Huge indicator icon in Xubuntu 14.04

[Hopungo Semi-bit]

My Wallch AppIndicator icon is huge. It seems applet does not resize it. The original file (/usr/share/wallch/files/indicator_radiance_normal.png) has the 64x64 resolution whilst the AppIndicator only 24x24. I was able to temporarily fix the problem by resizing icon in Gimp.

Related Q&A on Ask Ubuntu: http://askubuntu.com/questions/456728/huge-wallch-icon-in-xubuntu-14-04

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: wallch 4.0-0ubuntu4 [modified: usr/bin/wallch usr/share/wallch/files/indicator_radiance_normal.png]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-24.46-generic 3.13.9
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Apr 28 12:34:29 2014
SourcePackage: wallch
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Alex Solanos (hakermania)]

Hey there :) Thanks for the bug report.

I am quite sure that the indicator itself should be automatically scaled down to fit. This is automatically done to Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu gnome 14.04.

That's why I think that's more of a XUbuntu bug and how it handles its indicator icons. I will try to contact some dev of xfce4-indicator-plugin and ask their opinion :)

Thanks nonetheless!

[Alex Solanos (hakermania)]

OK, confirmed from the devs! Not a Wallch specific bug, it stems from the package responsible for drawing the indicator.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Alin Andrei (nilarimogard)]

Note that this also occurs with the GNOME Flashback session!

[Alin Andrei (nilarimogard)]

Also, since this only occurs with about 2-3 indicators (I've tested around 15), it should be fixable in Wallch itself (and easier than to wait for an upstream update which can take forever).

[Alex Solanos (hakermania)]

Yeah, we can resize our indicator icons to be around 24x24. True. I will do it and hopefully it will come through an update.

[Andrzej (ndrwrdck)]

For a long time Unity indicators used only fixed-size icons. Not sure if Unity now supports scalable icons but Gtk API seems stuck to 22px.

Xfce indicator plugin used to do bitmap scaling on the fly but that produced ugly icons, was CPU intensive for indicators that update icons often and buggy. Newer versions assume that all icon sizes are 22px.

[Alex Solanos (hakermania)]

Thanks for the information Andrzej :)

Do you have any link that proves your sayings? Unity completely supports larger icons. It scales them down automatically :D

[Hopungo Semi-bit (hopungo)]

Alin Andrei (nilarimogard) Yes, I changed the icon size to 24x24. And I mentioned it in report. Nevertheless, thanks :)

[Zoran Valentak (zorvalent)]

Hello, my Xubuntu 14.04 installation is also suffering from tray icons not being properly resized. So far I noticed Clementine and Skype having these types of problems. I attached a screenshot of the issue. I listened to advice on Xubuntu IRC and tried to remove the indicator plugin so that all programs start using the Notification plugin, but it didn't help, without the indicator plugin I don't have network, volume and skype icons at all. If you need any other info, do tell....

[Alex Solanos (hakermania)]

Hello Zoran!

One very simple and quick solution would be to resize the png icons located at /usr/share/wallch/files to be 22x22

I remind you that this is not a bug of Wallch as the icons should be manually resized by the indicator drawer.

[Zoran Valentak (zorvalent)]

Yep I know about this fix, but the problem is that Skype icons used for the system tray aren't easily accessible. From what I gather they are somehow embedded into the executable or something like that, that's what I read after all. For now I found a temporary fix by increasing the panel thickness so that all the icons are equally big....

[Alex Solanos (hakermania)]

This isn't about Wallch at all. We shouldn't be discussing it here.

[Harrisk3-f (harrisk3-f)]

Created attachment 5537
Variety icon is second from the left. Its size is clearly larger than the other icons.

Variety is a program that fetches random wallpapers from sites around the web and periodically changes the desktop background. Its icon displays in the indicator area on the panel. I am running Linux Mint XFCE 17 and when I am running Variety, its icon is much larger than the other icons in the indicator area. It did not do this under Linux Mint MATE 17. Restarting the program doesn't change the size. Other users report this bug under Gnome Shell (Fallback) and Xubuntu 14.04. This bug has been reported to the creator of Variety at the following link: https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1319159

[Harrisk3-f (harrisk3-f)]

Comment on attachment 5537
Variety icon is second from the left. Its size is clearly larger than the other icons.

I misspoke: the Variety icon is third from the left.

[Andrzej (ndrwrdck)]

Hi, both xfce4-indicator-plugin and Gnome Fallback's indicator applet simply display the icon received provided by the indicator. Libindicator API does not allow to specify the icon size and therefore the convention is that all icon sizes are 22px. Indicators that violate this rule (multiload) are doing that because they require a specific panel geometry anyway.

A similar issue existed in wallch (another wallpaper changer, do they share the code?) and was fixed there by simply resizing the icon to 22px.

In the past I tried doing icon scaling on the fly but it was buggy, CPU consuming and causing maintenance problems. So unless libindicator starts supporting icon size selection/scaling I will not add this feature to the plugin.

[James Boylan (drahkar)]

This issue has rolled into Ubuntu 15.10 with Xubuntu Desktop installed running xfce4-indicator-plugin 2.3.3.

[spike speigel (frail-knight)]

This is happening in 17.04 as well. I've experienced it with google music manager. It started with an appropriately sized icon. After I had performed uploads of some music, I looked up, and the icon had changed in size. It was then bigger to the point that the headphones were clipped off at the top of the panel.

I do not know what caused the change in the indicator icon size.

[spike speigel (frail-knight)]

Found the following news about the latest (dev?)release of xfce which will use GTK+3.

https://simon.shimmerproject.org/2017/05/24/the-first-gtk3-release-of-xfce4-panel-is-out/

From the post:

"The newly added xfce_panel_plugin_get_icon_size relies on GtkImage directly and which introduces defined, meaningful icon size-steps to avoid fuzzy icons in the panel."

Sounds promising.

[Theo Linkspfeifer (lastonestanding)]

Tested in 18.04, and Wallch's icon is properly sized. Neither Clementine nor Skype are displayed as indicators, but appear as classic tray icons.

I could not test with Google Music Manager because it does not show any tray icon unless you actually sign in with a Google account.

[Sean Davis (bluesabre)]

Seems to be resolved. Closing this ticket out.