Inherit human-icon-theme so that gnome-icon-theme and all icon-themes which depend on it have access to the notification-* icons used by notify-osd.

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio]

Binary package hint: gnome-icon-theme

Currently all icon themes except for Human do not contain the notification-* icons used by the new notify-osd system. This leads to them not being able to correctly display things like volume and brightness changes correctly. Obviously some thing needs to happen. I think that making gnome-icon-theme inherit the human-icon-theme so that it and all icon-themes which depend on it have access to the notification-* icons used by notify-osd.

It seems like the least invasive way to do this. Most icon themes in Gnome already inherit gnome-icon-theme, so this will fix the issue for most icon themes while only having to maintain one patch. Using the inherit function is also ideal as it will allow icon themes to eventually add there own notification-* icons which will be used as soon as they exist.

I have tested this approach with all icon themes shipped with the default Ubuntu desktop as well as a number of third party themes.

[Andreas Nilsson (andreasn)]

I don't think this is the right way to do it. It sounds like a icky thing to do, since human-icon-theme inherit gnome-icon-theme already, so you'll have a circular dependency kind off.
It will also deepen the gap between upstream and ubuntu's gnome-icon-theme (the only difference I can think of right now is that the start-here icon is changed), and that will open up to more bugs and confused maintainers.

A better solution is to make notifyosd install the icons into it's private hicolor, just like banshee, rhythmbox, gpm etc. currently does (ie /usr/share/notifyosd/icons/$size/status). More instructions here:
http://live.gnome.org/ThemableAppSpecificIcons/

[Kenneth Wimer (kwwii)]

Andreas is exactly right. We have already put icons in the package itself, now we have to make them install into hicolor. Then everyone will feel the love of the notification bubbles with their very own icon set.

[Kenneth Wimer (kwwii)]

This is not a bug in the gnome-icon theme but rather in the implementation of hicolor icons and the code to use them correctly

[Kenneth Wimer (kwwii)]

To wrap things up...the icons in the notify-osd package should be installing into /usr/share/notify-osd/icons/hicolor/scalable/status. Until now the "hicolor" is missing in the path.

Also the icon lookup should be using the naming fallbacks. So, if there is no notification-volume-low.svg it should use notification-volume.png if is exists (and so on).

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

I'll unsubscribe Ubuntu Sponsors for main for now. Please re-subscribe when ready.

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (andrewsomething)]

 Last time I looked at the source for notify-osd, the icons were not actually there. They were part of the human theme.

 I'm going to go ahead and mark this as a dup of Bug #331311 since that was the original bug.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

There should be two sets of icons. One is freely available and could be
included in the GNOME default theme, one is limited for use on Ubuntu.

Mark

[Iain Lane (laney)]

What does "one is freely available" mean? Ubuntu is going to start deploying non-free artwork?

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Some of the work we deliver as part of this initiative will come under
the same protection as the Ubuntu name does. Well be sure to deliver
work that fits into existing themes, like GNOME, along with the code too.

Mark

[Andreas Nilsson (andreasn)]

Iain: That sounds like non-free, yes.

Mark: are you kidding?
I guess you're free to do everything twice if you want to though.

[Andreas Nilsson (andreasn)]

On closer inspection of the package it seems the new icons in notify-osd are a copy-paste thing from existing gnome-icon-theme stuff, so not as much wasted work as I first expected. Sorry for the noise.