[Clipart] how about wallpaper..

[Bryce Harrington]

On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 02:58:06PM -0400, Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote:
> Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> writes:
> 
> > Seems like we could amass quite a large collection of SVG-based
> > wallpaper. 
> 
> I suppose, but for wallpaper, wouldn't most people rather have
> something raytraced, or a photograph?  The POVray gallery, or the
> IRTC, or sxc.hu, seem to me like good sources of wallpaper.  I know
> they don't scale very well, but how many people regularly change the
> dimensions of their desktops?

As a matter of fact, I happened to run headlong into this problem only a
month ago.  I was setting up a dual-head system at work, and wanted
wallpaper, but pretty much all the wall paper out there is designed for
something more towards a 4:3 aspect ratio than an 8:3 ratio.  I did
finally find some wallpaper of the correct aspect ratio but didn't care
for the picture, so ended up just turning it off.  

Anyway, it wasn't that big of a deal for me.  I knew I could probably
download something from deviant art and render it out, but I usually
have the screen fully plastered with xterms anyway.  But I guess this
serves as a definite case in point that scalable wallpaper *does* have a
use and would be worthwhile.

Of course, for my own purposes, SVG backgrounds wouldn't have addressed
the issue directly, since my window manager only supported bitmap
wallpaper.  However, I know that KDE (and perhaps other window managers)
will be supporting SVG wallpapers soon.  So even though it wouldn't have
solved my problem, in the future it probably would have.

> Also, for wallpaper, the public-domain requirement that we impose
> seems fairly unnecessary.

I think this is a good point.  For wallpaper, the license restrictions
need not be quite as exacting.

> I think we should focus on clip art.

I think it is good that we have focused so well on clip art.  "Do one
thing, and do it well."  However, I would not rule out expanding our
scope if we care confident that it will not disrupt us from our main
mission.

I know other sites specialize in wallpapers, and even include SVG
wallpapers, so perhaps this niche is already sufficiently covered.
However, if not, and if someone has the time and inclination to maintain
a wallpaper collection, I'd certainly support that effort.

Bryce