reduce icons in icon chooser dialog

[Nick Schermer]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 8:10 AM, Jannis Pohlmann <jannis at xfce.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Mar 2011 23:27:57 +0200
> Nick Schermer <nickschermer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Jannis Pohlmann <jannis at xfce.org>
>> wrote:
>> > On Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:38:14 +0200
>> > Nick Schermer <nickschermer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Bump
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 8:27 PM, Nick Schermer
>> >> <nickschermer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> > Folks,
>> >> >
>> >> > I've just pushed a branch to exo that excludes the 'symlink'
>> >> > icons in a theme from the icon view. On the common themes
>> >> > (Gnome,Tango) this reduces the number of icons with ~50% (ie.
>> >> > 50% of the icons are symlinks to real files) and you only see
>> >> > each image once. The symlink names are stored internally, so
>> >> > when you open the chooser for a desktop files with
>> >> > "xfce4-settings" as icon name, "preferences-desktop" is selected.
>> >> >
>> >> > Downside of this is that "preferences-desktop" is returned when
>> >> > you click ok and xfce4-settings is lost (I could fix that
>> >> > behaviour, but you get the point; spec names are set in those
>> >> > cases).
>> >> >
>> >> > Upside, less icons to scroll, and probably (no proof here) much
>> >> > faster; because even though the code pokes the files to check if
>> >> > they are symlinks, nothing is worse for performance then
>> >> > rendering images.
>> >
>> > Am I wrong here or does this also mean that some icon names will
>> > simply disappear? That might make some people wonder why icons they
>> > have been using before are missing out of a sudden.
>>
>> Indeed they do disappear. I could show in a tooltip which other
>> icon-names the icon represents, but I don't think people care about
>> names _that_ much, however, seeing the same icon a couple of times in
>> the same view (some up to 6 times and a steady reduction of ~50%) is
>> also confusing.
>
> I usually use the type-ahead feature to find the icon I want to use.
> There of course, names are very important. But as a developer myself I
> know more about the icon naming schemes etc. than the regular user
> does (maybe they don't even know about type-ahead search), so for
> others this feature might not be as important.

Type-ahead search also searches the "alternative" names, so if you
type "xfce-filemanager", "file-manager" is filtered.

>> > Also, the inconsistency issue (in particular across different
>> > themes) that you describe in your other mail makes me think that
>> > this either needs more thought or that we maybe shouldn't do it.
>> > But then again, I haven't looked into it deeply enough to have a
>> > strong opinion to bring to the table.
>>
>> If we use more spec icon-names, the problem becomes less and less
>> visible. It could be possible to add a checkbox "hide duplicate
>> icons", but personally that will only confuse more.
>
> True. Keep in mind however that the icon naming spec includes only the
> basic icon names. I assume that there will be more and more
> non-standard icon names again in the future because the icon naming
> spec maintainer(s) are rather reluctant to standardize new ones.

The code looks for symlinks, it has nothing to do with the spec, but
the fact it that the spec-name is the real file and alternative names
are symlinks to this file. So other icons will still show because they
are real image files.

Nick