[LV2] [LAD] Feature request: icons

[David Robillard]

On Mon, 2021-03-15 at 20:54 +0000, Alexandros Theodotou wrote:
> > And don't forget. It only makes sense if the hosts will provide
> > this 
> > feature. Host developers, what do you think about it?
> 
> I think having icons for plugins is a great idea and I would
> definitely
> add this feature to Zrythm. They can not only be used in plugin lists
> to make finding the plugins easier, but also as the icons for plugin
> windows.
> 
> Re: icon sizes I think having something loosely based on the
> freedesktop icon theme standard would be good.
> E.g., 16x16/logo.png 32x32/logo.png scalable/logo.svg somewhere in
> the
> plugin bundle and let the host decide what to use.
> 
> Regarding the RDF semantics of this though (like where the icon path
> should be in a bundle and how to specify it, or if it would be some
> hardcoded path) I'm not sure what would be best.

Personally I'd just avoid 99% of those nightmares and ignore the
concept of system icon "names" and bitmap sizes entirely and just stick
an SVG in the bundle and point some property at it.  That's trivially
easy and works just like everything else in LV2 does.  There's nothing
magic about files in bundles, no paths to configure, etc.

Rendering super small SVGs usually isn't going to work out very well,
though, so there is that.

If someone want to actually spec out something fancier that integrates
with desktop stuff somehow and supports multiple pre-rendered sizes and
whatnot, go nuts, but it doesn't sound very fun.

I suppose, as a middle ground, we could punt in much the same way that
we do with lv2:binary: you can specify a whole bunch of them if you
want.  Sorting out which one to use is the host's problem, solved by
looking at the files themselves.  Thus conveniently avoiding the need
to write a vocabulary for information that's already there anyway.

-- 
dr