mime-type icons, a proposal

[Alexander Larsson]

On Wed, 2004-10-06 at 16:09 +0000, Frans Englich wrote:
> 
> Assuming the priority is; 3rd party icons for mimetypes(hicolor) are
> only used when there isn't a specific mimetype icon in the theme, it
> means it will rarely happen. For example, all common specific-
> mimetypes would be covered by the icon theme since many people
> (probably the majority) needs them. For instance, icons for real media
> is already in the kde/gnome icon themes.

This avoids the issue that there is currently a big problem with mime
icon theming. You *have* to add a specific mime icon for each and every
mimetype, even if that is only a symlink to the generic icon for the
type. This is lots of work that each theme author currently has to do.
It also causes slowdowns on startup (reading many files) and wastes a
lot of memory (duplicating the icons when caching, storing the symlinks
in memory). And its fragile, since any addition of a new mimetype
upstream immediately breaks the look of themes.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl at redhat.com    alla at lysator.liu.se 
He's an impetuous white trash waffle chef from the Mississippi delta. She's a 
virginal paranoid widow with an evil twin sister. They fight crime!