From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Apr 28 6:23:26 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mailgate.cadence.com (mailgate.Cadence.COM [158.140.2.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 208B714EAF for ; Wed, 28 Apr 1999 06:23:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dmlb@ragnet.demon.co.uk) Received: (from smap@localhost) by mailgate.cadence.com (8.8.5/8.6.8) id GAA25328 for ; Wed, 28 Apr 1999 06:23:23 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199904281323.GAA25328@mailgate.cadence.com> Received: from symnt3.Cadence.COM(194.32.101.100) by mailgate.cadence.com via smap (mjr-v1.2) id xma925305801.025301; Wed, 28 Apr 99 06:23:21 -0700 Received: from pc287-cam.cadence.com ([194.32.96.111]) by symnt3.Cadence.COM with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2232.9) id JHJKDKQ1; Wed, 28 Apr 1999 14:18:27 +0100 Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Duncan Barclay" To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 14:23:52 +0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Adding desktop support Reply-To: dmlb@ragnet.demon.co.uk In-reply-to: <19990428222020.A70537@clear.co.nz> References: <199904280647.QAA26783@cimlogic.com.au>; from John Birrell on Wed, Apr 28, 1999 at 04:47:35PM +1000 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v2.53/R1) Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > On Wed, Apr 28, 1999 at 04:47:35PM +1000, John Birrell wrote: > > > > [idea to imbed relevant .xpm icon data in ELF executables] > > > > Every response so far has been pretty negative, so I thought I'd > break the running theme and say, for what it's worth, I like the > idea. > > If there is going to be icon data associated with an executable, I > can think of no better place for it. > > Presumably, for this to be useful, some guidelines ought to be well > known regarding the dimensions of the icon, and the colour depth > available? > > Maybe (for those application authors with severe artistic ability) > there could be a number of optional images present, e.g. one mono > image, one 16-colour image, one 256-colour image, one 65536-colour > image, etc... > > An application such as a file manager could then select an icon for > display which is appropriate to the number of available colours. > > In fact, running amok with this idea, perhaps an xml section > describing the command-line parameters of the executable with a > known (minimal) DTD would be useful for applications for which an > ability to pre-parse command-line syntaxes would be useful (like > file managers, once again). > > This all sounds very non-unixy. But I don't really know why. > > > Joe > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message RE: icons in exectuables and maybe more I mainly use Unix boxes for running applications (CAD, text, simulations), both at home and work for over ten years. As much as I love Unix for the flexibility it gives me when I program I do think that there is huge room for improvements on the desktop side of things. I whole heartadly support John's idea and would like to add support for the ideas of taking with further to encode whatever to get rid of the obscene hack that is file extension -> action databases in current desktops. Time to go and read up on objcopy.... Duncan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message