I have fixed three memory leaks. Before, leak_analyser.sh found 75 leaks from simply opening and closing Icon-O-Matic. It now reports only 27.
One thing that I feel could help when drawing icons is the option to have perspective guidelines/grid, with the option to snap to the guidelines. The guidelines should be configurable, but the default one should adhere to Haikuās Icon Guidelines.
Ticket #8758 talks about an idea similar to this. In its case, though, it doesnāt make a mention about snapping to the guidelines. Maybe you could add your comment mentioning that there. Oh, and, if you havenāt already, you can upvote it 
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In practice only the front-bottom corner angle is really important and should correspond from icon to icon, while the top-rear corner may vary. The height of the icon determines the other perspective lines, so those will vary as well (along with their corners).
You can simply draw that front-bottom angle (based on the illustrations in the Haiku Icon Guidelines documentation), then save it as a .hvif file and append it each time you start a new icon to make sure you get it consistently right.
But yes, that āhelp angleā can of course be built into IOM as an improvement.
The image was just to illustrate what perspective guidelines are for those that do not know. The example is from Adobe Illustrator.
The progress Iāve made so far was mostly going down a dead end. Iām going to have to write the code differently if I want to allow treating reference images like any other shape.
The question is if the reference image needs to be modifyable like Shapes.
Adding Transformers like Stroke and Contour isnāt needed.
We could also dispense with moving and rotating. I think we can assume the user already has a vaguely square icon-like image for a reference. It could also be pre-edited in an image editor. And even if isnāt a perfect fit, it can serve as a reference for creating Paths and the Shapes can later be moved and rotated.
We also donāt need to duplicate and reset/freeze transformations.
So weād really only need a bitmap as un-editable background, similar to the transparency checkers grid. The checkers should still be visible, of course, so the reference image should be added half-transparent.
The menu item āAdd reference imageā¦ā could move into the āFileā menu.
I disagree, moving and morphing it should be doable. Otherwise I can just put the image in ShowImage next to it. Or worse have to edit the image every time and replace it if Iād like to have it in a different place on the canvas.
Letās start from the use cases.
The idea is not to make a generic image editing tool here. The use for this feature is quite specific:
So, the image should be at the right size and shape already and fill the whole area. It is convenient to have it overlaid with the icon you are designing to quickly position your new shapes at the key points in the icon, and match the original. That would be harder to do if the reference is in a separate window.
I agree with humdinger here, if you want to do something more complex, youāll have to do it in some more advanced tool, Icon-O-Matic is not meant for it. And when youāre done, you can import your finalized reference into Icon-O-Matic as a single bitmap.
Beeing unable to move the reference icon, or beeing able to skew it makes the part of aligning paths difficult or impossible unless you painstakenly indeed edit the pocture in another programm and reimport it as another reference image.
I disagree with the assertion that reference icons are the right size and fill the area, if they use another style they probably are not doing that, moving or scaling the image is crucial to get a proper base to work from.
Somehow to be treated as the concept of a layer ? Resize and distort the image until satisfied, then use it as a reference to draw over it ?
If this is the plan, we should note the following:
Without the described toggle i personally dont see much point of this āreference imageā feature. One can argue simply being able to see the original icon in the IOM window (to eliminate the need to having open an extra image-viewer window) would allow us to maximize the IOM window size, but then it simply needs an additional view beside the vector design area, and it shouldnt be covered by the new icon design.
Not all icons have to be in the 'Haiku projection". TāWould be nice, but few people are really good HVIF creators. Having an approximation to a portās 2D icon is better than many apps sharing the standard 3-cube icon.
Instead of having the reference image layer at the bottom, weād of course superimpose it half-transparently to avoid obscuring it with our Shapes.
There should be a way to quickly toggle the reference image on/off.
I suggest we let @Zardshard have a go at a basic implementation and explore the possibilities and pitfalls first. Then weāll see what additional bells and whistles should be attached later.
If it turns out moving/resizing the reference image would be a benefit, Iām sure that can be accomplished. But I could imagine, even if you could align the reference image to have a few vertices match to our ideal 16/32/64 pixel grid, other vertices would just happen to fall outside it. The Paths we create in IOM will always be an approximation of the originalās lines. But weāll seeā¦
^ That ^
And having the option to superimpose a semitransparent version of the same checkered background we already have at the bottom (but sadly obscured as the icon advances) will also be nice.
I use it a lot as a visual reference: always have the 64px grid on, and just looking at the background you can see that a full square corresponds to 16px and half square corresponds to 32px.
I find it faster than constantly changing the alignment grid.
It could already be done by appending a premade version saved as an icon, but having it as a reference layer wouldnāt falsify the final hvif size as it does now, apart from being more convenient.
Having reference images act like shapes has a couple of advantages:
Alas, in this case the code will look very different depending on which path I go with.
By now, the codeās a mess. Iām going to be working on cleaning it up.
Nice work! 
