User talk:Smurf/Archive 1

Guild
Pm me in game :] Madam Foo 01:58, 23 June 2006 (CDT)

Images
nice work on the inventory icons. --Jamie  04:35, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Don't forget to flag the old image with if you upload a new one under a different name &mdash; Skuld   09:37, 30 June 2006 (CDT)


 * Smurf, I do like the new images, but could you square them off and make them all the same size? Otherwise if they're used in tables it makes them look bad as each line ends up being different sizes.  --Rainith 01:44, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Just the collector items or all the inventory items I've uploaded? And does 64x64 sound ok? --Smurf 01:55, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Off the top of my head, the ones that become an issue are the ones used in the merchant tables. The keys, and the cake/booze from the last event.  Check out Merchant/Shing Jea Monastery for what I'm talking about. (hmmm, looks like the older ones weren't perfectly square, but they weren't as far off from being square as yours.  If you aren't going to do thinks like bags, runes of holding or salvage/identity kits let me know and I'll at least get square ones of those up.)  Thanks again.  :)  --Rainith 02:15, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I see what you're talking about. I'll start making perfect squares, and I was planning on uploading the other merchant items but changing all the links from .jpg to .png has made me nervous. I'll try doing that now. --Smurf 02:38, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Much better. Thanks.  :)  --Rainith 02:53, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Just curious if anyone knows (may pre-date Smurf's work) - was .png selected due to the image quality or the tranparent background? The reason I ask is that in the listings we're resizing the images, and resized .png images look pretty poor on the wiki, while .jpg resizes much cleaner. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:50, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I unsure myself. Half the icons are png and the other half jpg with a few gif. I just want to get rid of the black/green background on these icons. I don't mind using jpg with a white background or using png. The Image use policy says to use png with icons that don't scale. At the time of uploading the material icons, they were only being used on their own page unscaled. After uploading they started becoming used as scaled icons ( like here). About half the merchant icons are png already so I figured might as well change them all to png. I'm willing to go either way just dunno which way to go. :S -- A confused Smurf 04:37, 12 August 2006 (CDT)
 * You're not the only one confused! And I do prefer the images with the white borders.  As these are icons, then GW:IMAGE does permit the use of png, as it's a better quality image (no degredation from compressing like what you get with jpg).  I'm wondering if we need to take this to the talk page for the community portal.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 10:24, 12 August 2006 (CDT)
 * We're partially saved - or even more confused. I just located the style and formatting guides.
 * The style and formatting guide for crafting materials shows to use .png
 * The stlye and formatting guide for salvage items shows to use .jpg
 * But I can't find a style and formatting guide for either collectable drops or for misc merchant items.  So the style guides don't appear to be complete and the ones that exist are inconsistent with each other.
 * I know that Rainith worked on these some - I'll post on his pages asking for his input. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 10:37, 12 August 2006 (CDT)

Ok, let's see if I can shed a little light on this. Way back in the olden days, when I first started contributing regularly to the wiki (around 11 or 12 months ago), the Special:Upload page didn't say quite the same thing that it says now. It did not mention about the scaling issue that we have with PNG files. So as most of the inventory icon images at the time were in PNG format, I continued that with all the ones I uploaded at the time (including most of the collectable drops). Some time shortly thereafter it became apparent to most of the regular users (regular meaning people who did the majority of the editing, not regular vs. admins) that there was an issue with MediaWiki and the scaling of images in PNG format, but no problem with the scaling of JPEG format files. For example:



That is the same picture (Ethalsar.PNG), the first is at its normal resolution and the second is scaled down to 80 pixels wide. As you can see, on the scaled version the color is completely wrong.

Now there is no question that PNGs have advantages over JPEGs (better quality, transparency), but they have too many disadvantages currently to be put into widespread use on the wiki (scaling issue, transparencies don't usually work in IE). Where we use them most is with the profession icons, and LordBiro, our "in house" icon wizard, actually uploads multiple sizes of the same icon so that we don't ever have to scale them (at least for what we use them for currently). See User talk:LordBiro for a look at his work.

Wow, this has gotten way to big and I haven't even hit the main questions yet. Sorry for the rambling monologue. Ok, looking at the posts above it looks to me like you aren't using the transparency functions of PNGs and are actually using a white background, if that is the case, and if you can get the same quality pictures using the JPEG format, why not switch to that for any of the ones used in tables and whatnot where they would be scaled down to a smaller size. Also, when you do upload new images, if the image's name doesn't match the item, change the name, use Superior Salvage Kit.png instead of Gwssalkf.png (also note that there is no need for underscores between the words, MediaWiki does them automatically). As to why the Materials S&F page says use PNG and the Salvage Item one says to use JPG, I did the Salvage Item page so that is why that one says to use JPG, but I don't think I had anything to do with the Materials one, so I can't speak for it. As it doesn't look like Gravewit has been able to fix the scaling issue, I'd suggest changing the Materials one to JPG if you think it is that much of an issue.

Again, sorry I got long winded and rambling here (I'm at work, give me a break, ok?), if there is a question that I didn't answer, or didn't answer sufficiently, let me know and I'll give it my best. --Rainith 18:10, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * This is the first wiki I've ever edited so I'm new, but is there a way to update every page that links to say SalvageKit.jpg to Salvage Kit.jpg or am I going to have to update each page individually? --Smurf 18:34, 12 August 2006 (CDT)
 * There are less pages that use it than it looks like because of the included tables, upload the new image and I'll change the pages. Just make the change on the item's main page and I'll fix the rest.  --Rainith 18:37, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Just leave a note, either here, or on my talk page when you're done with the merchant items, and I'll hit all of them at once. :)  --Rainith 19:09, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Ok, I think I got all the merchant items except Starter Shield because the filename Starter Shield.jpg is already taken. Should I just replace it? --Smurf 21:59, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Go ahead and use Image:Started Shield icon.jpg, I'll start on the merchants shortly. :)  --Rainith 22:10, 12 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I was involved in the early decisions as to which format we should use for icons and I argued PNGs. This was before we knew there was an issue with some PNGs being resized (although recently it seems all PNGs are affected). It would be so much easier if ImageMagick or something was installed on the wiki.


 * Anyway, good work on the icons Smurf :)  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 03:27, 15 August 2006 (CDT)