[Tango-artists] Redundent and non themeable icons

[William Szilveszter]

I have been thinking about various programs that really do require their 
own specific icons. They end up being "hard-coded" and as such, become 
unthemeable. So you have them either become Tango, of most often than 
not, do not match any icon set.

What if a standard was put forth to create a directory (e.g., software) 
within the default theme that would contain any program's specific icon. 
The program would install it's own icons here. This would allow themers 
to theme them as they would behave much like any default icon in the 
program (e.g., gtk-directory.png).

We could apply a spec that would simply require a "branding" of the icon 
to the program (e.g., banshee-star.png, file-roller-view.png, etc.). 
This would solve all the problems with a discontinuity among desktops, 
which is what Tango has set out to do.

This should be a very parsimonious move as coders will need to modify 
very little and it would also have the added effect of getting the 
public involved in various programs to help them improve aesthetically 
as it would become a trivial matter to change any icon in any program. 
Maybe the large DEs (i.e., GNOME, KDE) could move to this system with 
their "in house" programs and push independent programmers to do the same.

I think is would be a rather elegant and simple way of solving a long 
standing problem. What do you guys think?

Regards,

Will