Re: Menu icons for packages
On Fri, Mar 11, 2005 at 11:45:50AM +0000, tim hall wrote:
> ****
>
> OK, the crux of the matter is that I would like to give some guidance on the
> inclusion of .pngs as well as .xpms. I can see that it may suffice to quote
> menu icon policy verbatim and include any discussion of .desktop & .pngs
> separately according to .desktop guidelines and make it clear that it is an
> option as opposed to debian policy. The important issue from my perspective
> is that .pngs should use /usr/share/pixmaps/ too as seems to be general
> practice. I want to be sure I'm not going to cause future confusion if I
> suggest this to lots of Debian multimedia maintainers.
>
> ****
OK so I think there are two separate matter:
1) .desktop: The freedesktop standard does not mandate the format of
the icons (which is a major hole), so was should be allowed depend on
what is supported. Probably PNG and SVG should be used.
2) menu files: After sarge release, it is planned to update the menu
icon recommendation to handle (at least) PNG icons. Three proposals have
been made:
2.1) Just allow png files in the icon tags.
2.2) Add a new tag icon_png for png files.
2.3) Create a package that manage icons format conversion dynamically.
(See <http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2003/06/msg00017.html>)
I don't like 2.1) because it break backward compatibility and assume
window managers are smart enough to guess the file format by themselves.
The proposal 2.3) is more comprehensive but might be an overkill given
the actual set of wm that does display menu and what they support.
I am happy to discuss the future menu icon recommendation now. The first
point is an assessment of window managers support for icons.
> This is a side note, put in for clearance. I am just checking that DeMuDi is
> as Debian policy compliant as practicable as part of a move towards
> _official_ CDD status, hopefully in the not too distant future. DeMuDi has
> always used translate_menus in the past, this may now be controlled by
> cfengine scripts, I will have to check with Free. Anyhow, it's clearly a
> non-issue, that's all I needed to know.
Additionally, you might consider promoting menu hints to better classify
multimedia related apps.
> This started as a simple bug-report follow-up to a complaint that many DeMuDi
> menu items lacked icons, which is now no longer the case. I can now move on
> to fill in the gaps, make sure the menus look as good as possible without any
> vile hacks. I'm fairly sure Free has seen to this last point already. I now
> have about a month to try and pull it all in in time for the next
> AGNULA/DeMuDi release (1.2.1). Whee!
Thanks for your efforts toward improving menu!
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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