[Shotwell] Call for testing

[Martin Olsson]

On 06/21/2010 09:08 PM, Adam Dingle wrote:
> a few points here.  First, we actually made no change from 0.5 to 0.6 in
> the code that sets the desktop background.  I believe that the default
> desktop background style in Ubuntu 10.04 is actually Zoom, not Scale.
> To see this, create a new user, log in as that user and open
> System->Preferences->Appearance.  The style for all of the predefined
> background images will be Zoom.  (Note that GNOME actually tracks the
> style for each background image separately.)

I'm aware that you didn't change anything this time around but I believe
the current behavior is not as good as it could be. You're right about
zoom being the default (I meant "zoom" when I said "scale to width" because
essentially what "zoom" does is that it scales the image so that it fits
the _width_ of the screen. I realize this was very confusing, sorry about
that). I also agree that asking for zoom vs scale etc will make things
cluttered. What I propose is that Shotwell chooses the "style" setting
based on some smarter heuristics.

Maybe you will see what I mean if I provide another example. Download
this image and set it as desktop background using zoom:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/A.J._Bowen._Sundance_2007.jpg

Since the image is so tall, it just doesn't look good. Especially on wide
screens. For example, this is what I see:
http://temp.minimum.se/shotwell_other/cropped_portrait.png

Using SCALE in this case with explictly set BLACK background color looks better:
http://temp.minimum.se/shotwell_other/scale_looks_better.png

Granted, some users will want to use "zoom" anyway for certain photos,
for example here is another portrait which actually zoom really good in
http://temp.minimum.se/shotwell_other/accidentally_looks_really_good.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Portrait_Gandhi.jpg

So to conclude; the argument I'm trying to make here is that I believe that
for tall photos, using SCALE + explicit black will be what users what more
often than using ZOOM.

Of course for _all_ photos with landscape orientation (that is width > height),
zoom is clearly the right choice.


		Martin