Bug 4342 - many applications under openbox will not use theme icons.
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: Openbox
Classification: Unclassified
Component: general
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Linux
: P3 normal
Assignee: Dana Jansens
QA Contact:
URL:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-11-15 17:09 EST by james mcdowall
Modified: 2009-12-18 14:02:00 EST
1 user (show)

See Also:


Description james mcdowall 2009-11-15 17:09:43 EST 
please take a look at this screenshot:

http://omploader.org/vMnMyaA

in it you can see that I have 6 different applications open...

gimp, abiword and firefox on the left and liferea, gedit and rhythmbox on the right.

I have an icon theme configured through lxapperanace (in this case it is buuf-deuce but the same applies to every icon theme i have tried.

The applications on the right are all using the theme icons, the applications on the left are all using their original icons.

you can also see in the bottom left of the screenshot my tint2 panel showing the original firefox icon.  Tint2 is displaying the "window icon" for each application.

My question is wether openbox can force all applications running under it to use custom icons.  This will then allow tint2 to display the custom icons also.

Thank you.
Comment 1 james mcdowall 2009-11-16 21:01:18 EST 
i have also added a bug report on ubuntu launchpad here
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openbox/+bug/483941
Comment 2 Mikachu 2009-11-16 21:07:52 EST 
Openbox will display whatever icon the app specifies on the window, as does tint2 presumably. It would be impossible for openbox to override this icon with the "theme" icon, since it has no idea which window is which program. In X, there is no way to look at a window and know what binary started it. Even if there was, it would be a huge hack to try to map the binary to some desktop environment's idea of an icon theme and use that.
Comment 3 james mcdowall 2009-11-16 21:42:23 EST 
Thanks for the reply Mikachu

Perhaps you could help me further track down the source of this bug:
Which application would be responsible for assigning theme icons to applications?

Would the issue lie with lxappearance?

I think the use of themes and custom icons affects many users, so I would appreciate any avenues of investigation you could suggest
Comment 4 Mikachu 2009-11-16 21:54:46 EST 
Each application is solely responsible for what icons its windows have.
Comment 5 james mcdowall 2009-11-16 22:29:39 EST 
I guess ultimately it's up to the applications.  However, I know that firefox, for example, is capable of displaying the theme icon as it's window icon.  It exhibits this behaviour (as do all applications) under gnome.

I know that Openbox is not gnome, but many of the applications i am using under openbox do display the theme icon.

There must be some "centralised" utility that "talks" to all the applications and tells them that they should be using the icons defined by the user rather than their own.  I'm just trying to understand what this "utility" is.

And I'm trying to understand why some apps are using the theme and some aren't and if its possible to implement theme icons across the board.


Thanks
Comment 6 Dana Jansens 2009-11-21 17:04:51 EST 
If you run gnome-settings-daemon, do the apps then use the right icons ?  They may be getting that info from there.  Maybe they don't all look at whatever lxappearance is setting and just assume you must be running g-s-d.  I'd like to know cuz I'm thinking about implementing a simple g-s-d replacement inside/around/for Openbox.
Comment 7 james mcdowall 2009-11-21 22:56:36 EST 
Hi Dana

I just installed and tried gnome-settings-daemon.  But I get errors:

(gnome-settings-daemon:9735): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed 

Everything theme wise: icons, openbox theme, wallpaper is reset to the original installation state.

If I run gnome-settings-daemon again I then gat another error:

** (gnome-settings-daemon:10239): WARNING **: Failed to acquire org.gnome.SettingsDaemon 

** (gnome-settings-daemon:10239): WARNING **: Could not acquire name 

I don't have gnome or any gnome related packages installed.
Comment 8 Dana Jansens 2009-12-18 14:02:00 EST 
Yeh you can only run one copy of it at a time.  Okay, thanks for testing, I guess that is not the solution.  I'm not sure why some apps would get the theme and some wouldn't, there must be some system (outside of the WM) providing it.  Maybe g-s-d needs something more also.