[Wylug-discuss] Gnome 2.6. Mime Type Icon Woes

[Dave Fisher]

On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 03:49:46PM +0100, John Leach wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-06-20 at 13:03, Dave Fisher wrote:
> > The so-called 'spatial browsing' model is even more annoying and
> > anti-productive than the users of trendier distros had led me to
> > believe.
>
> Yeh, object permanence is a real pain.  I don't know how we've lived
> with it over the past few million years.

I think the increasing shortage of landfill sites in most western
societies might be a clue ;-)

> > Almost all file types (including devices, directories, etc. are
> > represented by a default 'dog-eared page' icon.  With the result that my
> > shell now gives me far more visual browsing clues than the bloody GUI
> > file manager!
> >
> > So, can anyone tell me where gnome hides the configuration to associate
> > file types with icons?
>
> As far as I can see, ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/interface/%gconf.xml holds
> an entry named "icon_theme", which is set to "Industrial" in my case.

mmm ... I found that early on, but in my case something keeps re-setting
it to 'default'. I prefer Nuvola, but any modification by GUI or vim
just gets wiped out.

> This is translated to /usr/share/icons/Industrial somewhere along the
> line.  In this directory "index.theme" points at the various
> sub-directories containing the icons.  The icon files are named by their
> use (e.g: gnome-dev-cdrom.png).  I believe Nautilus knows to look for
> these particular file names for the file types, but I'm  not 100% sure
> on that.  Seems sensible (with names based on mime types being a big
> hint, e.g: gnome-mime-application-x-shockwave-flash.png)

I guessed along similar lines, so it's nice to know that at least one
other person concurs ;)

<snip>

> Try creating a new user and logging in as that.  That might indicate
> whether it's a legacy config issue.

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

Dave