[vlc-devel] VLC MiniMode Widget: SVG/CSS based Media Playback Notification and Controller

[jpd at videolan.org]

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 04:51:23AM +0200, Rohit Yadav wrote:
> The points I would like to address here is quality of image and memory
> usage. If we start using SVGs by replacing all the pixmaps from VLC,
> the quality of images will increase while size will decrease.

Do we have a volunteer? ;-)

I think that's quite a chunk of work, but an interesting suggestion.
Since I try to stay well away from user interfaces I cannot comment
much on its general desirability. Maybe others on the list can?


> You tell me 100Kb PNG Vs 2 Kb SVG, while SVG has better quality, I really
> don't know if SVG will take more memory than PNG. Folks, comment.

Presumably there will be pixmaps to show the result, at least until the
underlying graphics system supports drawing vectors right away. So it
won't use less memory and cpu usage may be comparable (drawing with all
its trappings (anti-aliasing, sub-pixel tinkering, what have you) vs.
decompressing). Image quality will only be as good as the renderer, so
it introduces additional complexity on several levels.


> Qt, Java, W3C, WHATWG etc, everyone's promoting SVG. There has to be a
> reason why these people are doing that.

W3C came up with the idea. "Java" has no bearing on us. Qt still
requires an extra module and (still presumably) dependent libraries. So
I don't tend to think of such arguments as holding much weight by and of
themselves. Now if you can show persuasive secondary effects....


> I think we need quality, we have all the memory and processing in the world.
> Just a thought.

vlc gets used aplenty in memory and cpu constrained environments, so
that is not an automatic given -- though probably not in Qt form.

However, you are proposing to spend away other people's cycles and
memory, not just your own, so being a little considerate goes a long
way. Regardless of how popular this argument tends to be in developer
communities. :-)

Bottom line: Not wasting other people's cpu and memory enlarges the
program's potential reach.


Of course, the cpu requirements for this I expect to be likely
insignificant compared to, oh, decoding mpeg4, but that doesn't change
the problem with the sentiment.