Related
Like a lot of people here I had been waiting rather impatiently for the real VGA hack for my Jasjar. Now that it's here and I've been using it for a week or so, I'm definitely beginning to see why MS didn't make this an option from the beginning, and I'm also beginning to wonder how much it's really worth.
Real VGA has two big benefits for me... it allows me to shrink the size of the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so I get more usable screen space, and it allows Pocket IE to run without it's stupid pixel doubling 'feature'... that's a big one for me.
Unfortunately it's got a lot of disadvangages too... it makes the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so small that they're difficult to use normally, and all but impossible to use while driving. Like I said above, making them smaller would be an advantage, but it's simply way too small. A lot of applications don't work well in real VGA mode... including the phone dialer, the calculator and others. The font size can't be changed for a lot of things... the start bar, the caller ID info screen, and others. This makes a lot of the information displayed quite difficult to read... again, especially while in a car.
As I've been thinking about it more and more, I realized that the only thing that I really need is for PocketIE to work without pixel doubling... then I'd be quite happy in non-VGA mode. While I doubt that will ever happen hopefully we'll get some third party browsers that will work nicely in non-VGA mode. Until then I think I'm going to be using non-vga most of the time and I'll just switch to VGA mode when I need to do a lot of browsing.
Anyone have any other thoughts on this?
Brett
I think that makes sense. We need dynamically switching VGA really. For day to day use, the thumb is just too fat for VGA. It's barely ok to use for QVGA driving/walking etc.
But for browsing, VGA is great. But it's too much and too tiring all the time I think.
V
yea...we need a button like the screen rotate button that lets us change the res whenever we want
I think I would also agree. There are only two advantages to using the o2vga fix. 1) The only app that it improves is the browser, But as Brett stated, in the car it is too small. It works well for some sites very well and others it is too small. 2) the best advantage is that after I applied o2vga, ms voice command now shows the contact info when i say show "contact".
I also am beta testing the wm5 thunderhawk browser. It allows 640 x 480 and 800 x 600, and 640 x 320(?). The font that is used in thunderhawk is hard to read and the app is very slow. Due to the slow speed and font, I'm not sure the thunderhawk browser on wm5 universal is worth it. ALL in all, the original IE browser with zoom to small or medium seem to look the best.
Brett: Couldn't agree more. It was great to see what the device can do, and how the screen really is, tiny! But in truth, the eyestrain was no joke, and finger operation became impossible. I did a lot of toggling between the two, and ultimately decided that what I was is the standard resolution, but with some hacks for:
- Smaller scroll bars (VJ mentions this somewhere)
- Shrunk edge bits in XL
- Smaller edges for Terminal Services (altho central area surprisingly gives same res)
- and of course a hack for PIE.
Now, surely the latter is manageable? It's simply how IE is rendering. Perhaps MS will fix this soon, or maybe someone can intercept the rendering engine. I even don't care if my images lose every second pixel in order to come to the right size at half the res.
Real time Resolution Switching
See the attached link to a bit of software, which once released for WM5 may solve the VGA issue. It allows switching between resolutions on the fly.
I tried it on my Blue Angel, and it worked great, albeit a little unstable.
Note the site says they've been working on WM5 compatibility since Feb, so this may be wishful thinking.
http://www.nyditot.com/Products.asp
It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking.
It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking.
I agree it is to much hassle to work smoothly in everyday conditions, personally I think its down to programmers to make font options more accessable, take the new version of pocket breeze, in qvga or vga it stays the same size on screen, and gives the user total control over all font sizes.
This is the sort of programming we need to utilise such a great display!!!
lol
kinda bull---- lol
i remember when whe had 640 resolution on the pc.. everyone hated it when we started to use 800 res.. and lets not speak about 1024 haha..
i see loads of people using 1600 res nowedays.. higher res means better image quality!!
It also means better games better everything. So 640 res on the exec is SUPER, we only need adjust (like the pc) font size and get larger better resolution icons for those people who like to nagg (just like on real pc's)
VGA resolution is the future, and i am sure we get 800 res soon also and maybe even higher.. better looking programs etc etc..
and if your fingers are to thick for dialpad then you must have problems with any normal gsm LMAO
Just get a skin where the ok button close button are larger and nicer..
but that is just my penny worth :twisted:
With S2U2 now supporting .gif formats, how can i resize them without distorting the image? I have a few wallpapers I want to try myself, but I cant figure out what program to use. Can anyone help me?
hhhmmm do you mean on pc or pda?
irfanview is a good program to do it on pc
but you can never do it without it becomming blocky
all resizing do is to multiply the sizes of the pixels
no software can add new infomation to an image
those tv shows where they can keep zooming
and it audo makes the picture unblocky is just tv
I use GIMP 'Scaling' feature to scale a picture to 240 x 320, after I crop out the portion I want.
GIMP allow you to save multiple layers of pictures as gif format and even determine the speed of animation.
So....would GIMP enable you to take a 240x320 and crop it to a 240x240 like cropping a photo in other imaging software?
Yes it sure does.
GIMP may seem a bit 'daunting' for non-graphic designing tool user like me at first glance. but once you play with it for a while, it's not that difficult.
I'll give it a shot...thanks for the quick response!
is there a way to resize these in a batch rather than one by one using gimp? I just spent 30 mins trying to resize one gif and it still wouldnt even let me save it. Can someone give me some quck instructions on resizing using this program por favor?
How many layer are there in your gif file? I think the length of time taken is due to your unfamiliarity with GIMP. Otherwise, it should be pretty fast. Not sure whether there are other software out there which allows an even faster and easier way of doing this.
By the way, a question for the guru. I notice the picture quality dropped a bit after I saved them into gif. Any tips to get around such a drop?
i believe one gif had about 141 layers, is there a LIMIT to how many layers S2U2 .96 will support?
Perpetual is a simple image zooming demo.
You can zoom on any of the 200 images, and the pixels will turn into other images to zoom, perpetually.
What is it for ?
Nothing ! It's just a proof of concept and a demo I made...
If you have any images to submit to add into the demo, feel free to post in the forum and we'll update as soon as possible ! I'm looking for images that have nice colors and an overall dominant one (that'll be used for the color detection) Thanks for helping support this useless project !
Download Perpetual​
Also available :
Perpetual Image Maker
Sexy Image Pack
Kaiser47's DeviantART selection (really awesome pack !)
SaintSeya pack
Zen nature pack
v0.3 (03/29/08)
- New prp format (old ones should still work though) with additionnal data : author, icon, etc...
- New menu using the new prp format data, looks much better !
- Now saves viewed purcentage !
- Now works with Smartphones !
- Fixed menu bug if you had too many packs
- Much higher image quality while zooming
v0.2
- Fixed image bug when you have more than 256 images (that was stupid)
- Fixed potential crash when moving around too much
- Fixed surface bug when you moved around
- PerpetualMaker updated, smaller exe
- Improved performance
- New image viewer to select start image
- Now over 300 images !
- New Image Pack maker : just put in any directory, and it'll take all the images from images/ (still requires 240x240 jpeg images) and do a pack (.prp file)
- New splash screen, with possibility to select pack to display !
- Fixed random crash when changing speed while in auto mode
- Speed button : x0.5, 1, or 2
- Auto button for lazy people
- Surface button to come back to the unzoomed image
A video is available on that page if you want to see what it looks like without downloading/installing
Thanks for the feedback, suggestions, and images !
Fascinating software - it works perfectly in portrait, its a bit slow and landscape, and it doesn't handle the change from portrait to landscape well.
Thanks for making my Kaiser much cooler however.
Any way the process could be automated, to make it into a semi-interactive screensaver?
Surur
Well, technically, it's automated on my PC (there's no way to add all the needed data for the colors of the 200 images alone ^^) : I just have a folder with the images, launch my .Net app, and it scans through all the images, sorts by color, and outputs both miniature views (to avoid overloading the memory) and a huge array with the number of the image to use for every 16bit color ^^
It takes a while to run on my PC, so it's unlikely to work on in realtime, would have way too much loading time. I have just thought of an alternative method to build the color array, it could work much faster, but would only be available for real-time if you have only a few images... and if you don't have many images, well... It won't work to well ^^ You need to have at least 50 or 100 photos, ranging in pretty much all the possible colors (my PC app outputs which colors are overpopulated and which aren't populated enough, to know which images to remove and what colors to search for) ^^
While it would be cool to use my own pictures, it would be nice to see it zoom through the stock images without me having to touch the screen with the stylus too, independently.
Surur
Well, this is a first release, I just wanted to have a quick proof of concept and that's it ^^
The future stuff that could be added :
- "Surface" button (to move back up)
- Auto button (could be nice to for lazy people ^^)
Anything else ?
A zooming back feature would be cool
sercio said:
A zooming back feature would be cool
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would that be for the skin-tone pictures ?
Surur
yeah
Btw there should be alot more pictures kind of ^^
This looks really cool I will have to try this on my Hermes. Does it work for VGA and Qvga?
*Edit* Only Qvga any plans for VGA? *Edit*
Alkhal said:
*Edit* Only Qvga any plans for VGA? *Edit*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, it should work on VGA, just that it's upscaled. I tested on emulator and the performance was good.
In theory, a 100% VGA version could be done. But the program is already 5MB, uses a lot of ram for all the images, and a full VGA version would just use 4 times more ram :s
Btw there should be alot more pictures kind of ^^
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Feel free to post some images (or send them by mail/PM) and I'll add them ^^
*Edit*
Ok here are some random Pictures i found and had on ma system! I extra made them 240x240 so you dont have any work rescaling them
Btw i would like if the "zooming" effect could be more smoother and slower if its possible...
Hope you like ma pics!
Regards
Thanks, let me check that out.
As for zooming, the speed can be changed, not a problem I didn't actually test on hardware, just on emulator, so it might not be optimal yet...
TODO list (note to myself) :
- Auto-zoom
- Back button
- Speed button
edit : hey, nice set of pics I'll definately include most of them in the next release (either as additional pictures or as a remplacement. like flickr-color-picker.jpg which will be perfect to replace a sort of crappy image I had in the same style ^^) Thanks !
edit2 :
Better not or are you willing to made a "special" adult version ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could be fun if you know where to find nice pics (IE, with nice and different colors, won't be as simple)
edit3 (last one, I promise !) :
Still looking for a good theme for the icon and the viewer, if anyone has an idea, please share !
I found few random pics... hope you can use them
Yay, those are awesome !
I'm currently finishing a set of 50 sexy photos, then I'll see if it works good enough with those
Cool and amazing app! Works perfectly on WM2003! Keep working
I think that you should make other app like that: http://www.mazaika.com/mazdownload.html for ppc (WM 2003 support for sure! ).
Nice work!
Thanks for the link. That one seems nice too, but the images are in 64x64, whereas I use nice and big 240x240 images ^^ I'm thinking of modifying my PC .Net exe and redistributing it... It could produce a file like myimages.prp which would contain all the data needed, and could be copied on the PPC to open it...
As for SexyPerpetual, tested, it works pretty well ! The images aren't the best as I used the first image pack I could download on bittorrent. Not sure what the forum policy is for the kind of stuff, so I will not post a link to download it. Just send over a quick PM requesting the link and I'll answer back
As for the video, if you want to take a look, here the link for the normal version's video : http://www.palib.info/blog/flvplayer.swf?file=http://www.xflib.net/Games/Perpetual/Perpetual.flv
Just keep replace the name by the sexy version's name and you should be able to view it (if the admins don't want this posted, please just tell me and I'll remove it !)
yes it woudl be cool if you can provide a tool that we can use to compile "our" versions with our pictures. it would be simpler than having to make special requests to you and sending many pics ?
but also if you really want pics, perhaps we can all send some to you ? public ftp or classic sharing sites like rapidshare ?
SexyPerpetual is very nice But insert "more naked photos" xD
BTW: I like kaiser47s idea
Kaiser47, feel free to use any method to send of photos
Yeah, I know, the sexy version misses a few naked photos ^^ But I just took a pack found on bittorrent, and used the ones with the most colors (because if I use only naked women on a white background, the transitions will be crappy, so I needed to have blue, red, etc....). If you have a pack with nice naked photos, I'll add them to the pack
I'm currently modifying the PC part of the code to generate a special file which could be distributed and read by the PPC app, that way anyone can do an image pack
Cool idea
I do not have ones so I will w8 for new versions xD
I'm looking for a simple to use Windows utility which I can use to crop pictures with a 4:3 frame and will automatically scale to 320x240 in landscape or portrait. Picasa comes close to what I'm looking for but it doesn't have 4:3 as one of the default cropping ratios.
If you know of something that can do this let me know. I have hundreds of pictures I'd like to crop and scale for display on my HTC Touch.
Thanks.
Leon.
for this i use "irfanview" . it's a freeware.
it can respects the original ratios, and even can handle batch processing/resize ..... on big groups of pictures.
I gave irfanview a whirl, it's quite a powerful program but still a little more than I'm looking for. The interface is not what I'm used to.
Any other suggestions?
I'm just fed up with this wallpaper issue in Manila.
When I got my Touch HD I figured someone will figure out why exactly is the 800x400 screen reducing wallpaper image quality to some low-res sh*t.
But, it's been months now, and no one seems to be working on this, so what the heck - I've decided to post it here, in hope that someone will actually try to do something about it.
What really disappointed me was the fact that even the latest Manila 3 from Topaz and Rhodium still has the exact same issue. So, it seems obvious to me that guys from HTC have no intention of fixing this. Why? I don't know.
But I do know it's frustrating to have all those fancy graphics, all that big, high-res screen, and then be forced to stare at THAT all day long.
Since I've seen so many great things being done to improve Manila, such huge changes to the whole system, I reckon there must be a way to improve this as well.
p.s. If no one cares, just take this as a bunch of rambling from a visual kind of guy
Oh, and just to share my info so far:
- the wallpaper picture format has no impact (I have tried them all - jpg, png, gif, bmp, 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit etc.)
- wallpaper picture size has no impact (it will look just as bad if you use 640x480, 800x400 or 8000x4800 pixel)
- if you put 800x400 wallpaper, it will not be stretched in any way - it will fill up the screen exactly 100% full, so people reporting 640x440 photos having better quality when used as wallpapers were having a placebo effect.
- the default Manila wallpaper is crisp sharp - no trace of any quality degradation.
- all default Manila wallpapers are very simple looking, with small number of colors, and very short range of colors (mostly it's just shades of gray and black)
- TF3D obviously applies some kind of compression algorithm to any applied photo, increasing brightness and applying very, very, very agressive image compression.
I believe it is this compression that is the cause of the image degradation. If someone could find the registry key to turn it off, I assume the problem would be solved. I also have a feeling that this compression was pushed up so high in order to speed up TF3d.
I am attaching an enlarge example of this compression. Original wallpaper vs. how it looks on TF3D.
I have no idea if I should move this somewhere else..
so Rozenthal, is this meant to be a development thread?
Well, more of a "hacking" if you want. If an application would arise from this, it would sure be great, but tracking down the problem itself and finding a manual solution would be also very much appreciated.
I posted this into this forum because I figure here's where most of the people dealing with Manila graphics are hanging out.
Bla, fixing up my CFC patch for Manila to be able to load PNGs would possibly solve this. However I seem to recall something about the background always being shrunk to 512x512 max with the vertexes then stretched to fill the screen. Not completely sure on that, though.
And yes, QTC compression (used for Manila) is definitely lossy. It can be pretty decent though, depending on the editor you use.
Chainfire said:
Bla, fixing up my CFC patch for Manila to be able to load PNGs would possibly solve this. However I seem to recall something about the background always being shrunk to 512x512 max with the vertexes then stretched to fill the screen. Not completely sure on that, though.
And yes, QTC compression (used for Manila) is definitely lossy. It can be pretty decent though, depending on the editor you use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Chainfire, you must be reading my mind! I was just now reading that thread of yours where you used CFC to resize images for QVG and was going to write to you
I believe that information you provided in that thread MUST be somehow linked to this problem. I have only skimmed through your thread, but from what I understand there is in fact a compression algorithm involved in all Manila graphic files?
About the 512x512 - I can almost certainly say that this is not the case in Touch HD. The images you use for wallpaper do not get scaled in any way if they're in 800x400 resolution. They stay the same (this was the first thing I tested). However, they do seem to go through some sort of compression that causes any kind of graphic to look bad.
So, you're saying there's a way to manually compress with better results? But what then? How do we apply the custom-compressed image? I'm guessing it would be necessary to first find out which file is the default Manilla wallpaper, and then replace the new one with that? Would that work? Can this somehow be automatized?
I know it's a lot of questions, and it's late, but any help would be appreciated, especially because I feel that this might be the closest we got to solving this damn problem.
Cheers!
Have you tried interlacing your .pngs? I realized that interlacing my images for manilla 2D themes helped. I was also under the impression that HTC has some special compression going on with their images, but while saving my images in photoshop, I save them in .png and select interlace option in the end. Try it.
Here's what's up:
1. When you save images for your pocket PC, they DO have to be in a loss less format, such as .png... This goes for Homescreen backgrounds as well, so when you save a picture off your phone camera, it'll be pixelation by default because they're usually in .jpeg format.
2. When you save images in Photoshop, in a format like .png. Save them as Interlaced images, or they'll come out crappy on the device.
3. If you are using the color overlay feature in Photoshop to, say, change the color of the image, There will be pixelation if there are any gradients in the picture. Most of the images in the Manilla 2D theme files have gradients, so almost all of them result in pixelation. What you have to do for those is: Zoom in and use the Blur tool (Smart Blur filter on larger images.) to smooth out the pixelation!
Hope this works for other people, and if someone can contribute anything else, it would also be appreciated.
The screen is 800x480 isn't it?
yes it is 800*480
makes me feel bad that it looks like that on such a beautiful device.
its obviously unacceptable that HTC playes like that.
i dont understand whats their big problem to give us some drivers that would solve this annoying issue
Here, try this file out. Make a backup copy of yours unless its cooked in rom, that way you can delete this if necessary. It makes a difference for me. In this section of script, I changed the values to 200, 200 and it was reeeeeally crappy. I did that when I was checking effect. Originally it was 512, 512. In this one, I made it 800, 800.
I think it also makes bg's better if you make them square(in my case 640x640), especially if your using the new landscape manila. I know on touch pro, the rotation works better with bg's that don't have to be stretched.
BackgroundAsyncImageFactoryLoader = AsyncImageFactoryLoader()
BackgroundAsyncImageFactoryLoader.Priority = TaskPriority_BelowNormal
BackgroundAsyncImageFactoryLoader.Quality = 100
BackgroundAsyncImageFactoryLoader.OnComplete:connect(BackgroundImageResized)
BackgroundAsyncImageFactoryLoader:ResizeImage(machineStatus.HomeBackgroundPath.Value, CachedImagePath, EncoderType_JPEG, 800, 800, true, false)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does anyone know what the true, false is at the end of that line?
Re Wallpaper Resolution
I'm sorry but the Wallpaper you have as an original is of such poor quality that no phones resolution could correct it. I have a Touch HD myself and have made many Themes for all different phone resolutions and now for my new phone as well and have never had trouble getting what I expected and I use all of the graphic formats ie: .png .jpg etc.
For WVGA the Backgrounds actually need to be 480 x 696 for portrait and 800 x 366 for Landscape, what has not been taken into account is the size of the top and bottom bars which are both 52 pixcels adding up to 104 pixcels this needs to be subtracted from the overall size.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=492857&highlight=touchflo+vista
stickfigure said:
Have you tried interlacing your .pngs? I realized that interlacing my images for manilla 2D themes helped. I was also under the impression that HTC has some special compression going on with their images, but while saving my images in photoshop, I save them in .png and select interlace option in the end. Try it.
Here's what's up:
1. When you save images for your pocket PC, they DO have to be in a loss less format, such as .png... This goes for Homescreen backgrounds as well, so when you save a picture off your phone camera, it'll be pixelation by default because they're usually in .jpeg format.
2. When you save images in Photoshop, in a format like .png. Save them as Interlaced images, or they'll come out crappy on the device.
3. If you are using the color overlay feature in Photoshop to, say, change the color of the image, There will be pixelation if there are any gradients in the picture. Most of the images in the Manilla 2D theme files have gradients, so almost all of them result in pixelation. What you have to do for those is: Zoom in and use the Blur tool (Smart Blur filter on larger images.) to smooth out the pixelation!
Hope this works for other people, and if someone can contribute anything else, it would also be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course I tried. I tried interlacing both PNG and GIF's, I also tried different color depths, and all supported picture formats. It had no impact.
The thing is images don't look crappy on the device - when you view them in Album application, they look excellent. Actually, they look better then on my 30" Apple cinema screen, because HD has such huge pixel density.
However, when you apply these images to act as wallpapers on Home screen, they drop in quality and sharpness so much that it degrades the whole device appearance. And this is very annoying
grzegorz10 said:
I'm sorry but the Wallpaper you have as an original is of such poor quality that no phones resolution could correct it. I have a Touch HD myself and have made many Themes for all different phone resolutions and now for my new phone as well and have never had trouble getting what I expected and I use all of the graphic formats ie: .png .jpg etc.
For WVGA the Backgrounds actually need to be 480 x 696 for portrait and 800 x 366 for Landscape, what has not been taken into account is the size of the top and bottom bars which are both 52 pixcels adding up to 104 pixcels this needs to be subtracted from the overall size.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=492857&highlight=touchflo+vista
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The image I attached is 600% blown up version, that's not full size wallpaper.
And it doesn't matter what kind of quality of image I use - the images always appear much less sharp and with reduced quality when applied to home screen wallpaper.
Also, I don't think you're right about 480x696. That is the "visible" area of the screen, but homescreen wallpaper will always be used in 100% if the width is 480 or height 800. It might get cropped tough, can't say that for sure.
But, for example lets say you want to use image that is 800x800 in original resolution. When you set it as wallpaper, it will not be resized to fit 696 height, but rather it will be cropped on the sides, and the top and bottom bars will cover the top areas of the image. But there will be no scaling involved. This can be easily tested simply by overlaying the original image over the captured image of the device.
showaco said:
Here, try this file out. Make a backup copy of yours unless its cooked in rom, that way you can delete this if necessary. It makes a difference for me. In this section of script, I changed the values to 200, 200 and it was reeeeeally crappy. I did that when I was checking effect. Originally it was 512, 512. In this one, I made it 800, 800.
I think it also makes bg's better if you make them square(in my case 640x640), especially if your using the new landscape manila. I know on touch pro, the rotation works better with bg's that don't have to be stretched.
Does anyone know what the true, false is at the end of that line?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey, thanks! I have tested this, using 640x640 images, as well as 800x480, and 800x800. I can't say if it's a placebo effect, but the image does look slightly better.
Could I ask you to make a few versions of this file with parameters that can be substracted by 512? Because if I remember correctly, Manila likes those 512 numbers. So, if you would be so kind to make 1024x1024, 1536x1536, and 2048x2048.
I would be glad to test them to see if there are any further improvements over this issue.
Ok, I tested everything again with a different wallpaper, so there's no more question whether the source file is good quality.
I think this image is suitable, because it has a lot of small details, but also large areas with soft transitions, so we can see the effect of compression on both the detail and the textures.
I also tested 696 file, and as I said earlier - it has absolutely no positive effect to image quality.
I have also noticed that in fact even the HTC Album applies some sort of image compression, but it's much much less visible! You can notice the effect of this on the dark area transitions. However, it's barely noticable when viewed on the device.
Perhaps if someone who knows where the HTC Album Manila files are, maybe it would be possible to compare them with the files that control compression in Home screen? Perhaps it would be enough just to copy the settings for HTC Album? Just an idea...
I'm attaching the files, they speak for themselves.
ok i've search in the registry with:
compress
quality
jpg
wallpaper
desktop
but nothing
BadCluster said:
ok i've search in the registry with:
compress
quality
jpg
wallpaper
desktop
but nothing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So did I Same results.
I don't think it's that simple anymore. We probably need to combine 2 things: the edited Manila file to support graphics up to 800 pixels, a way to easily compress a photo with ATC compression and then make Manila use it.
OK, I think I finally figured out some stuff. First of all, we knew from before that wallpaper image for landscape was made out of 2 bitmaps.
However, it seems that this is the same case with the portrait wallpaper as well.
Digging through Manila graphic files I've found that indeed the maximum image size is 512x512pixels. So, in order to get the 480x696 pixel needed to cover the whole visible screen area, guys from HTC simply used 2 images, each with 512x512 resolution, but first actually covering 480x512 area, and the second 480x184.
Together, as you can see, they make 480x696.
But, what happens when you load 800x400 pixel image?
Most likely that the image first gets cropped to 480x696 dimensions, and after that top part (480x512) is put into one file, and the bottom part (480x184) is put into a separate file. They both get compressed with that ugly algorithm and that's why we end up with crappy looking wallpaper photos.
Files involved are:
LANDSCAPE:
29cff4fe_bglevel0_landscape_left.png
058acf31_bglevel0_landscape_right.png
PORTRAIT:
70083a29_bg_level0.png
77feee1d_bg_level0_bottom.png
Now, it's clear that Manila indeed does support full resolution, but because the wallpaper is being split into 2 parts and compressed, we have poor image quality. What brings us back to my first idea - is there a way to disable this compression, or increase the quality of the compressed photo by somehow forcing the compression algorithm to produce higher quality images?
Another way would be to use a Manila editor, cut the images into 2 manually, update old Manila default wallpaper files and always use the default background.
This is of course major pain in the a$$ to do each time you want to simply change a wallpaper.
Oh and by the way, for the record, I just manually updated these Manila graphic files, overwrote the old ones and I'm looking at my full-resolution wallpaper right now.
So, this obviously can be done. The question is can it be automatized?
this is a tricky subject.. well i've always edited the 4 manila files to create my wallpapers on my Raphael.. well i also tried background for all tab but that's kinda buggy in the prosess of when i change from portrait to landscape.. well it's like the background for all tab app kinda takes the image i want as background and overlap the 4 manila files that has to be edited manually to make a great background,... well anyway i'm stuck with the same thoughts as this thread states... it's not so fun to always have to edit those manila files to create a good background and so forth...