Re: Menu icons for packages
Last Friday 11 March 2005 12:58, Bill Allombert was like:
> 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.
OK, thanks for that information. For now, I just want to encourage multimedia
maintainers to include .pngs. So, can I take it that /usr/share/pixmaps/ the
best place to put them? I notice there are some .svgs in here too. I ask
because there is increasing usage of /usr/share/icons/ by both GNOME and KDE
apps (all .png & .svg AFAICT) and /usr/share/images/ is being used by
A/DeMuDi for wallpapers & splash screens and the like.
> I am happy to discuss the future menu icon recommendation now. The first
> point is an assessment of window managers support for icons.
I have become interested in all aspects of the Debian menu system, there are a
couple of things that really bug me about it, but for the most part it's a
great system. I would be interested in further discussion once I've had a
chance to study the policy recommendations properly and got moving on
bringing the multimedia entries up to current standards. A/DeMuDi only
supports GNOME and Fluxbox, so that simplifies matters for us. ;-)
> > 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.
Noted.
> > 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!
Well, thank you for all your great work!
I look forwards to future communications.
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
Reply to: