Icon theme specification: Standardizing icon names

[Frans Englich]

On Tuesday 12 October 2004 15:11, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> I haven't had a chance to look over the entire spec. Though I do agree
> with a few points made by others.
>
> This many icons is way too many to specify individually. 

One thing should be remembered: I haven't made those names up, this is what 
GNOME & KDE have -- I've only organized and renamed them.

> The list is 
> only going to grow.

Yes, in either case it will grow.


> Quickly skimming over the list you came up with, 
> I saw much room to compress it into a standard scheme, rather than
> specifying individual icons separately.

Right, there are many cases(consciously so) where multiple names could be 
reasoned to be covered by one icon. Either KDE or GNOME have had this 
detailed naming scheme(e.g. icon exists for them). 

We could compress and generalize at the icon name level, but that is 
restraining and removes flexibility. It also makes it hard to convince 
projects to conform: "Hi! We've written this spec, and you'll need to rename 
all of your icons. You have to delete a bunch of icons too. How ya'll doin' 
btw?" :)

As written in the top post, the count is daunting, but the icons already 
exists, and the /method/ of cutting down the count should be a choice by the 
designer's use of a "pseudo icon" mechanism, not by limiting the options for 
everyone. The end result, for those who don't want to be that detailed(which 
is everyone, but in different case, and to various extent), is the same -- 
one can reduce the amount of icons.

In other words, icon theme creators can easily create functioning themes 
without creating as many icons as there is specified icon names.

Another question is if it should be spec'ed at once, or in steps(but the 
amount is needed anyway, AFAICT).


Cheers,

		Frans