xdg image formats

[Gabriel Rauter]

Hi,

currently the Icon Theme Specification, the Thumbnail Managing Standard and
maybe others mostly use png as their sole image file format (svg and xpm
aside). Png is sure a great open image format for this cases and is
probably to stay a dominant format for a long time giving the standards a
reliable base.
What i am missing in those standards is the openness to newer formats.
Adding the possibility to make those standards flexible regarding others
formats would remove a obstacle for newer image formats to be tested and
prove them self in modern desktop environments.
The Icon Theme Specification could add a key MimeTypes which would have a
list of MIME types as value. The icon lookup function for the theme
directory would then have to change to ((Theme MIME types) ∩ (Supported
MIME types), "png", "svg", "xpm").
As for the Thumbnail Managing Standard i can't think of an easy way
to extend this to other formats without creating to much duplicate
thumbnails.
Both Qt and Gdk have the ability to be extend their supported image formats
trough plugins/loader. So if i add a webp pixbuf loader in gnome i
am already able to hardcode the path of webp files and use them as icons.
Currently the xdg lookup function used in gtk is blocking the usage of a an
icon theme consisting of webp files instead of png files.

Thanks,
Gabriel Rauter
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