Last modified: 2009-12-31 01:52:32 UTC
See, for example, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Debian. The second image in the gallery is only 87px wide, because the SVG file has a "size" of 87px. This fake size should be ignored for SVGs in galleries.
If the file specifies 87 pixels as its natural size, then that's what it'll show as. Gallery thumbs scale down, they don't scale up. The file does specify this (using generic units, which are ~= pixels): <svg height="108.445" space="preserve" viewBox="-10 -10 107 128" width="87.125">
I'm under the impression those numbers, height="108.445", width="87.125", are in *points*, not pixels. Regardless, the whole point of SVG is that you can scale up. I see no reason why an SVG image shouldn't be scaled up when used in a gallery. Dismissing the issue with "wontfix" is simply obstructionist.
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/coords.html#Units 'When a coordinate or length value is a number without a unit identifier (e.g., "25"), then the given coordinate or length is assumed to be in user units (i.e., a value in the current user coordinate system). .... One px unit is defined to be equal to one user unit. Thus, a length of "5px" is the same as a length of "5".' If the image specifies a natural size that's small, that's because it's *supposed* to be displayed small. So, that's going to be the size it gets shown at. You can of course scale it up in an [[Image:foo.svg|200px]] usage if you like.
That standard also states "in most circumstances, "px" units will not map to the device pixel grid." Of course, [[Image:Foo.svg|200px]] works correctly. This bug is talking about the use of SVG in <gallery>s. Currently, the only way to make an SVG display correctly within galleries is to use an SVG editor to scale it up to 120x120px, and re-upload the modified version. Naturally, it would be much easier to simply fix the software to do what users expect.
The image displays at its specified size, unless it is larger than the box can accommodate in which case it is scaled down to fit. That's how all images work, and is the natural, expected behavior. Just because you can scale doesn't mean you always should.
(In reply to comment #5) > That's how all images work, and is the natural, expected behavior. How do you know that's the expected behavior? Compare [[Image:Commons-logo.png]] and [[Image:Commons-logo.svg]]. The PNG version looks bigger. 99% of people will erroniously conclude that the SVG version is a thumbnail of the PNG version, and that the PNG version should be used in favor of the SVG version. Indeed, the SVG version was tagged as "redundant" to the PNG once already (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Commons-logo.svg&action=history). The confusion could be avoided by displaying the SVG logo on its image description page at the user's selected image size. > Just because you can scale doesn't mean you always should. Actually, I think it does. If we could scale up PNG or JPG images, it would be preferable to do so. We don't do that simply because there is no good way to scale these file types up. Morally speaking, SVG files have infinite resolution. The promise of SVG is that it finally frees us from having to worry about resolution issues. As long as MediaWiki refuses to scale up, this promise remains unfulfilled.
I would tend to agree that SVG images can be assumed to be scalable up or down to any size regardless of their "native" resolution, just because they're SVGs. This assumption may of course fail in some cases, such as with embedded bitmaps, but it seems safe overall. Then again, I have to wonder if the behavior of not scaling up images in galleries altogether is reasonable (bug 13214). At any rate it makes no sense for this to be closed while that's not. It seems now that that's going to be fixed, so I'll just mark this a duplicate.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 13214 ***
Changing to FIXED since SVGs are now scaled up in galleries. bug 13214 seems to be about not scaling up small bitmap images
