Emoticon theme specification Version 0.1

[Olivier Goffart]

Le Lundi 10 Janvier 2005 02:52, Frans Englich a écrit :
> As Owen thinks, I also see advantages in using the existing icon theme
> specification, if the complications can be solved. That spec have already
> outlined low level details for icon filenames/types, and hence avoids spec
> duplication, among other things.

Emoticons and icon themes are both images, and that make sens to have them in 
the same global theme.

Anyway, i still think emoticon should be provided alone. 
The idea is that it's important to share the same emoticons theme between 
different person so they can see both two the same emoticons.

So for instance in Kopete, we already thought about setting different emoticon 
themes per protocol, or even per contacts.)

Also in MSN Messenger, the user is allowed to use different emoticons, and 
theses emoticons are even transmitted to the other side.
We planed to export the emoticon theme as well.

> One problem that to me seem to arise when piggy-backing the icon theme spec
> is the use of multiple emoticon themes. This can be solved by distributing
> XDG icon themes that only have emoticon icons, but inherits the preferred
> icon theme in general, and in this way "fakes" an emoticons-only icon
> theme. Would it be sufficient?

Maybe this can be improved, because one don't want the "fake" icon theme 
appears in the icon theme configuration.

It's then easier to (optionaly) include an emoticon theme in the icon theme, 
but emoticons theme still may be get alone.

> I think that the possibility of the ordinary icon theme to influence the
> emoticons has look/usability advantages; emoticons are part of the desktop
> as a whole, as the usage scenarios Oliver outlined.

We agree.

> As Owen mentions, emoticons also brings the problem of associating
> particular meta data with the icons, in this case what smilie an icon
> corresponds to and the "group"(anything else?). If that was encoded in the
> filenames, the icon names could look something like this, in line with the
> name standardization:
> [...]

I personaly think a mapping file (xml or test) is simpler than that.


>
> When I prepared the draft for the icon name standardization[1](to be part
> of the icon theme spec, it standardizes icon _names_) I thought of
> emoticons. I didn't come up with anything else than cute because it needed
> more thinking(like what happens now), but I stumbled over this spec:
>
> http://www.theoretic.com/Emoticons
>
> I can't say anything useful about it currently, I think.

I was not aware of this spec.
It relates the JEP-0038  http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0038.html

It may be interesting to use this spec instead.  (wich looks like the kopete 
one, only the xml file is different)

There is anyway few issue with it:  It has been designed for Jabber, and uses 
somtimes the terms Jabber (like in the extentions of emoticons packages)
Also, there is no translations possible of the name and the description (but 
the current Kopete implementation doesn't have either)

This spec is mainly for a package, and they don't say where the theme should 
be stored. they should be in $XDG_DATA_DIRS/ of course.  The specs says it 
should stay in a package (zip file)  which is probably not a good idea, is 
it ?

And what does the WARNING mean on the top of the document ?  only that the 
spec is not at the 1.0 version ?

Anyway, that spec is quite complete.