Icons: Normal or Interlaced proportion?

[Ulysses13]

Hello. Here's a stupid question, go easy on me...

I have been making icons in the 'standard' proportion of those which previously came with Workbench 3.1. By that I mean in proportion with the WB menu pixels etc, where they look square on a non-interlaced screen.

The new OS3.2 has a lot of fancy icons, which when installed on this setup look stretched vertically. I'm assuming they are intended for interlaced screens, as switching to that makes them look right, but all my legacy icons, and the WB menus themselves are then squished vertically.

Is there a sweet spot I'm supposed to be operating in where both of these types of icon design look good, or is the intention that we all leave behind non-interlaced proportions and move to the proportions of the 3.2 Glowicons?

I'm sure I've seen some people's screens where they appear to have the 3.2 Glowicons in the correct proportion, as well as old style icons, and their Workbench menus look nice and chunky - square like they should. How is this achieved? Perhaps I imagined it.

Should I still be doubling up my pixels horizontally like back in the day, or assuming everyone uses interlaced screenmodes? Most people don't use interlaced screens anymore, but those modes were the ones that gave us most space I guess...

Sorry - never understood all this well enough even in the 90s, so I'm a little lost after all these years. What's the most future-proof approach?

[acidbottle]

Have to say it’s a bit of a mystery to me also. I prefer non laced but hate the way modern icons look on a normal hi res screen.

I think some folk will custom make icons or edit them manually.

I’d welcome ideas to!

[Minuous]

The icons and other GUI elements are intended for approximately square pixels (ie. interlaced or RTG). Maybe an option should be added to AmigaOS or Report+ to double or halve icons along the vertical axis.

Menus look fine to me; they are in proportion with the other elements. I guess that if you are used to seeing them stretched, they might look squished at first.

[Ulysses13]

I think the system menus and the Amiga icon in the dropdown for example, clearly look 'right' when non-interlaced.

As far as I understand it, interlaced was all about displaying the output on a household TV. That was important back then, but not now. So things were made 'squashed' to save on the amount of pixels you'd need. So we got squat pixels because it was less resource hungry, and looks right on a TV once 'stretched'. The Amiga being originally imagined as a games console.

But it turned out to be a computer, and seeing it correctly on a monitor became important.

I feel like non-interlaced should be the assumption these days, but the new 3.2 Glowicons are designed to appear correctly on interlaced screen modes. That makes me think we've assumed this is the default.

I guess interlaced these days, with scan doublers and flicker fixers etc, no longer means a TV, but the potential for more pixels.

But - if I go that way, the AmigaOs gets squished, so it feels wrong.

I'm happiest in a non-interlaced mode.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Minuous

The icons and other GUI elements are intended for approximately square pixels (ie. interlaced or RTG). Maybe an option should be added to AmigaOS or Report+ to double or halve icons along the vertical axis.

Menus look fine to me; they are in proportion with the other elements. I guess that if you are used to seeing them stretched, they might look squished at first.

Actually, the GUI sizing within intuition is dependent on the screen mode, and there are GUI layouts present for both lores with 1:1 pixel aspect ratio, and hi-res with 1:2 pixel aspect ratio. The workbench was designed with a hi-res screen in mind. Interlace has a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio and was not quite a target back then - if you remember the flicker of interface, you know why.

The sizing gadget is one of the exceptions, it has always the same size. Unfortunately, some programs depend on its size.