[kde-linux] adding icon

[Duncan]

Doug posted on Wed, 22 May 2013 19:14:28 -0400 as excerpted:

> Downloaded and installed a useful program not in the
> repo--ConvertAll--which comes with a set of icons, large, medium, small.
> I have placed the program on the desktop, but it doesn't use an icon
> that it came packed with, but some generic one. How do I exchange the
> provided icon for the generic?

Did you put the program executable file itself on the desktop, or is it a 
*.desktop file or an icon dragged from the kickoff menu or similar?

If it's the program (executable) file itself, that always gets the 
generic program file icon, normally a gear, indicating that it's the 
executable file itself.

To change the icon you must be using a *.desktop file, a text file that 
defines certain properties like the executable to call (the program 
executable itself), the working directory it should start in, any command-
line parameters that should be used when that *.desktop file is invoked, 
a name (which does NOT have to be the filename) and a short and long 
description (depending on the configuration, either the short description 
or the name may be shown), and significantly for your question here, the 
icon that should be displayed.

The package may have shipped with a *.desktop file in addition to the 
icons -- packages of executables intended to be run from the X desktop 
often do -- but if it didn't, an easy way to create one is...

Run kmenuedit (either from krunner/kickoff whatever, or by context-
clicking (normally right-clicking) on the kickoff menu or your chosen 
variant, and choosing Edit Applications, which should start kmenuedit) 
and create a new menu entry for that application, filling in the new menu 
entry dialog fields (including chosen icon) as appropriate.

Once the entry is available in kickoff/kmenu/whatever, you should be able 
to drag it from there to the desktop. =:^)

Meanwhile, the executable file itself is normally placed not on the 
desktop, but somewhere in your path (the PATH environmental variable).  
For a user, the traditional location is ~/bin/, which is (again 
traditionally) the user's bin directory found in the path.  If instead 
you install it (normally requiring superuser to do so) in the system's 
normal bin dir, that's normally /usr/bin for package-manager-managed 
packages, or /usr/local/bin, for those you install yourself, outside of 
the normal package manager control.  However, this is simply the normal/
traditional setup.  Various distros have variants on the theme that 
better fit what they're doing as a distro, or you (or the sysadmin) can 
set them yourself, so your paths and default executable location 
directories may be somewhat different.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman