Re: NSImage and ICNS

[Eric Wasylishen]

From some brief experimentation on Cocoa, it seems that ICNS files are given special treatment: If you create an NSImageView with an NSImage loaded from an ICNS file, resizing the image view will cause the best-sized representations to be used (the smallest one which is larger than or equal the destination size). However, if you do the same thing with either of the TIFF files I posted above, only the first sub-image in the TIFF is used. I'm not sure why this is; it seems like a bug in Cocoa.

I am not sure if Cocoa handles multi-image TIFF files at all and always uses the first (sub)image.

I should point out that according to the documentation, the way that NSImage picks a best representation when there are representations with different point sizes (as is the case with icons) is undefined.

It is described here (section "How an Image Representation Is Chosen"):

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/conceptual/CocoaDrawingGuide/Images/Images.html

Right. The instructions there have to be read very carefully, though - by "resolution" they are referring to DPI. If the representations have the same DPI, color depth, and color space, but different dimensions (in points), by following that set of instructions the best representation would be "operating-system dependent". At least, that's how I interpret it.

and done by -bestRepresentation:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSImage_Class/DeprecationAppendix/AppendixADeprecatedAPI.html%23//apple_ref/occ/instm/NSImage/bestRepresentationForDevice:

But beware: it is deprecated in 10.6.

One potential solution I have in mind is modifying -[NSImageCell drawInteriorWithFrame:] so it manually chooses an image rep based on the size that the cell is going to be drawn in. That's only the first thing that came to mind, though; it probably needs some closer investigation.

On Cocoa it is fully automatic within NSImage (i.e. it scans and scores all image reps it knows) so there is no special case to be considered in any NSView or NSCell.

Yes, but as far as I know, the rect given to -[NSImage drawInRect:...] has no influence on the choice of representation to use to draw with (in either Cocoa or GNUstep).  If we have a TIFF or ICNS file with different versions of an icon at 16x16, 32x32, 128x128, etc, and if we want to draw that in an NSImageView, and we want the frame size of the image view to determine which image rep is chosen, we can't just rely on the built-in image rep matching of NSImage. That's why I was suggesting we might need to implement a special case in NSImageCell which uses the frame to draw in to choose an image rep.

-Eric