xpm files look horrid

[Israel Dahl]

This bug affects all icon themes, and desktops (AFAIK)
So I decided posting it here would get the attention it needs.
The problem stems from packages that are orphaned in Debian.
Many icons that are xpm look terrible in the Dash, and some are sized incorrectly.
The desktop files of some are completely missing the line
Icon=*iconName*
Some have only
Icon=
Some have paths
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/*iconName*

The best solution that I have thought of (it may not be the best) is someone working for Canonical or a member of Ubuntu can make a script to parse the desktop files of all installed packages and check for 3 things
1. and Icon= line
2. Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps
3. Icon= with no icon name

If there is an icon, convert ${pixmaps}${iconName} -scale ${size} ${properdirectory}${iconName}.png
so there would be a proper Icon in a proper directory.
I suppose, though the rules files of all those rouge programs might need to be fixed, or the menu-update program needs to be modified to fix this when a program is installed.

If there is a better solution, I'd be glad to hear it.

The Lubuntu-dev team is compiling a list of all the apps in the LSC that install this way.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Missing%20Menu%20Icons
Any advice, or feedback as how to procede to fix this for the millions of users would be much appreciated.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: ubuntu-mono 13.04+14.04.20131211-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.12.0-7.15-generic 3.12.4
Uname: Linux 3.12.0-7-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.12.7-0ubuntu3
Architecture: i386
CurrentDesktop: LXDE
Date: Wed Jan 1 17:56:58 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-12-31 (1 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 14.04 "Trusty Tahr" - Alpha i386 (20131230)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-themes
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Redwolf (viking.redwolf)]

XPM aren't used anymore since Cairo can render SVG the same way as PNG, respecting alpah channels. Only Openbox isn't updated its libraries.

[Israel Dahl (israeldahl)]

I think some of the other old-school WM still use xpm, too.... I know JWM does for sure....
I didn't realize before this that xpm are related to xbm...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_PixMap
But openbox uses xbm for the buttons. JWM uses xpm for the menus (etc...)
so very few users would be affectted if all xpm files were removed.... though it would be nice to have both (for the random person who uses JWM or maybe something like icewm, if it uses xpm, too...)

[Israel Dahl (israeldahl)]

apparently this is related to gdk-pixbuf, so I am marking it accordingly