[racket-dev] Icon issues resolved (almost)

On 01/08/2012 08:10 PM, Eli Barzilay wrote:
> Yesterday, Neil Toronto wrote:
>> I've pushed a change that removes DrRacket's dependence on
>> `slideshow/pict' (via `icons'), removes the `icons' module, and adds
>> a new `images' collection. Instead of precompiling SVGs, the new
>> code ray-traces floating-point ARGB+Z bitmaps; instead of composing
>> icons from picts, it composites floating-point renders.
>
> So now there's no docs at all?

Correct, and there never will be. </sarcasm>

Truthfully, I just haven't ported the old ones yet. Perfection within a 
reasonable epsilon will happen before the release. (You'll have to take 
a limit to get actual perfection.)

> Also, an advantage of processing svg files would have been the ability
> to use existing icons -- even if you've used some half-assed script to
> translate them then it's probably better than nothing...  (Unless you
> have some better way to do it.)

The disadvantage is actually writing an SVG interpreter. When looking 
into it, I discovered the reason there are so few, and why even those 
are only partial. The committee of designers kitchen-sinked the file 
spec, yielding a format that is easy to *write* but hard to *read*. It 
would take me until next Christmas to write a partial implementation.

Now we know it's about 1/12 as hard to write a ray tracer for z maps 
than an SVG interpreter. And knowing is half the battle.

Neil T