixmaps are
>generated from larger artwork when needed.
These routines don't work correctly on non-rectangular pixmaps. You
can't scale a circular pixmap which has been carefully hand-edited to
avoid jagged edges without reintroducing jagged edges. X would need to
support an alpha-channel for that, so that you could effectively
anti-alias the edge of the pixmap. It does not.
>This kind of pixmap routines need to be written in any case. Most likely
>a part of the GTK+ so that we don't have to ever again see poor pixmaps
>(see DAP and numerous other software, for example).
No, they are not part of GTK+. The GTK+ folks tend to suggest that you
use the various image libraries that exist for this stuff.
There are other problems too: several pixmaps in Ardour contain
text. If you resize them, the text may be illegible, through a
combination of the rescale algorithm and the small size. Many people I
know complain that XForms (the toolkit used by DAP) has default fonts
that are too small, and there is no way to change them at
run-time. You would end up with a situation in ardour that would be
very similar.
In addition, you might be able to rescale the pixmaps somehow, but the
text does not rescale - like most non-font-related GTK programs that I
know of it, it makes font choices when it starts, and leaves them set
for the entire run of the program. Many visual elements in Ardour's
GUI contain text that is the main determinate of their (minimum)
size. You could choose to use smaller fonts in the GTK rc file, but
changing the fonts on the fly is so much work that I cannot even
imagine it (nor how to decide which font to use).
If you want to use the visual elements I supply on a smaller display,
then you should scale them externally to Ardour (the GIMP can be run
in batch mode, or you could use the pbm suite of tools,
whatever). Then choose a smaller set of fonts in the GTK rc file that
ardour loads, and then invoke Ardour. Voila. No external image
libraries, no hundreds of line of code to handle bizarre resize
requests, etc.
Ardour does not, and will not resize its window (downward).
--p
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