Common icon themes

[Waldo Bastian]

On Wednesday 20 November 2002 01:43, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> I would do it this way:
>
>  - all apps install *some icon* (which need not follow any special
>    style, maybe it should try to be "neutral") to the default theme.
>    This ensures that regardless of current theme, an app will have an
>    icon. The skeleton of this default theme comes in Alex's
>    non-desktop-specific tarball package.
>
>  - desktops can ship any number of icon themes, which may happen to
>    cover all the apps in that desktop, and may also happen to include
>    apps in other desktops. For example, KDE may ship the "Keramik"
>    icon theme. GNOME already includes a set of accessibility themes
>    such as high contrast, low contrast (and it would be good if KDE
>    could use those).
>
>  - third parties such as themes.org-type sites can ship any number of
>    icon themes, which may happen to cover the icons for any number of
>    apps or desktops.

[Snip]

> Why not just say:
>  - there is a single systemwide cross-desktop default fallback icon
>    location
>  - there are any number of extra icon themes
>  - both desktops default to (and are shipped with) some extra icon theme

[Snip]

> Some of my thoughts again:
>
>  - it seems wrong if there's code in any desktop that special-cases
>    another specific desktop; the spec and icon lookup algorithm should
>    be independent of which desktops exist.
>
>  - it's important to have icon themes, such as the low/high contrast
>    accessibility themes, keramik, bluecurve, etc. that span both
>    desktops. This benefits everyone. Icon themes aren't trivial to
>    create.
>
>  - it's very much technically cleaner if all apps work the same way,
>    instead of having some apps be special.
>
>  - whatever we do it definitely needs to be documented in the icon
>    theme spec, so anyone can implement it, and then we need to all
>    follow the spec.
>
>  - I would consider it a bug if for the same current icon theme and
>    the same icon name, two implementations come up with a different
>    icon.
>
> Does anyone disagree with these points?

I very much agree with that.

Cheers,
Waldo