>The problem is just that they're very large and complex files, 
>from
>the looks of it.  Lots of shapes, lots of gradients, lots of 
>(unnecessary,
>IMNSHO) clipping and masking.  The SVG icon files that ship with
>Trinity are mostly ten percent or less of that size, and much less
>complex.  Even in Inkscape on my quad-core, the LO files take 
>several seconds longer to load than, say, the old 
>crsc-app-openoffice.svgz icon that ships with our Crystal theme.
>
>The optimum solution would be to clonk whoever created the files
>over the head with a blunt object and get them to redo them as
>straightforward stacks of shapes and gradients without all the
>unnecessary file-bloating crap.

With your understanding of svg file formats, do you feel 
comfortable contacting the LO team and ask them to consider 
releasing palatable icons?

>The code to look at in TDE is
>the stuff related to clipping, masking, and cloning in SVGs, but 
>it 
>may never be possible to make these files open acceptably fast on 
>a slow machine.  They're just not made with that in mind.

This likely is the best solution. Use more recent svg algorithms 
that do not suffer the same rendering problems. What algorithms are 
being used in other desktops? --- Take advantage of GPL code 
sharing practices. :-)

>The only workaround that occurs to me at this time is overwriting
>the files with something simpler after LO is installed, or else
>deleting the SVGs outright and (hopefully) forcing the system to
>fall back on the raster versions of the icons.

A challenge to that idea is the LO devs name the icons with the LO 
release number in the file name. Maintaining our own png icon set 
would be overwhelming because with each LO release a new Trinity 
icon set is needed. Not to mention all past LO icons sets as well 
because they have included the release number in the file names for 
a long time now.

>I can attempt to redraw the icons to produce substantially 
>identical
>smaller SVGs to overwrite them with, but it would take a while,
>so I'm not going to start until and unless we decide that this is 
>the way to go.

Does not sound productive at the moment. :-)

BTW, I used Trinity Gwenview to convert the 8 LO svg files to 
256x256 png files. The png files all opened much faster in image 
viewers. Yet again, the challenge is the LO release number is part 
of the file name. Thus converting the images to png is doable as 
proof-of-concept, but impractical to implement.

Darrell