Re: Icons in stock buttons (bug 78072)

["David Adam Bordoley" <bordoley msu edu>]

Matthias Clasen writes: 

> Settings are controled by the xsettings manager, style properties are
> controled by the theme. I don't know if there's a hard rule to determine
> whether a parameter should be a setting or a style property. My
> understanding is that settings are of a more global nature, things which
> you want to control on a desktop-wide scale (e.g double-click time, drag
> threshold) while style properties are parameters which influence the
> visual appearance of individual gtk widgets and wouldn't have any
> meaning to e.g. a Qt-based app. The image-suppressing parameters we're
> discussing here are borderline: while they do modify the appearance of
> individual widgets, they clearly have a meaning for e.g. Qt-based apps,
> and you would likely want to set them desktop-wide.

Hmm, well can the default setting be changed based on platform? For instance 
on windows, we'd probably want to turn off icons in buttons and in menus to 
be consistent with the general windows look [1], the same would be true for 
a mac port if it is ever completed. 

On unix its a tossup i guess. I can imagine situations where an app might 
want to overide a user's pref for icons in menus, specifically the 
applications menu in the gnome panel where every menu item has an associated 
icon. I guess i should mention that the folks who don't like icons, usually 
don't like them because if every menu item doesn't have one it make vertical 
scanning tougher. see seth's comments in this thread 
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2003-February/msg00036.html. 

dave 


[1[ I know there are exceptions but gtk ought to do its best to follow the 
general rule.