Re: PROPOSAL: GNOME Volume Manager for GNOME 2.8

[Jamie McCracken <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Fri, 2004-06-25 at 00:32, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Gwe, 2004-06-25 at 00:54, Mike Hearn wrote:
> > 3) Introduce a new icon theme format and ship themes packed - that
> > requires you to have an up to date desktop otherwise some themes will
> > just mysteriously not work, and is equivalent to scrapping the current
> > spec. Not Good. Inventing specs then abandoning them months later is
> > arguably the same as breaking backwards compatibility in that spec.
> 
> I would say introduce the new icon theme format as an optimisation for
> 2.7->2.8. Keep support for the old format and also mapping tools. That
> means you can either
> 
> a) pack a theme and take the disk hit
> b) pack the theme and flush the original
> c) leave it as is
> 
> I'd suspect vendors would ship standard themes in format (b),
> most themes would come out in format (c) and people who cared about
> performance would do (a) or (b) themselves. In fact themes should come
> out in the current format because you can't edit the packed one
> without unpacking and repacking.
> 
> To me its a cache format. If bluecurve.pac present use it if not load
> them up. Hell you could make the first client generate the pac file if
> there wasn't one.

That all sounds okay but I frequently like to change individual icons in
a theme so would I (and ordinary users) be able to easily do the same if
they come pre-packed?

Also I could have all the icons in a single archive file (could be
compressed or uncompressed depending which is fastest) and be able to
easily change or replace individual icons via cli or File Roller. So
does your pac format provide any additional benefits over using an
archive file?

jamie.