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Haiku Vector Icon Format (HVIF) is a vector storage format designed to store icons, specifically for
Aimed at fast rendering and small file sizes, HVIF brings the following approaches:
* Icons have a native size of 64×64 pixels
* Integer coordinates from −32 to +95 and an eighth bit to indicate non-integer coordinates are used to reduce the size.
* There are three basic path types: ''path with commands'', ''path with straight lines only'' and ''path with curves only''.
* There are four different path commands introduced for icon creating: ''horizontal line'', ''vertical line'', ''line'', and ''cubic curve''.
* Since a great precision is not needed, it uses its own floating point format for storing transformation matrices, resulting a matrix size of 18 bytes, which is considerably smaller than the transformation matrix size of 24 or 48 bytes in other formats.
* There are two types of style: ''plain color'' and ''gradient''.
* Flags are used to specify what aspects of the objects should be stored in the file, so that unused sections don't take up space.
* HVIF data consists of three sections: The first one encodes styles, the second the paths and the third the shapes.
* Styles and paths are global to an icon with a maximum number of 256 for each, so that they can be reused by different shapes by referring to them with one byte.
* The icons have an average size of 500–700 bytes, which is smaller than commonly used
Haiku Icons
by zuMi
Haiku icons
in Haiku source repository
in Haiku user guide {{Haiku Software Computer file formats Graphics file formats Haiku (operating system) Open formats 2006 introductions
Haiku
is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or s ...
.
History
Haiku developers commonly agreed that Haiku could not be released with originalBeOS R5
BeOS R5 is the final version of BeOS from Be Inc. It was released in March 2000, and came in two varieties: Professional and Personal.
R5 was the 4th major release of BeOS for a public audience, and the 6th since it left developer-only stages ...
icons. Since Haiku needed its own artwork anyway, it was thought that icons could switch to vectors graphics from traditional BeOS bitmaps. In July 2006 Haiku developer Stephan Aßmus introduced Icon-O-Matic, the icon editor of Haiku, and a storage format with a rendering engine based on Anti-Grain Geometry
Anti-Grain Geometry (AGG) is a 2D rendering graphics library written in C++. It features anti-aliasing and sub-pixel resolution. It is not a graphics library, per se, but rather a framework to build a graphics library upon.
The library is opera ...
.
After a few days of discussion, Aßmus announced a contest to determine an icon theme for Haiku. He stated that there was no guideline that had to be followed and suggested 1 September as deadline. 16 icon sets were rated in the contest, and Aßmus' icon set "Stippi" received the award. In early November it was also announced that Stephan Aßmus implemented vector icons in OpenTracker.
HVIF icons of Stippi set are used in current Haiku releases and builds.
Features
Aimed at fast rendering and small file sizes, HVIF brings the following approaches:
* Icons have a native size of 64×64 pixels
* Integer coordinates from −32 to +95 and an eighth bit to indicate non-integer coordinates are used to reduce the size.
* There are three basic path types: ''path with commands'', ''path with straight lines only'' and ''path with curves only''.
* There are four different path commands introduced for icon creating: ''horizontal line'', ''vertical line'', ''line'', and ''cubic curve''.
* Since a great precision is not needed, it uses its own floating point format for storing transformation matrices, resulting a matrix size of 18 bytes, which is considerably smaller than the transformation matrix size of 24 or 48 bytes in other formats.
* There are two types of style: ''plain color'' and ''gradient''.
* Flags are used to specify what aspects of the objects should be stored in the file, so that unused sections don't take up space.
* HVIF data consists of three sections: The first one encodes styles, the second the paths and the third the shapes.
* Styles and paths are global to an icon with a maximum number of 256 for each, so that they can be reused by different shapes by referring to them with one byte.
* The icons have an average size of 500–700 bytes, which is smaller than commonly used bitmap
In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index.
As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a particular bitmapping application: t ...
or vector graphics
Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display ...
icons.
* Because of their small size, icons can be stored within inode of files. Therefore, the name, the size, the date and the icon of a file can be read by Tracker within a single disk operation.
* Unlike other vector graphics formats, the icons are rendered in a single pass except for some cases like transparency, causing no visible seams between shapes.
References
External links
Haiku Icons
by zuMi
Haiku icons
in Haiku source repository
in Haiku user guide {{Haiku Software Computer file formats Graphics file formats Haiku (operating system) Open formats 2006 introductions