multi-resolution backgrounds

[Matthias Clasen]

On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 09:59 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
> Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > I have now pushed support for multi-resolution backgrounds into rawhide.
> > The file format for this has slightly changed, to support
> > multi-resolution in animated backgrounds as well. The way it works is
> > that you can use one or more <size> elements whereever the format
> > previously expected a filename:
> 
> Question 1: what happens if we define backgrounds for 1920x1200, 
> 1600x1200 and 1280x1024 and the real screen size is not on that list, 
> say 1024x768? It will be used the first from the list (in this case, one 
> with an unfitting aspect ratio) or a resolution with the same aspect 
> ratio (in this case 1600x1200)?

I wrote some code that is supposed to try and find the best aspect
ratio. Of course, there are several other constraints (eg you don't want
to scale up too much, even if the aspect ratio is perfect). The code may
need some tweaks, but should basically work.

> Question 2: suppose the screen size is 1024x768 and we use both 
> multi-resolution and animation. Somehow the theme is defined badly, at 
> "from" it have 800x600, 1024x768 and 1920x1200 but at "to" only 800x600 
> and 1920x1200. What will happen? The transition fail or it will go do a 
> different resolution?
> And a variation: animation with multiple transitions, the first 
> transition has both correct "from" and "to" resolutions, but the second 
> transition does not have all the screen sizes from the first transition.

Which size to pick and scale is determined for each frame individually,
so there is not a technical problem. Of course, it may still look bad,
and in general I'd say "just don't do that".