xdg-utils xdg-icon-resource's destination icon name

[Rodney Dawes]

Until there's a way to specify a list of icons to fall back through via
the MIME type definition files, I think this is rather broken. We
clearly need to allow different apps to have icons for MIME types.
However, we also clearly can't have different apps trying to install the
same file in the same location.

Alex Larsson made a proposal for a few small changes to the Shared MIME
spec, that would allow specification of generic fallback icons. This
would allow applications to install their own icons as
$appname-$mimetype.{png,svg} into the theme, and specify fallbacks
through a MIME definition XML file. This would prevent file conflicts,
remove the need for symlinks (which only makes the matter worse, if
someone wants to install an icon that is currently a symlink), and
allow applications to provide their own MIME type icons. However, as
his proposal got little to no response on the list, it has been left
hanging idle and uncommitted. We really need to get it in, though.

I would recommend not installing branded MIME icons at all, until the
matter is resolved, personally. The current situation is a mess.

-- dobey


On Tue, 2007-01-16 at 23:26 -0800, Daniel Yek wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> xdg-icon-resource requires that the (source) icon has vendor-prefix and 
> turns around copies the icon to a destination file without the 
> vendor-prefix -- in fact, using only MIME type as icon file name. This 
> creates bigger icon name conflicts. Is that a design decision or a bug?
> 
> So, an icon likes hxplay-mime-video-ogg-48x48.png would be installed as 
> video-ogg.png (with symbolic link of gnome-mime-video-ogg.png to it). That 
> is undesirable to me. Documentation says nothing about behavior like this, 
> leaving developers reading through the scripts to figure out if the scripts 
> are doing what is expected (if what is expected is understood at all). So, 
> xdg-utils doesn't make life easier as it first appeared to be. (If it is 
> documented clearly, it could be a different story.)
> 
> Also, xdg-icon-resource doesn't provide an option to create only symbolic 
> links back to icons in application installation directory.
> 
> Any comment if xdg-icon-resource is right or wrong? Was it done that way to 
> accommodate how KDE worked? (Just speculating...)
> 
> Thanks.
> 
>