[kde-linux] Why are taskbar icons sometimes a big X?

[James Richard Tyrer]

Larry Alkoff wrote:
> Chris Peterman wrote:
>> On Saturday 15 July 2006 01:04, Larry Alkoff wrote:
>>> I have some programs that have perfectly good icons on the desktop
>>> but when I open them, the icon in the task bar box is a large X that
>>> looks hand drawn.
>>>
>>> A good case in point is Thunderbird which has a lovely icon of an
>>> envelope in version 1.5.0.4 that appears in the desktop boxes as a big
>>> hand drawn X.
>>>
>>> By taskbar I mean the boxes for each desktop that typically show the
>>> program icon.  Please correct my nomenclature so I can call it correctly.
>>>
>>> How can I get the normal desktop icon to display there like other apps?
>>>
>>> Larry
>> Only thing I can think of is that the icons you want to use don't have 
>> versions in the size that is needed. 
>>
>> As an example, take a look in your ~/.icons (thats where they are put for like 
>> GNOME and XFCE, and KDE also looks there for them) and look in one of the 
>> theme folders, you will see a bunch of folders named 12x12, 64x64, etc, which 
>> are all the sizes that the icons may be needed in. Now if you can get your 
>> hands on a SVG version of the icon, KDE should take care of the resize by 
>> itself (SHOULD, I don't know how well SVG Icon Support is in KDE or anything 
>> else for that matter). Otherwise just make a copy of the icon in those pixel 
>> sizes (any image program should be able to handle it).
>>
>> I hope that made sense :D
>>
> 
> Thanks for your reply Chris.
> I have more information now.
> 
> There is no ~/.icon folder but I think I'll make one and hard link any 
> useful icons found so they won't get lost.
> 
> The locate program tells me that there are Thunderbird icons (and 
> others) scattered in quite a few directories in my Ubuntu system - it's 
> very confusing.
> 
> There are 12 icons of various sizes in /usr/share/pixmaps.
> They come only in 32x32 and 48x48 in either .png and .xpm plus a much 
> larger size in .svg (no size available probably because they are scalable).
> 
> How can I tell _exactly_ which icon is on the desktop?  Is there a program?
> 
> There is a text file about the desktop icon in ~/Desktop but it only 
> lists the name, not size or path.  From the name 
> "mozilla-thunderbird-menu" I infer it must be either a 32x32 .xpm or .png.
> 
> I've created another line in ~/Desktop to create another desktop icon 
> named 'Thunderbird Mail orig.desktop' and am going to experiment on the 
> original icon,
> first with a .svg but also .xpm and .png to see how they behave.
> 
> Again, I really need a program that tells me the path and size of an 
> existing icon.

With Thunderbird and Firefox, this isn't the problem.  This is a
developer level question that I don't have the exact answer for.

However, I can tell you how to fix it.  Open the 'desktop' file for 
Thunderbird and first make sure that it contains:

	Icon=thunderbird

If so, are you getting the correct icon in the menu?  If so, you can fix 
the problem by changing this line:

	Exec=thunderbird %i

Adding the "%i" will force KDE to use the menu icon for the TaskBar and 
in the KWin window decorations.

-- 
JRT