Repost: Icon Names Standard

[Frans Englich]

On Friday 10 September 2004 22:48, you wrote:
> * Frans Englich <frans.englich at telia.com> [Sep 11. 2004 00:26]:
> > On Friday 10 September 2004 07:22, ???????????????? ??????????????????
> > wrote:
> >
> > Slightly related is "pseudo icons" which  I proposed on this list a
> > couple of months ago. Food for thought:
> >
> > http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xdg/2004-July/004232.html
>
> I think that this kind of thing undermines the whole point behind the
> effort, actually. I think that one should start at the points that are
> easily fixable and definable and then work forward. I admit that there
> will always be a large difference in the needs between desktops but some
> tihngs (many!) can be written down in stone now, so that we can move
> forward.

The idea of "pseudo icons" is simply the possibility for several icon names to 
map to one actual icon; instead of duplicating/copying the actual files, a 
mechanism(of some sort) do the actual mapping so the same icon is loaded.

An icon names standard faces the problem of backwards compatability; 
Applications (in the case of KDE, especially 3rd parties) would need to have 
their code change to load the right icons when the standard is adopted in the 
default icon theme. The "pseudo icon" concept would then be used as a 
compatability layer where requests for old icon names didn't fail, but were 
"redirected" to the renamed icons. Emigration would be easier, and the 
standard faster adopted.

I don't see how "pseudo icons" contradict an icon name standard; such one can 
be written without pseudo icons, and without disturbing "pseudo icons". But, 
the adoption of such a standard faces practical issues which such a concept 
could help solving(and hence I threw out the idea).

How to implement "pseudo icons", would require investigating/following up 
Alexander's reply.


Cheers,

		Frans