Re: How to use all icon themes from /usr/share/icons?

On Saturday 06 August 2005 03:42, Torsten Rahn (KDE) wrote:
> Just those icon themes which have an index.theme file in
>
> /usr/share/icons/{iconthemename}
>
> will show up correctly in the KDE Control Center.

Agree. Or /opt/kde3/share/icons/{iconthemename}

> > I'd be curious to know where you got you icons from? I suffer from a
> > shortage of icons. :-(
>
> www.kde-look.org is your friend. Have a look at the icon theme section.

Sometimes. :-(

> > I don't think that Debian KDE stores it's icons under /usr/share/icons,=
 I
> > thought they were in /opt/kde3/share/icons/ and Gnome's were
>
> No. Debian (packages) install KDE in /usr/share/icons.

Pity, I expected better from them. :-(

<...>

> > in /opt/gnome/share/icons/. Normally the icons in /usr/share/icons are
> > for particular programs and not icon themes.
>
> No. Application specific icons for KDE and Gnome are stored
> in /usr/share/apps/{program name}/icons

I can only speak for KDE on Suse:

/usr/share/apps/ doesn't exist,
/opt/kde3/share/apps/ does.

BTW, I consider [/usr/share/apps/ | /opt/kde3/share/apps/]{program =

name}/[icons | images | pics] to be a bug. This behaviour leads to =

unnecessary duplication and gets in the way of themes.

I just recently had to hack k3b, to get a theme to work properly. :-(

/usr/share/icons on my system has no themes, only icons for djvulibre-3.5.1=
4-4 =

and WindowMaker-applets-1.0-649.

> Applications which don't honor the icon freedesktop standard sometimes
> install their pixmaps in /usr/share/pixmaps. But this rarely happens these
> days.

ls /usr/share/pixmaps/*.* | sort
civworld.png
djvu.png
enigma-help.png
enigma.png
firefox.xpm
freeciv-manual.png
freeciv.png
frozen-bubble.png
gl-117.png
gxmessage.png
manedit.xpm
mycomp.png
pingus.png
realplay.png
supertux.png
xfig.png
xine_16x16.png
xine_22x22.png
xine_32x32.png
xine_48x48.png
xine.xpm
yudit.png

I can understand why Yudit is here, what's Firefox excuse?

> > > Now how do I select these icon themes in the Control Center?
> >
> > You don't.
>
> Usually each icon theme has got an index.theme file. If this is the case
> you can select the icon theme file in kcontrol's icon dialog which you can
> also get by typing
>
> kcmshell icons
>
> on the command line.

My answer was based on the assumption that if it did have a valid index.the=
me =

file, it would show up if installed properly.

> > > Why are some icon sets displayed there and others are not?
> >
> > Only KDE's icon themes are displayed there.
>
> Wrong. See comment about index.theme file above.

Since KDE's icon themes need a valid index.theme file, my answer stands.

> > > And, as we are at it already :) , is there a "standard" for the single
> > > icon names which all icon themes do respect?
>
> See
>
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-theme-spec/icon-theme-spec-latest.h=
tm
>l

Nice, I'll look into this. :-)

> > Normally application foo =3D icon foo, e.g.:
>
> While this is often the case the name of the icon is specified in
> icon-section of the application's .desktop file which you will find in
<...>

I've found .desktop files that don't specify an icon, and yet an icon shows =

up, and others that specify the full icon name [e.g. foo.xpm] that doesn't =

exist [while foo.png does].

I also seen .desktop files that only specify the beginning of the icon name =

[e.g. foo] and finds the icon. Whether this is a Suse hack or not I do not =

know.

> > ark will have an icon called ark.* [ark.png | ark.xpm]
> >
> > KDE will look for an icon matching the name of the app, even if it is n=
ot
> > explicitly stated.
>
> No. It will look for the icon name specified in the application's .desktop
> file. (See
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.=
9.
>4.html )
>
> You'll get a list of the directories which KDE will search through
> (including any subdirectories) by typing
>
> kde-config --path icon
>
> on the command line.

See my answer above, but still some really interesting references. Thanks.

> > BTW, some apps explicitly state which icon to use. I have had a few apps
> > that expected foo.xpm, even though it didn't exist and therefore ignored
> > the PNG that did.
>
> This is mostly the case for some applets where the iconnames are hardcoded
> (which is evil (TM)).
<...>

I meant in their .desktop file. Again see my answer above.

Sadly too, KDE hardcodes images. :-(

I've tripped across this frequently lately, as I'm doing more themes. I'm =

working on themes for kcontrol, khelpcenter and kdeui. I tried to add a =

themes to ksmserver and About KDE, but that confounded recessed box is =

hardcoded in. I've still to get around to filing a bug on that though. :-(


Torsten do you have or know where to get an example [well commented] =

index.theme for Oliver. It looks like he's going to need it. :-(

All the best.

-- =

Robert "roach" Spencer
Pietermaritzburg
South Africa