Independence of icon and GTK themes

[Andrew Conkling <andrewski fr st>]

One thing that would really rock my socks is independence of GTK and
icon themes.  As of now, AFAIK, to fully take advantage of an icon
theme, you have to add its iconrc file to the gtkrc of the GTK theme in
use.  That's kind of a pain, for example, if you use a system theme
whose gtkrc you can't edit or if you want to change your GTK theme
without changing your icon theme or vice versa.

I couldn't find anything in the archives on this topic.  Has it been
discussed before?  Would this be better suited for the xdg mailing list?
What can I do to help this happen in the future of GTK?

Thanks,
Andrew