500 Byte Images: The Haiku Vector Icon Format (2016)
The problem with vector icons is that they don't really scale as well as people seem to think.Just because you can rasterise it at any size, doesn't mean that the resulting icon makes sense at that size. When icons are really small you usually want a simpler version of the same icon for it to remain recognisable.You can see it clearly in the examples used in the article for the 16x16 icon. Compare the bitmap version (https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/images/apps-images/i...) to the vector version (https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/images/apps-images/i...) , the bitmap version is specifically made for the low resolution and is still very clear, the vector version is a blurry mess.To properly handle this you'd need either multiple versions or a vector format that can scale the amount of detail with the size. In either case you'd need to ensure that the rendering has pixel-perfect results at small sizes so it doesn't become a blurry-mess, kind of defeating the purpose of using a vector format.Vector images work great for large icons, but for small ones they fall short.