icons size issues in Nautilus

[Wolf Rogner]

Ubuntu 15.04 (right after upgrade)
Macbook Pro Retina 15 (menu scaling to 1,62)

Nautilus scaling 150% for icons and 66% for lists

Icons in Nautilus are displayed properly except for LibreOffice icons which are displayed 200-250%.
Previews are displayed same size as LibreOffice icons.
MS document files are displayed properly (150%)

Dragging a file over a folder previously (14.10) made the folder darker (sometimes changing icon to opened) and the file could be dropped.

In 15.04 (Nautilus 3.14.2) the folder icon SHRINKS (to 100%) and cannot be seen under the dragged icon.

Would be nice if the old behaviour would be restored.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.14.2-0ubuntu9
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-15.15-generic 3.19.3
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-15-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia wl
ApportVersion: 2.17.2-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sat Apr 25 11:26:58 2015
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'use-tree-view' b'true'
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'default-column-order' b"['name', 'size', 'type', 'date_modified', 'owner', 'group', 'permissions', 'mime_type', 'where', 'date_accessed']"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-05-17 (707 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64+mac (20130424)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to vivid on 2015-04-25 (0 days ago)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

can you also include a screenshot of the issue? what icon theme are you using?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I can confirm the smaller folder icons on dnd issue but not the libreoffice one

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

Well, its the default (Humanity and Gnome for LibreOffice).
Screenshot attached.

I checked with Gnome, there are suitable icon sizes available.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

weird but I can't confirm the issue with those icons...

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

I have set display magnification to 1.62 in System Settings / Displays
I have set default icon magnification to 150% and list to 66% in Nautilus

I agree, it is strange.

The phenomenon is not constrained to LibreOffice icons. I found that HTML files are the same icon size.

Here is a strange observation: the scalable icons of LibreOffice are corrupt (see screenshot)

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

I tried a few things:

reinstalled libreoffice-common (which contains the icons).

Nothing changed

I changed an icon manually and it worked (changed to hicolor icons, 48x48).

Nothing changed

dconf-editor: claims desktop icon set is ubuntu-mono-dark (which has no libreoffice icons).

No entry for nautilus.

Thus the question: How does Unity get its icons?

The desktop file states (e.g. /usr/share/applications/libreoffice-writer.desktop):
...
Icon=libreoffice-writer
...

and on the machine I can find:

./app-install/icons/libreoffice-writer.svg
./icons/gnome/16x16/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/gnome/32x32/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/gnome/48x48/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/gnome/128x128/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/gnome/scalable/apps/libreoffice-writer.svg
./icons/gnome/256x256/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/libreoffice-writer.xpm
./icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/libreoffice-writer.svg
./icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/HighContrast/16x16/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/HighContrast/32x32/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/HighContrast/48x48/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/HighContrast/22x22/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/HighContrast/256x256/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/HighContrast/24x24/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/locolor/16x16/apps/libreoffice-writer.png
./icons/locolor/32x32/apps/libreoffice-writer.png

Presuming Nautilus being a Gnome application, Nautilus searches for the icons in the gnome part first (maybe someone can answer this quickly before I have to dig into the sources).

So, as I am completely confused now, how can I help sort this out?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the file icons don't come from the .desktop Icon, they are mode on the mimetype (you can see the mimetype in e.g nautilus properties)

you can run "gvfs-info <somefile>" to get the details of the mimetype and icon it's using

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

Interesting but not further fruitful.

gvfs-info 20060627\ One\ Codes.ods (just one sample)

gives these attributes:
...
display name: 20060627 One Codes.ods
...
type: regular
...
attributes:
  standard::type: 1
  standard::name: 20060627 One Codes.ods
...
  standard::icon: application-vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet, x-office-spreadsheet
  standard::content-type: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet
  standard::fast-content-type: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet
...
  standard::symbolic-icon: application-vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet-symbolic, x-office-spreadsheet-symbolic, application-vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet, x-office-spreadsheet
...

gvfs-mime --query 20060627\ One\ Codes.ods
No default applications for '20060627 One Codes.ods' (Hey? right clicking provides open with LibreOffice Calc!!!)

Searched a bit more, found a reference to ~/.config/mimeapps.list and ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list. They differ in content but provide overlapping sections and mime types.

Strange that the application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet is missing from both files.

I compared these files to the ones I had with 14.10 (where the icons were displayed correctly): No differences here.

Any suggestions?

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

Correction: the mimeapps.list only overlap in section name ([Added Associations]) but the items are different.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

why do you call gvfs-mime there? it's to know what program is associated to open the file, nothing to do with the icon, that command works on mimetype, e.g "gvfs-mime --query application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet" should work

nautilus looks at the corresponding icon in the theme, e.g
$ find /usr/share/themes/<icon_theme_name> -name application-vnd.oasis.opendocument.*

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

not /usr/share/themes but /usr/share/icons

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

OK, now we come closer to the icons.
(the gvfs-mime was just an excursion to more precisely understand whats going on under the hood).

So the question now is, which icon set does Nautilus choose?

The Theme is Ambiance.
The icon theme in the index.theme is ubuntu-mono-dark

But there are no icons for applications or documents in this theme.
I observed that Nautilus takes the folder icons from Humanity. Some icons are taken even from the pixmaps directory.

So, there must be some other mechanism to extract icons.

Another interesting observation: The phenomenon can be observed on a LiveCD (or LiveUSB)
I have tried it on all my other machines (most Apple hardware, some HP and other machines).

With a Nautilus setting of 150% for icon view, this can be observed on all machines.

try:

Nautilus preferences:
Icon View Defaults: Default zoom level: 150%
List View Defaults: Default zoom level: 66%

Make an LO document, change the zoom with CTRL-+/-.

Thanks for the excursion into how Unity works in conjunction with GNOME.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Ok, what is weird is that your screenshot looks like icons on 100% zoom on my laptop, but maybe it's due to the scaling. Here they look a bit too big with a set up in zooms.

The way icons works is that the code looks for matches in the different theme directory (the index.theme has an Inherit= key which lists other themes to use), so e.g the ubuntu-mono themes inherits from Humanity, GNOME, hicolor, so the code is looking in all of those. Also if the exact name is not found, it fallback to more generic ones ("application-vnd.oasis.opendocument.text.png/svg" is tried first, then it tries "application-vnd.oasis.opendocument" then "application-vnd.oasis", etc)

It's likely that some of the icons are lacking at specific sizes in the theme

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

My display has a resolution of 2880x1800. I need to zoom the display otherwise I cannot read anything. That's why I zoom 1,62 (on the Macbook 13", 1,5 achieves the same result).

Also, I like the icons to be at 150% but in List-View I am more interested in the text, thus 66%

As I found out, this has nothing to do with the penomenon. Zomming to 150% in Nautilus gives the same result irrespectively of the display or its zoom factor.

Next: Missing Icons. If this is the case, it must have happened during upgrade. But here comes another interesting part:
I made a backup of the icons before upgrading. The folders are identical.

So, I doubt this is an issue of missing icons. I can cross check if I would know, what the normal size of icons would be (I presumed 48x48 for default 100%). Then the next size would be 64x64. There, the icons are missing.
In 128x128 there is a link to the svgs again.

In my ubuntu-mono-dark, the inheritance adds Humanity-Dark which has less icons than Humanity.
I have added Humanity to the inheritance list and will test this now. Be back right then

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

I tried the following:

added Humanity to the inheritance list: same effect (even though there are more sizes available)
replaced Humanity-Dark with Humanity: same effect.

Made a symbolic link to the Humanity mimes: same effect.
Some icons get increased to 200% while others only grow to 150%.

Either the icon themes are broken or it is something we oversee.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the dnd issue should be fixed with https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/humanity-icon-theme/0.6.9

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

Just installed 0.6.9 and sorry, no.

It does not fix the huge icons at all.

The shrunken folder icons are, as far as I can see, gone.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> "and sorry, no"

right, nobody claimed they are, the previous comment state that the "dnd issue should be fixed", which you confirmed...

[Wolf Rogner (war-rsb)]

well then ... excellent work :-)

what is "dnd"?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

drag and drop

[MichaelB (mrbou)]

This problem still present in 16.04.2 (with 150% icons zoom). No fix or workaround? (See attachment)

[Coeur Noir (coeur-noir)]

Also affected by this problem although I do not use any scale factor regarding the screen size.

I have icons of different sizes as soon as I zoom into a folder or set defaut zoom to ≠ 100% in Nautilus preferences.

See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1687411