GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 346679
album covers - deal with atypical aspect ratio
Last modified: 2007-01-31 10:00:31 UTC
The current (e.g. 0.9.5 and CVS as I write this) album artplugin will resize any cover art to use the full available width of the side pane - taking the required vertical space. Most CD cover images are actually square (e.g. Amazon) while real physical CDs are slightly wider than they are tall. For such cover images, the current behaviour is fine. Some special editions have very wide covers; the current result is usable BUT the queue will "grow" taller to use up the now vacent space. The only example I can think of is if someone wanted to use the original cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland" (the full wrap round cover from the back to the front of the LP, so roughly twice as wide as tall). However, sometimes there is a "tall and thin" cover such as the special "book" edition of Pink Floyd's "Is there anybody out there? The Wall Live" which is roughly twice as tall as it is wide. Or Negativland's "Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak" which is a similar shape. Such images can take up all of the side pane, completely hiding the queue etc. My suggestion is that all images are scaled to fit centrally in a SQUARE of side equal to the side panel's available width. This will also mean that the vertical size of the image space, and the queue DO NOT "breathe" up and down when switching tracks. While this is fun to watch, it is rather distracting - I would hope that HIG would have something to say on that. Screenshots to be attached.
Created attachment 68423 [details] Tall thin cover - What I would like to see In this example, the tall thin cover has been scaled to fit in a square at the bottom of the side panel.
Yep, I also vote for all covers to be resized to fit i na perfect swaure for perfect transitions from cover to cover. Not that I have any fancy shpaed CD boxes, but simply that even for "normal" CD covers, I found that many of the ones retrived from the net by the art plugin, are not exactly square, yielding to covers "growing" or "shrinking" during transitions... not very tidi HIG-wise indeed. ;-)
Created attachment 80138 [details] [review] art-widget-keep-constant-aspect-ratio.patch Try this. Keeps art widget square; scales to fit if aspect ratio of cover within (0.9, 1.1). Otherwise, pads sides or top and bottom. Please test with the covers you mentioned. Thanks.
Committed to svn, thanks.