[Clipart] Re: [Inkscape-devel] Open Clip Art Library Release 0.11 Announcement

[Alan Horkan]

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Nathan Eady wrote:

> Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 13:04:07 -0500
> From: Nathan Eady <eady at galion.lib.oh.us>
> To: clipart at lists.freedesktop.org
> Cc: Alan Horkan <horkana at maths.tcd.ie>
> Subject: Re: [Clipart] Re: [Inkscape-devel] Open Clip Art Library Release
>     0.11 Announcement
>
> Alan Horkan wrote:
>
> > That sounds like only my gradients.  I also submitted a set of about 50
> > SVG Patterns but I didn't/dont really have the time to follow up on them
> > (or the adequate scripting knowledge to efficiently make the necessary
> > changes).
>
> When I first joined the list, I vaguely remember something being said
> about some patterns, but at the time I didn't know enough about the
> project to really assimilate what was said in any kind of context, so
> I no longer recall the details.
>
> Hmmm...  Don't we have archives?  Aha, here:
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/clipart/2004-August/001073.html
>
> Those patterns?

That's right.  I'm reasonably sure I did add them to the submission queue
as patterns.zip, I may have accidentally done so more than once.  (They
should be safe enough on my website but the files are Public Domain so I
encourage people to make copies.)

> > Also in hindsight* the gradients really should be modified so that a
> > thumbnail preview can be easily generated for them (this is of
> > particularly concern to users of the GNU Image Manipulation Program).
>
> Yes, I think this had been done at one point, and used to generate
> thumbnails, but somehow the results didn't get put back into the
> release tarball at the time and so, when the next release was based
> on the previous release tarball, it was missing this change.

I think it was done to get a better preview on the website.
I believe someone wrote quick Perl script which may have been put in CVS
somewhere.

> I don't recall now who did the change, but it seems like it was a batch
> operation?  Or was it done by hand?  If we do it again, the versions
> with the thumbnail (just a rectangle filled with the gradient, probably)
> should be zipped/tarred up and put in incoming, so they can be dropped
> in to replace the existing ones in the next release -- does that make
> sense?

I'd go for a 100x100 square rather than a rectangle.
If the script writer feels like showing off the script should try to
recognise the difference between linear and radial gradients and provide
add the right kind of example to be thumbnailed.

> Also, there are a number of images that don't make good thumbnails,
> due to the document size or somesuch not being a good match for the
> actual content, scalewise, resulting in a lot of white area.  It would
> be nice if there were a tool for automatically fixing that, but I
> don't know enough SVG to have any real idea how feasible that is.

The patterns are almost all designed to fit nicely in to a 100x100 pixel
preview from the origin (one or two might look better at 200x200).  It
shouldn't take much modification of the script being used on the gradients
to get this right, should only really involve slightly different pattern
matching.

If a file only contained pattern definitions and no other content Jasc
WebDraw would automatically draw them all at the origin point (0,0) so I
was careful to arrange my patterns very precisely (which involved lots of
tedious XML editing, something I don't plan on doing ever again especially
with the Tesselation/Symmetry tools now included in Inkscape).

It was clear pretty early on that once you were able to get a few
contributors the really hard part of OpenClipart.org would be managing all
that content.  I wish you continued success and good luck.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

Inkscape, Draw Freely  http://inkscape.org
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