xdg-icon (Was: [Portland] RE: Portland: xdg-utils)

[Jeremy White]

Bastian, Waldo wrote:
> Xdg-icon is your friendly helper tool that codifies what the
> freedesktop.org Icon theme specification says applications should be
> doing. Or in other words it helps you get your icons installed under
> /usr/share/icons in the Right Way [tm].
> 
> It's very well possible that your application manages to get by without
> installing anything under /usr/share/icons. In that case you don't need
> to use xdg-icon either.

Ah, see I've always installed my icons under
  /opt/<mypathhere>
or the equivalent, so I've never felt the need for xdg-icon.

Hrm.  I guess I can grudgingly concede that others might
reasonably want to install an icon into the system and then
use it by name, without the explicit path (even though
they're all wrong, wrong, I tell you! <grin>).

I think the depth of my emotional reaction stemmed from the fact
that xdg-icon is the very first entry listed on the new documentation
page.  Further, because xdg-icon has a lot of non obvious options,
my immediate reaction as an ISV was confusion and befuddlement.

Hence, I was alarmed; part of xdg-utils value should be, imho,
that it should be obvious and easy to an ISV.

I wonder if we could add the concept of 'advanced' tools to
the xdg-utils documentation and shift this utility to
that section?

> As far as creeping featuritis goes, all of the above has been applicable
> since 2002 (when the first Icon theme spec was written) if not before
> (when KDE was essentially doing the same already)

I shouldn't have even mentioned the rant, and just deleted it silently.
Please pretend I had the grace to do that :-/.

Cheers,

Jeremy