GNU bug report logs -
#71180
[ELPA Feature Request] Package thumbnail
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"Elijah G." <eg642616 <at> gmail.com> writes:
> Philip Kaludercic <philipk <at> posteo.net> writes:
>
>> Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> tags 71180 - notabug
>>> severity 71180 wishlist
>>> thanks
>>>
>>> "Elijah G." <eg642616 <at> gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> Tags: notabug
>>>>
>>>> Hi, i'm wondering if would be a good idea add support for thumbnail for
>>>> elpa packages (for elpa website and package-menu *Help* buffers).
>>>> I think this is a missing feature that most other editors and non-editors
>>>> does (such as synaptic and vscodium).
>>
>> I am not sure if you mean this as a kind of "logo" or as a kind of
>> screenshot? I assume you mean the latter.
>
> I meant a screenshot.
>
>>>> My idea is to only support 1 image (jpg or png, adding more than 1
>>>> thumbnail would be hard to read the package *Help* buffer) and resize it
>>>> (if possible) for not take all the buffer size.
>>>>
>>>> For packages developers i think would be fine define new header comment
>>>> line for let them to choose which image they want to use, something like:
>>>> ;;; Thumbnail: ./image.png
>>
>> If anything, I think it would be best to mandate SVG, which after all we
>> can easily generate using (x-export-frames nil 'svg), if supported.
>> That should solve the scaling issue. AFAIK we currently don't support
>> animated SVGs in Emacs, right? That might be a nice feature for some
>> packages.
>
> About animated screenshot/thumbnail i think that GIF images fits
> better with this.
The issue is that .gif is still a bitmap format, so we wouldn't have the
advantage of scaling that vector graphics give us.
As this is a feature that would only be added in a future version of
Emacs, we could start another feature request to support SVG animations
as well, perhaps even a way to record Emacs into such a animation.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVG_animation for a few examples.
>> Two points I am not fond of is that screenshots on sites like GitHub are
>> often not uniform and contain a lot of noise. It would be nice if we
>> could give some guidelines, or better yet generate the screenshots
>> ourselves from a given sequence of keys. That might not be nice from a
>> security or performance perspective and could still be circumvented.
>
> I agree about a guideline.
It might even be worth considering restricting screenshots to GNU ELPA
packages, so that the guidelines can be enforced more effectively.
>> If we are talking about screenshots, that these aren't hard
>> requirements to understand what a package does, just as describe-package
>> can do its job now without the help of images. Visual examples should
>> be regarded as an enchantment, where they make sense.
>
> Of course, the screenshot would be something optional, allowing
> packages add a screenshot/thumbnail would make more easy watch what does
> a package or what can do a package (instead going to their repository or
> read its description).
>
> Here is a little mockup how i think it would look like in
> package-describe *Help* buffer
That seems like the screenshot is part of the README file? I would have
imagined them before or after the file, perhaps even in a different buffer.
> x
>
--
Philip Kaludercic on peregrine
This bug report was last modified 1 year and 58 days ago.
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