Application needs hi-res or SVG icon

[dmiranda]

The provided application icon does not look nice when scaled to a larger size, for example in the application switcher

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: lyx 2.0.2-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-17.26-generic-pae 3.2.6
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-17-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 1.92-0ubuntu1
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Feb 21 20:27:24 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release i386 (20111012)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=pt_BR:pt:en
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: lyx
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-02-11 (10 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

This annoys me also. Here is a screenshot showing the poor resolution of the icon, when pressing alt-tab.

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes (jmarc)]

This problem is fixed in LyX 2.0.3, released today. It would make sense to upgrade LyX at least in precise and oneiric, since stable releases tend to be very safe.

JMarc (LyX developer and ubuntu user).

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

I'm not sure what's happened, but I upgraded LyX to 2.0.3 from ppa:lyx-devel/release today, and the problem is still there. Or are you saying it's fixed in the nightlies?

Also, the package says 2.0.3, as does the LyX background. However, when I look at launchpad, it says it was released "2012-02-19", which is too early?

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes (jmarc)]

What I meant is that we provide a svg icon and that the autotools machinery tries to install it in freedektop-mandated places. However, I would not be surprised to find that there is some packaging to do on the debian/ubuntu side of things to make use of it.

So this is probably a shortcoming of this particular build.

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

Ah. So should this bug stay open? And I guess I should file the bug at https://launchpad.net/~lyx-devel/+archive/release too?

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes (jmarc)]

Yes and yes. The lyx-devel ppa is one thing, but real ubuntu builds are another.

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

Thanks. I tried, but unfortunately ~lyx-devel doesn't allow filing of bugs.

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes (jmarc)]

Liviu, do you read us?

[Liviu Andronic (landronimirc)]

Yes, and you are of course correct: the '~lyx-devel' PPA and the official builds are different.

Concerning '~lyx-devel', I do not see how to enable a bug tracking feature. Does anyone know if this can be done for teams?

As for the issue itself, how can I get LyX to use the SVG (or high-res PNG) in the use-cases outlined above?

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

> Concerning '~lyx-devel', I do not see how to enable a bug tracking feature. Does anyone know if this can be done for teams?
I think bugs appear in the bug page for teams simply when they are assigned to the team or when the team is subscribed to the bug. I do not think there is any other way of directly reporting a bug to a team.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

Liviu, Launchpad bugs can only be filed for software projects. For that to work, LyX would need to be registered in Launchpad as a project (currently it is only a package within the Ubuntu project). However, since LyX already has its own Trac instance, this might be redundant, and the LyX Trac might be the best place to register bugs related to the packages in the ~lyx-devel PPA (as opposed to bugs in the official Ubuntu LyX packages).

About the actual issue, my suggestion is to consult the packaging code used by Ubuntu itself. This can be done by:
1. Navigate https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lyx
2. Click "Code" near the top
3. Choose a release, e.g. lp:ubuntu/precise/lyx
4. Click "Browse the code"
5. View the contents of the "debian" directory

I suspect that in the file lyx.desktop, the line:

Icon=lyx

…must be changed to:

Icon=lyx.svg

…or perhaps a more complete path, e.g. /usr/share/lyx/images/lyx.svg. If I make this latter change manually on my system, Ubuntu uses the SVG icon.

However, I'm not familiar enough with Debian/Ubuntu packaging to know how to accomplish this automatically. At step #3 above, you can see the names of some Ubuntu devs who have modified the packaging code for LyX in the past. Perhaps if you contact them they can quickly explain how.

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

I can confirm that Paul's solution works fine on my build too. That is, "Icon=lyx.svg" does not work, but "Icon=/usr/share/lyx/images/lyx.svg" works fine.

FWIW, I'm not sure to what the default "Icon=lyx" actually refers. I tried changing these files, but it doesn't seem to use any of these as a source.
/usr/share/app-install/icons/lyx.png
/usr/share/lyx/images/lyx.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/lyx.png

[Liviu Andronic (landronimirc)]

I partially solved the problem by linking /usr/share/lyx/images/lyx.svg to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/lyx.svg. This way LyX desktop and panel launchers use the slick SVG icon. However this doesn't seem to affect the WM: When you launch LyX, it will still be sporting a low-resolution bitmap in the app list on the panel or when switching between apps via 'alt + tab'.

Please test. [1] If someone knows how to deal with the icon used by the WM please let me know.

[1] https://launchpad.net/~lyx-devel/+archive/release

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

Sorry, I've moved from Unity to KDE, so I can't really test it (I don't have Unity installed any more). It's looking fine on KDE though!