mime-type icons, a proposal

[Jakub Steiner]

On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 21:41 -0700, Rob Lanphier wrote:

> up (Mac OS X), Ryan *demonstrated* that they are more app-centric than
> you are giving them credit for, and the platform is still
> aesthetically just fine.

One thing that speaks against app-centric icons for mime types is the
number of combinations when you have to deal with the concept of icon
themes. 

There is no concept of icon themes on OSX as far as I know. There is a
single set, with defined guidelines. Having a single look for the "Linux
desktop" would surely be nice, but realistically I hardly see an
agreement on a global KDE/Gnome icon theme possible. So if icon themes
cannot go and we want to have app-defined mime-types, it means having
multiple version of a mime type icon *per theme*. Since this will hardly
be manageable, users will end up having mixed style icons on desktops
and it will look like XP having all the win95 cruft all around.

It could be solvable by using mime type emblem overlays on themed
document-base or something, but that's not a 100% solution.

cheers

-- 
Jakub Steiner <jimmac at ximian.com>