On Feb 24, 2009, at 5:36 AM, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:

We're still at the point where most of the serious icon artists  

create in SVG but have to deploy in multiple PNG versions per icon  

due to the runtime limitations of current display engines.


I don't think it's only because of the limitations. Even with perfect SVG

support I would still deploy in PNG, because it's faster to load. And with

multiple sizes looking different, there's little reason not to deploy PNG.

The solution is not for Inkscape to behave differently than the rest of the

desktop, but rather to improve librsvg, or modularize Inkscape enough that

its renderer could replace librsvg (I doubt if that's possible, because

librsvg is SAX-based).


You're missing the key point

Other people out there use different settings that get the icon sizes different. And nowadays with hi-res displays more and more common, allowing for that is more critical.

Scalable icons solve that problem. PNG do not.