Launcher Properties forgets icon

[D Tangman]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

Ubuntu 9.04, gnome-panel version 1:2.26.0-0ubuntu7.

When creating or editing the properties of an application launcher, clearing the "Command:" field and typing "/" causes the previously selected icon to be replaced by "Choose Icon", with the icon browser sitting in the root directory. The same occurs if everything after the initial "/" in the "Command:" field is deleted. Nothing typed in the "Command:" field should cause the selected icon to change.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

why is that a bug again? the launcher dialog look for an icon for the command you specified there, if you change the command the icon is also changed, i don't see the bug there.

[D Tangman (dgtangman)]

Two problems: First, the launcher dialog appears to only look for an icon for the command when the command field is set to "/"; setting it to anything else doesn't change the previously selected icon. But the launcher dialog can't possibly make an intelligent icon selection when the command field is "/". And in fact, it doesn't "look for an icon" - it simply throws away any existing icon selection and makes the user start over. At this point the user must navigate the directory structure to find the icon, since the icon browser is no longer sitting in the previously used icon directory.

Second, the launcher dialog does this even if the user has just finished selecting an icon for the launcher, so a user who works through the dialog following the usual convention of western languages (top left to lower right) has his/her efforts at icon selection discarded when he/she gets to the command field and is foolish enough to erase the field and type the full path to the desired executable.

In general, changing one field should *never* cause another field to change unless the change is almost certain to be a significant improvement on the existing contents of the second field. In this case the change provides no value for a user who hasn't yet selected the icon for the launcher and is intensely annoying for a user who has already set the icon to its desired value.

As a side note, if this were really a desirable "feature", it would presumably also be desirable whenever the command field is changed; that only one specific value in the command field causes the icon information to be discarded makes this look much more like a bug than a feature.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

feel free to send this upstream at bugzilla.gnome.org where the people writing the software can read about it.

[D Tangman (dgtangman)]

Done. Gnome bug # 592646.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for sent it there.