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How do I add an icon as a "window decoration" to a window that doesn't have one?

Asked by Stephen Hamer

A small problem, which the grey-beards of ubuntu should not unduly stress themselves about, but which is presently of great interest to me (I have got to an age in which I have to have small problems to obsess about).

When I open a window in 10.04, that window usually comes decorated with an icon at the top of the window, on the left-side - the same icon that is used in "launchers" and in (say) an Application-menu entry. These icons are, I believe, actually called "window decorations". Most windows have them, but not all. I recently installed gpppon (a graphical interface for pon / poff connections) in my system, and although it is a pretty ancient piece of (unsupported) software, it worked out fine. But it came without an identifying menu- or window-icon. I managed to attach an icon to its Application-Internet menu-entry (right click entry, choose "Properties", click on the "widget" at the top-left of the properties dialogue-box, which acts as a place-holder for a menu-icon -> Pixmaps (or wherever) in the browser window that the system puts up and choose an icon)), but can't find any way to attach a window-icon. At present there is just a white square where the icon should be.

Is there a simple way customise an individual window; and if so, how do you do it? Or do window decorations - if they are present at all - come bundled-in with the original application code, so that they can only be varied by some arcane script-editing process (which I would be very leery of attempting).

"No easy solution" will do as an answer here. I can then start to obsess about some other small problem.

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Federico Tello Gentile
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Revision history for this message
Best Federico Tello Gentile (federicotg) said : 		#1

The icon might be missing in the application itself. Maybe because it is such a basic app (just 2 buttons) they did not bother with adding an icon to it.

Revision history for this message
Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#2

You may edit the launcher as root.
Read the changelog.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/gpppon

Revision history for this message
Stephen Hamer (stephen-hamer-uk) said : 		#3

A big thank you to Sam and Frederico for taking the trouble to answer my Q, especially as I stupidly filed it under the wrong package–evolution–when 'gnome' would perhaps have been the correct choice.

I tried Sam's idea: editing the launcher as root. Or rather, I tried my interpretation of this idea: to be specific, I searched for gpppon in a nautilus window to find the launcher-file. This turned up two candidates: /usr/share/app-install/desktop and /usr/share/applications. I then edited these as root by doing:

gksudo nautilus

browsing to the relevant files and adding icons in the manner previously described. I then left my session as root by doing:

exit

This maneuver gave me two files sporting handsome new icons, but produced no change in the gpppon window when I clicked the (top panel) launcher.

Sam also suggests reading the gpppon changelog. But the web-page he lists is, I'm afraid a bit uninformative; it actually contains very little info of any kind. I would add here that the app. itself does seem to come supplied with a changelog-generating file. I found it at /usr/share/doc/gpppon, copied it, and then unpacked it with archive manager. For my trouble I got a longish screed listing all the changes made to gpppon since 1999. But this too contained nothing very usable (at least by me).

So on this occasion, I think we're going to have to hand the palm to Frederico: some windows, evidently, are just not meant to have icons. Time to move on.

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Stephen Hamer (stephen-hamer-uk) said : 		#4

Thanks Federico Tello Gentile, that solved my question.