<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi, In the <a href="http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html">current Desktop Entry Specification</a> (<a href="http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-1.1.html">1.1</a>), it's possible to specify an icon for the directory (in case of a .directory file) or the .desktop file itself. Implementations are to follow this rule: </div><blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"> Icon to display in file manager, menus, etc. If the name is an absolute path, the given file will be used. If the name is not an absolute path, the algorithm described in the <a class="ulink" href="http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/icon-theme-spec" target="_top">Icon Theme Specification</a> will be used to locate the icon. </blockquote><div>The <a class="ulink" href="http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/icon-theme-spec" target="_top">Icon Theme Specification</a> specifies that the icon should be seached for in a collection of paths related to the current theme. I propose that we allow the usage of relative paths in some way also. Use-cases <ol><li>I use a lot of .directory files to make directories containing a movie have the movie poster as the icon. This behaviour could apply to any form of media, like comic books, music (album art) and photos.</li> <li>A vendor might want to bundle an icon to a piece of software they're distributing to go with a .desktop file which are not to go in the desktop menu and therefore are still located in the application directory.</li> </ol></div><div>Current solutions <ol><li>I have a script looking for a specially named file (.folder.png) and when it finds one, it will create or update the .directory file in the same location as the icon file with the full path of it. Everytime I move a directory, mount it on another computer or just have a soft link I browse through, I have to rerun the script in the current path I'm using. Applications like Amarok will explicitly create the .directory file with the icon path set to the absolute path to the directory, plus the filename of the album art. </li><li>In this case, the install script must update the .desktop file with the full path to the icon, and hope that the user will never move this directory. A install script is now required even if it wasn't before.</li> </ol></div><div>Proposed solutions I propose that we allow the user to specify a relative path to a file to use as an icon. How we do this is not really important, but I have these separate suggestions (ordered by how it "should" work, IMHO): <ul><li>Icon paths starting with a dot will be relative from the directory containing the Desktop Entry; the path ./folder_icon.png in /home/user/Documents/BookProject/.directory will set the icon to /home/user/Documents/BookProject/folder_icon.png.</li> <li>When no absolute path is specified, first search the containing directory before following the Icon Theme Specification. In the example above, we would have entered folder_icon.png and this file would have been found locally before searching for it and therefore set.</li> <li>Usage of some other prefix to denote a relative path, rules following the others </li><li>Using a different setting, or a compliment to the setting (like Icon=..., IconPath=Relative), rules following the others </li></ul></div><div>I do not think the first few would be that hard to implement, altough my knowledge in this area is a bit clouded. It is important to specify exactly where the relative path will apply from when loading the icon, and when this is done, it should be easy enough to do the rest. According to how I think would be best is to have the relative path apply to the directory containing the Desktop Entry. That is, if I use some form of file manager that follows the specs and I have the following structure: ─+─ Projects     │     +─ BookProject     │  │     │  +─ .directory                     (Icon=./folder_icon.png)     │  +─ folder_icon.png     │  +─ (...)     │     +─ SoftwareProject        │        +─ .directory                     (Icon=./.project.png)        +─ .project.png        +─ gendocs.png        +─ Generate Documentation.desktop (Icon=./gendocs.png)        +─ (...) <ul style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><li>Visiting SoftwareProject would let me see a entry called Generate Documentation and have the Projects/SoftwareProject/gendocs.png file as an icon.</li> <li>Visiting BookProject would let me see that the current directory have Projects/BookProject/folder_icon.png as the icon (if whis is displayed at all).</li> <li>Visiting Projects will let me see two directories, BookProject and SoftwareProject, both having their respective icons correctly as expected. </li></ul></div><div>I would not be surprised if it's hard to do this in reality since the most simple things are often the hardest to do in a large codebase. It would also not surprise me if this is the reason it's not in the spec from the beginning... Perhaps we could make this easier if we specify that a local path going up a directory structure will be illegal and that the path must be from the directory downwards. Anyway... Let's discuss! PS. I hope this is the correct list to mail this to. If not, please direct me to where I should send this proposal. .DS </div><div>-- Magnus Bergmark - magnus DOT bergmark AT gmail DOT com GPG/PGP: 0x7BE84794DB6AA648 Fingerprint: 0E6F D2DB F0EF 534A 2184 52AF 7BE8 4794 DB6A A648 </div></div>