Docky

Why does an app find it's apps/svg icon then after its up switch to application-default-icon.png?

Asked by Ken Miller

Hi,

For the version 2.1.0 bzr docky r1165 ppa, I'm trying to provide icons for applications it doesn't know about, such as freemind. I've found that inserting /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/freemind.svg and re-running update-icon-caches /usr/share/icons/hicolor/ provides a perfect icon on application startup; however, once it finishes starting up, the icon reverts to the non-scalable, ugly /usr/share/icons/application-default-icon.png . I straced' docky, and it yields no clues. It successfully opens freemind.svg then later opens application-default-icon.png .

Advice welcome!

Thanks,

== k ==

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Chris S. (cszikszoy) said : 		#1

I'm not sure what you mean by "application startup"? This is how docky gets icons:
We first look at the .desktop file for the application. Everything is based around the .desktop files. We take the "Icon=" value from the .desktop file and use that as the icon for the application when it's sitting on the dock (not running).

Once you start an application, docky uses a complex process to try to map the running application to the .desktop file. Unfortunately, the authors of applications commonly use launcher scripts to launch their programs. For example, the .desktop file's "Exec=" value might say "application-a", but "application-a" is actually a shell script that launches the real application. Through some complex algorithms, we are able to detect and correct this simple case, but there are other cases where the matching process fails. In that situation, docky has no clue what .desktop file to match a running application with and we fallback on the low resolution icon provided by the window. What you're noticing is probably this.

So, the real problem is that this application is failing to match the .desktop file. Can you please file a bug along the lines of "Application X fails to match" or something similar. Please include the .desktop file for the application, and the output of ps -ef | grep "<APPLICATION NAME>" in the bug report.

Can you help with this problem?

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