~/.local/share/pixmaps is not in search list for icons

[David Faure]

On Thursday 19 April 2012 03:53:56 Rodrigo Silva wrote:
> For user install:
> - extract to ~/.local/opt/eclipse
> - symlink ~/.local/opt/eclipse/eclipse executable to ~/bin/eclipse
> - create a desktop entry in ~/.local/share/applications/eclipse.desktop
> - copy the provided icon to... ?
> 
> See the problem? The obvious place would be
> ~/.local/share/pixmaps/eclipse.xpm, but that folder is not in search list
> for icons.

Works in KDE 4 :-)

$ kde4-config --path xdgdata-pixmap
/home/dfaure/.local/share/pixmaps/:/usr/share/pixmaps/

And, actually, the comment in the code about this, says:
 "These are not in the icon spec, but e.g. GNOME puts some icons there 
anyway."
:-)

But maybe this isn't the case anymore?

> For the user I must use ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps.
> So my issues are:
> 
> So, what should I do? Why the Icon Spec does not define
> ~/.local/share/pixmaps for the user, just /usr/share/pixmaps ? Are pixmaps
> a legacy dir, and only present in system path for backward-compability?

I think so, actually. The code talks about legacy dirs.

> if so, is it ok to place xpm icons in the /usr/share/icons... tree? Should I
> completely disregard /usr/share/pixmaps? Or should I not care about
> "symmetry"?

I'm no icon theme expert, actually, but I think that was the idea yes - that 
icons should always be associated with a theme.
I would agree that it doesn't always make sense though.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, http://www.davidfaure.fr
Sponsored by Nokia to work on KDE, incl. KDE Frameworks 5