New SVG-based Icon-Editor

[ColinE66]

Hi Olaf, I've not had much of a chance yet to have a really good 'play' with it, but it struck me that the available effects were a bit limited; just shadow types, currently. Anyway, I made a suggestion at your friends forum for a kind of 'outline' effect (for mouse-overs and such). Even threw in some illustrative code that I'm sure you can improve on

[Schmidt]

Hi Olaf, I've not had much of a chance yet to have a really good 'play' with it, but it struck me that the available effects were a bit limited; just shadow types, currently. Anyway, I made a suggestion at your friends forum for a kind of 'outline' effect (for mouse-overs and such). Even threw in some illustrative code that I'm sure you can improve on

Hi Colin,

Yep - saw your suggestion in the Colibrico-Forum, thanks BTW -
and indeed the VB6-code to ensure that dynamically is quite straight forward...

But it is doing that "Blurred-Glowing"-effect on Image-Surfaces (Pixel-Surfaces),
per Pixel-Operations (Cairo-Pixel-Operators as ATOP, the two Blur-Methods and also
RenderSurfaceContent are kind of "Alpha-capable-Pixel-Only"-Operations
(more acting like a BitBlt on steroids - then putting Pixel-areas into the SVG -
kinda like it's possible to put a normal Bitmap per BitBlt into an EMF - which works,
but in higher resolutions will only look well, when the underlying BitMap was oversized
in a way, that it offers enough reserves for Higher-Resolution-Renderings).

So, to keep open the Option, to later export a constructed Image to SVG, we have to stay away
from these Pixel-Operations (to keep up the resolution-independence of the resulting SVG - and
the Filesizes of the exported SVGs relatively small).

It's nevertheless possible "by other means" - but this would start with a pre-scan of the
"surrounding-path" of a given Source-Image (which is not easy, since several SVG-Layers
can be combined in the App) - and then - on that scanned Path - applying several Strokes
(with decreasing LineWidth and increasing Alpha, to achieve a similar effect.

So, it's doable in an SVG-export-compatible manner, but with a bit more efforts (though we have that feature on our "to-do"-list already).

In the meantime VB6-Users could apply that effect dynamically (similar to what you've outlined) dynamically
(directly in the VB6-App, which could then use a normal Image-resource, which comes without any effects pre-applied).

That's the way I'd prefer to work with an Icon-Set anyways - only creating a single Icon-Set for the normal-case
as my "shipped Resource", then applying only dynamic-live-effects, depending on the current states
(for Hover, Disabled, Pressed, etc.).

If it doesn't have to be an images contour (the current Images-Outline) which shall have the Glow-Effect,
but "Images where the framing remains in a constant shape" - there's several Glow- and Reflection-
effects possible already, by using the pre-fabricated Basic-Shapes in a layered combination.
The Video #3 (creating a Button) shows a bit, how to work with these "Shape-Layers": http://colibrico.de/en/videos.htm

Olaf

[ColinE66]

So, it's doable in an SVG-export-compatible manner, but with a bit more efforts (though we have that feature on our "to-do"-list already).

Aaah, OK. I had no idea it would be so much more difficult due to the SVG aspects. Thanks for explaining...