Re: gnome-icon-theme branched for gnome-2-14

[Pat Suwalski <pat suwalski net>]

Rodney Dawes wrote:
> PS: I would also like to think the people who actually took the time to
> give /useful/ feedback on the gnome-icon-theme changes.

Sorry if I'm in the category of those who did not give useful feedback
on that specific point.

There was some discussion about a week back on #gnome-hackers from
people who were strongly for the current icons, and those who were
strongly for the new, simplified theme (in relation to mime-types, that
is). Some positive ideas came from the discussion, and I thought I would
summarize here.

* Some people like having the distinguished and labeled icons showing a
short-version of the type, especially when an original and converted
file are next to each other in nautilus (original png and scaled jpeg,
for example). "I want to quickly distinguish between two similar files
over the ssh connection. Different coloured icons let me find it quickly."

* Regarding the above, files that don't have extensions, like network
mounts (FTP vs. SSH) need more distinguishing between the icons,
especially since they are on the desktop where there is no list view.

* Some people do not like the labels. "An image is an image. I can click
on its properties or go to list view if I need more information."

* Some file formats that have container mime types don't work well with
the current scheme at all.

Much of this ground was covered back in the fall when the "Acrobat"
emblem was removed from Evince:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evince-list/2005-September/msg00008.html

I made a possible solution, with patch, which I thought was very useful,
since I very often have a source Postscript file and PDF in the same
directory, which get thumbnailed exactly the same way, apart from an
overlay.

Jonathan Blandford rejected my patch, suggesting that perhaps the best
approach would be to extend Nautilus' emblem code to permit an
alternative to the "labels" which I love so much and which will be
removed with the new g-i-t. These emblems could be turned on or off,
would work better with thumbnails than the current solution, would be
themable, and really should not provide much of a performance hit
considering the methods used to generate many of the thumbnails.

The rest of the Evince thread is also recommended reading, as it raises
good points. I would like to know if this proposal is at all feasible,
if people think that there would be interest in this, and if it does
make up for lost functionality in the otherwise much-improved icon
handling that we will get in 2.16.

--Pat