[Thunar-dev] Thunar not picking up custom icon folder color

[Markus]

I just noticed I mistakenly sent the following answer to golinux
privately instead of the mailing list. I'm copying my answer below for
the record:

The inheritance of the parent theme (gnome) does work as intended, it
does inherit the uncolored (brownish) variant from the gnome icon theme
for the "inode-directory" icon. This is what you described as "[...] the
generic folder/directory icon reverts to gnome." in your original mail.

True, the inherited "inode-directory" is actually a symbolic link as
well. However, the inherited symbolic link is not interpreted relative
to the icon theme it is inherited by (DarkPurpy) but instead always
relative to the path where the link actually resides (gnome). When GTK
interprets the icon theme, it does not copy missing icons from the
inherited themes but instead traverses the inheritance tree recursively
until the first occurrence of the missing icon. This means, icons - and
also symlinks - are always loaded from within the respective theme's
directory.

In your case, the "inode-directory" icon is missing in "DarkPurpy".
Thus, GTK is traversing through the inheritance list (and the resulting
directories) to find the first parent theme that provides such icon,
which is "gnome". The provided symbolic link called
"inode-directory.png" is now interpreted relative to the directory where
the "gnome" theme resides. Thus it points to the corresponding gnome
variant of "folder.png" and returns this as the icon image, which is the
brown one.

When you specify your own symbolic link in the "DarkPurpy" theme
instead, it is loaded from there instantly and no traversing through the
inheritance list is done.

I hope this answers your question.


Best regards,

Markus

> Thank you for the timely response.  However, I am not quite understanding something.  The inode-directory.png file is already present in the gnome icon theme.   Why is it not being "inherited"?   Does that mean that the other links in gnome will also be broken ie "not inherited"?  I realize this question goes beyond Thunar.  Just hoping you might be able to shed some light on it.
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Mon, 2/19/18, Markus <markus.xp at web.de> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Thunar-dev] Thunar not picking up custom icon folder color
>  To: thunar-dev at xfce.org
>  Date: Monday, February 19, 2018, 1:35 AM
>  
> Thunar, in contrast to many other file managers, is using the "inode-directory" icon for plain folders - which the theme you linked to is missing.
>
> You can simply execute this in every of the "places/" subdirectory of the theme to create the necessary links:
>
>     ln -s folder.png inode-directory.png
>
> If the theme is not picking it up, you can refresh the cache via:
>
>     gtk-update-icon-cache /path/to/DarkPurpy
>
> (will need root permissions if system path obviously)
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Markus
>
>> I have recolored the gnome icon set to blend with the Devuan ASCII (Stretch) desktop theming.  But there are some glitches that are currently being discussed on the Xfce forum.  The index.theme is posted there as well as a link to download the DarkPurpy icon set:
>>
>> https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?pid=47454
>>
>>
>> AFAICT the generic folder icon is picked up everywhere except in Thunar, even the desktop.  In Jessie, Thunar does see the specific directory icons for home, documents etc.  But the generic folder/directory icon reverts to gnome.  In ASCII Thunar only picks up the the colorized Home icon.
>>
>> Xcfe is Devuan's default desktop and I want it to look beautiful.  Does anyone have a clue why Thunar is doing this?   It would be terribly inefficient to have to have to resort to switching out the icons in the complete Gnome icon theme (well over 10mb).  What am I missing.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> golinux
>> _______________________________________________
>> Thunar-dev mailing list
>> Thunar-dev at xfce.org
>> https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/thunar-dev
>>
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