For 1x1 flags, use a different width/height than 512

[mpsijm]

Not sure if this is desired or feasible, so feel free to close if you think it's not 🙂

When hacking away for #1251, I found it tedious to copy my changes from the 4x3 flags to the 1x1 version and vice versa, because they use different heights. Currently, 4x3 uses a viewBox of 640×480, and 1x1 uses 512×512. For triband flags like NL, this results in (inaccurate) fractions.

One suggestion could be to rescale the 1x1 flags to 480×480. I see several advantages:

• The vertical measurements will be more consistent between the 4x3 and 1x1 flags, reducing the effort when (re-)designing them both at the same time.
• 480 has prime factors 2, 3, and 5, whereas 512 only has prime factor 2.

However, there are also some disadvantages:

• For vertical triband flags (like FR), the inaccurate fractions remain in the 4x3 variant, because 640 is not divisible by 3.
  • This could be fixed by changing the sizes to 1920×1440 and 1440×1440, or 960×720, or 480×360, but that's another can of worms.
• Flags don't change that often, so it may not be worth the effort.

Regarding feasability: in theory, this can be achieved by adding a transform=scale(.9375) to all current flags, and use scripting to apply this transformation to all <rect>s and <path>s and what else (for one-off uses, I like to use this Inkscape plugin, but I don't know yet how to automate this for all flags at once). However, there will probably be flags where rounding errors need to be manually checked/corrected, and I'm not sure how well this works for charged flags with small details.

I'm curious to hear your opinions on this! 😄

[lipis]

The short answer that we won't do that.. too much effort for all those flags without a clear benefit.. they are not changing that often and It's pretty easy for me to do the changes for new flags.. or updating them!