Icon naming spec: generic binary MIME type icon?

[Rodney Dawes]

On Thu, 2008-12-04 at 10:26 +0100, Jakob Petsovits wrote:
> On Tuesday 02 December 2008, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> > It is maintained. And I am very easily contacted.
> 
> You might consider to reply to the original post in this thread.
> I believe the lack of feedback about past proposals contributes a major 
> portion to the (perceived?) maintenance and communication problems.

I have replied to that mail now. Your reply would have been sufficient
if you hadn't made derogatory remarks about the maintainership of the
spec, and gnome-icon-theme. The fact is that gnome-icon-theme has
nothing to do with the spec, other than that it uses it. There are
plenty of icons in it, which aren't in the spec, and shouldn't be. I
do however maintain it, as well as Tango, along with the artists working
on them. I can't exactly have the artists experiment with metaphors and
icon names in themes which I don't control, very easily, now can I?

> A short answer to each of the incoming spec proposals might do wonders, e.g.:
> 
> * I think that's a good idea, and I'll add it to the spec as soon as I
>   find time.
> 
> * I don't think that's a good idea, because (...)
>   [suggestion is reworked, reposted, and then receives another judgement]
> 
> * I have a fundamental issue with this: (...). Such an icon will never go in.
> 
> * I can't say much at the moment (requires more research), but I'll look
>   into it as soon as I find time.
> 
> * I'll never find time for *this* crap, f*ck off and bl**dy leave me alone.
> 
> You might optionally go into more details, but this kind of feedback is the 
> least that a contributor can expect from the spec maintainer. Omitting even 
> this minimal feedback is basically the same as the last option, which is why 
> the spec appears to be unmaintained even if that's not the whole truth.

I do tend to reply naming spec proposals. I don't really reply to silly
quarrelsome mails though. Replying to my asking for more information,
arguing that I'm being uncooperative is just dumb, and untrue. If there
was a mail that had several proposals, and thus required more of a
reply, I may have not had time when I got the mail, and being
overwhelmed with other priorities, it may have slipped by completely. If
that is the case though, I can always be pinged on IRC or in e-mail to
reply.

When initially working on the spec, I made several changes to make the
spec fit better with KDE. So just calling me uncooperative and whatever
other useless names people want to come up with and throw out in e-mails
whenever spec mail comes up on the list, is completely false, and a
waste of everyone's time. Please keep the content in relation to the
mail being replied to in the future, and leave out whatever personal
feelings you have about the maintainer because you disagree with one
little thing here or there.

Thanks,
Rodney