Program icons: generic vs. branded

[Jakob Petsovits]

Disclaimer: The opinions in here are my personal findings and not to be taken 
as absolute authority.

On Saturday, 19. April 2008, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> I find the definition of programs which should use generic icons very
> unprecise. What is a "more advanced" program? And what is the reasoning for
> generic icon (names) for programs?
>
> Some programs follow the spec, like Okular (graphics-viewer-document) and
> Ark (utilities-file-archiver), others like KCalc (kcalc) don't. But isn't
> Okular a more advanced program, while KCalc isn't?

That's right, and actually I messed up on this front.

For one, kcalc should really be using the 'accessories-calculator' icon.
And secondly, neither graphics-viewer-document nor utilities-file-archiver are 
in the naming spec, which causes some inconvenience for packagers like 
Jonathan Riddell who mentioned this to me, but I don't remember what the 
actual problem was. Should have been more conservative when naming these 
icons, but now we've already got them in the icon theme.

I asked the creators of the spec sometime, and the answer was like,
"generic icons should only be used for applications that don't need an 
identity on their own, and only for the most basic set of applications".
So, no generic icon for distinctive apps like KMail, for example, or for 
office productivity applications.

An editors like Okteta is definitely an edge case, but for the sake of staying 
on the safe side, I'd propose to go with "okteta" for now. You can always 
drop the specific name for the generic one, but the other direction takes a 
bit more caution.

For new generic icons, I personally would only use those that are already 
defined in the naming spec, and have specific icons otherwise.

> Does KDE follow the spec?

Mostly, yes. I made a few mistakes here and there, and didn't get fully done 
with moving icons out of kdebase/runtime, and Oxygen doesn't include all 
icons that are specified (oh how I miss the days when the artists came up 
with a new icon from the spec every two days or so), but on the whole we're 
operating on roughly the same set of base icons as GNOME is.

> How do I find out if e.g. Okteta, the new hex
> editor in kdeutils :) , should use a branded icon or a generic one?

Rule for app icons, for the time being:
- If it's already one of the icons defined in the spec, use that icon.
- If it's not in there but should be (in your opinion), propose it on the
  xdg list and hope that dobey is motivated to handle your request
  within two years or so. Might be successful if you present your very
  persuading arguments 3-5 more times on #tango after initially proposing
  your idea on the mailing list.
- If it's not (yet) in the spec, name it by the app's executable name.

(When will I ever find the motivation to write up a "how to name icons" 
guideline on TechBase? Bah.)

> If the reason for generic icon names are icon themes, well, what about
> using names like graphics-viewer-document-okular and
> utilities-file-archiver-ark? So if the branded icon is not included in the
> icon theme the fallback will be the generic one?

That was my idea as well, and I still find it compelling in a way.
However, given the above precondition that generic icons should only cover 
apps that don't need any branding, it will rather be a question of
"generic icon only" vs. "app specific icon only" with no middle ground.

And, the closing point and topmost rule:
Use something generic if you can cooperate with other app authors to use
the same thing too. Oxygen in kdebase/runtime does that by means of
"market power" (hopefully in a way that remotely makes any sense), but for 
apps it will only bring benefits if the app authors sit down and spec this 
out together.