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Date:      Thu, 29 Apr 1999 08:45:22 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Thomas Valentino Crimi <tcrimi+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Adding desktop support (please don't)
Message-ID:  <wr_5FWm00Uw809xqQ0@andrew.cmu.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199904290014.RAA24394@mina.sr.hp.com>
References:  <199904290014.RAA24394@mina.sr.hp.com>

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  Sorry to be adding more fuel to the fire, but I have a question, and
then a proposal.

   Except for initial 'wonder what there is in /usr/bin?' type browsing,
can anyone imagine actually sauntering up to to a chock-full (379
commands at my count) directory and looking at each one through it's
icon?  I could envision a very nice 'learn unix browser' which shows a
list of each command and lets the user choose to see the short
description or the man page, but really, assuming you did make about 450
new icons for each and every system binary.  

   One alternative I'd like to propose is an icons.db file, laid out for
optimum keysearch, with the .ICON elf section possibly containing a
unique identifier for the binary.  The .db file could contain multiple
versions of each icon, in all the popular styles, and the user could
have his/her own .icons.db file which is searched prior to the system
list.  Next comes /usr/local/share/icons.db where the administrator
could install 'icon packages' to override system-default binaries as
well as icons for the ports. Now, from here we would need to add in some
pkg_add, pkg_delete like utilties icon_add, icon_delete which access
this db.. the syntax could look like

 icon_add <binary name> [stylename:iconfile]...

where icon_add could extract the unique identifier from the binary, and
then add in the iconfile.  The user can then always retrieve icons of
any style type from the db, and everyone can have the interface they
want.

I volunteer to send patches if people want this  :)

<just kidding>  icond? anyone? </just kiodding>

Thomas 


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