Re: Empathy user status icons

[Luca Ferretti <elle uca libero it>]

2009/6/24 Fernando <ferkiwi gmail com>:
> As discussed in xdg-list [1], there's an icon missing for
> "user-unknown" (and possibly "user-error") for gnome-icon-theme to be
> fully matching with Empathy, as it is now part of GNOME.

I can see any addition in icon namin spec log[1], why should we start
adding non-yet-standard icons?

Those named icons was discussed, as you said, on xdg-list, but I can't
see any comment by icon naming spec maintainer or wide consensus (only
4 emails)

> Also, unless it's there a good reason for keeping the "user-invisible"
> name, perhaps a rename to "user-hidden" would be desirable, since
> "hidden" is the term used in Telepathy.

As above, those named icons are not yet in spec.

Now, my personal point of view about those new named icons.
It is not so simple to have meagniful and self explaing icons for user
statuses, I suppose the general consensus between GNOME icon designer
is to keep their number low. So, for example, if  your application
needs a "do-not-disturb" status you should:
 * provide as themable app specific icon (see [2]), using a proper
name like "user-busy-donotdisturb" (so you could use "user-busy" if
current icon theme provides user-busy but not user-busy-donotdisturb -
this fallback could be really appreciated by a11y themes)
 *  don't provide an icon and just differentiate statuses by label
(honestly, I prefer this one then 10 different status icons)

[1] http://webcvs.freedesktop.org/icon-theme/default-icon-theme/spec/icon-naming-spec.xml?view=log
[2] http://live.gnome.org/ThemableAppSpecificIcons