Multiple DeskTops, HiColor theme, standardized icon names, &menu icons

[Bastian, Waldo]

>James and I agreed that app-specific icons should be installed to the
>$XDG_DATA_DIRS/$appname/icons/$theme/... path structure, and that these
>such paths should be added automatically to the search list by the icon
>theme implementation.

I don't think that applications should be required to install private
icons into a $XDG_DATA_DIRS location. It's ok to add these locations to
the search path but for third party applications that don't install in a
$XDG_DATA_DIRS prefix (Like LSB applications) it is a burden to get
their private icons into a XDG prefix and I have seen no reason why that
would need to be required. Note also that we established earlier this
year on the xdg list already that applications dynamically extending
XDG_DATA_DIRS is not the direction that we want to go.

So I suggest to reword the above proposal to [with rationale in
brackets]:

The search-list for app-specific icons should include
$XDG_DATA_DIRS/$appname/icons/$theme/... in addition to the other
directories [$XDG_DATA_DIRS/icons/$theme/... and friends] already
specified by the Icon Theme specification. Applications  should first
look for application-specific icons in this combined search list before
looking up the icon in other application-specific locations [=locations
other than the ones defined by the spec, left at the discretion of the
app, also consider the case where an app developer wants to include the
icon in the data section of the executable]. Applications are encouraged
[soft version of "should"] to install application-specific icons to
${install_prefix}/share/$appname/icons/$theme [So in the "normal" case
the icon will in fact end up in
$XDG_DATA_DIRS/$appname/icons/$theme/...]

That said, I would like to see an icon-spec that conforms with existing
implementations and that can be referred to by LSB 3.2 (ideally "icon
spec 1.0") before new things get added that existing implementations do
not yet support.

Cheers,
Waldo