Quote:
Originally Posted by kintrupf
I just checked the cover shape "Square box, stretch to fit". The covers now completely fill the width of the screen, but they sure are ugly 
The setting "Portrait box with aspect ratio" looks way better. However, the widget still puts some millimeters of unused space around all covers. It would be great if you could draw the covers right to the edge of the widget like in square box mode, filling as much as possible of the widget. |
The space available is divided into equal segments with
no separation between the segments 2 normalized android pixels between the covers. The cover images are sized (downscaled) to maximum 3 times the size of an app icon (this avoids a memory consumption issue). These images are laid into the segments. If the segment is smaller than the image then the image is further downscaled to fit the segment, preserving aspect ratio. This means that one dimension will fully consume the segment. If the segment is larger in all dimensions than the cover then the cover is centered into the segment, leaving space on all sides.
Of course I could change the "max 3 times" size rule, but that would have consequences. One would be that the memory required for a widget would increase dramatically. On some devices this might cause the widgets to stop working. Another consequence is that existing widgets could change appearance, something that people might or might not be happy with. These are both risks I am loath to take.
There is a way to get Android to upscale an image to fit the segment in at least one dimension. The problem is that upscaling covers can get ugly quickly, with pixelation and generating color artifacts. The only way to avoid the problem is to make the widget size smaller so that upscaling doesn't occur, and given the granularity of the widget size bars that could produce images that are too small. In summary: changing the scale type at this point raises the "it changed" risk described above.
If you want the covers to fill the widget and if a segment is larger than the cover, then the current solution is to make the segments smaller. You can do that by making the widget smaller or by adding books (segments) to the widget. Try adding a 5th cover to the widget. That might fix the problem for you.