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

[Daniel Yek]

Thanks for the reply.

More inline...

At 06:30 AM 1/17/2007, Rodney Dawes wrote:
>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.

What kind of response were expected? Response from desktop implementors? Or 
Software Vendors?


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

By looking at the documentation, I think the Portland Project was trying to 
promote the use of the scripts so that in the future, the distributors can 
change the script and have different actions happening in, then, existing 
released software packages. This is done by having new system-wide 
xdg-utils scripts in the path overriding the bundled scripts (appear later 
in the path). So, even though the existing scripts are resulting in "a 
mess", but once desktop implementations change, the scripts can stop 
creating a mess. Sounds like a plan to me and thus its usage can be encouraged.


-- 
Daniel Yek




>-- 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.
> >
> >