Out of Hanwell

I recently used Inkscape to design an SVG logo for that development tool I’ve been talking about. Perhaps my inexperience explains why I’m so easily impressed by vector graphics, but here’s what I liked:

• Attribution. I can attribute certain parts of the image that are derived from another source.
• Accessibility. The image can be rendered at any required size and could (theoretically) degrade nicely for media with low color depth, should the software support it.
• Consistent file size. The size at which the image is rendered doesn’t matter; it maintains a fixed file size. You might still end up with a huge SVG if you’re doing complex graphics, though.
• Human-readable format. XML probably isn’t perfectly human readable, but compare it with JPEGs, GIFs, and PNGs and you’ll see what I mean.

As I started creating icons from the logo, however, I found that vector graphics are not integrated into the development process very well at all. Mac was pretty easy–create four PNGs and drop them onto the image tool–but Windows was a pain. Windows icons have five or six standard sizes and five different color depths, which means a lot of image conversion. Worse still, Microsoft Visual C++ does not support 256 color icons, so I had to hunt for an editor that did. Even then, I compromised. Any users with monochrome or 16 color displays will just have to suffer with whatever Windows gives them. (I apologize in advance!)

This made me wish for a one-click web service that creates icon files from vector graphics. It shouldn’t be so hard to do, but it would be very convenient. Eventually, of course, the service could support low color depths by removing gradients and by picking appropriate replacement colors.