Symbolic application indicator icons scaled 150%, from 16 to 24 pixels

[Stephen Brandt]

System indicators (audio, networking, shutdown, etc) are rendered at 16px. Application indicators on the other hand are rendered at 24px. See the attached screenshot with Haguichi indicator [1] as example.

For symbolic icons this is most visible, because they are designed at 16px and scaling to 150% isn't going to look sharp... That's the reason I've programmed Haguichi indicator for the time being to not use the symbolic icon on Pantheon desktop [2], so that the hicolor icon is used instead. As the hicolor icon has a specific 24px sized bitmap and a few pixels margin around the shape itself, at least it doesn't *appear* too much off.

[1] https://code.launchpad.net/haguichi-indicator
[2] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ztefn/haguichi-indicator/0.3/revision/4

[Stephen Brandt (ztefn)]

Screenshot.

[Djax (parnold-x)]

Hi Stephen,
afaik all icons are 24px. Also the system indicators.

[Stephen Brandt (ztefn)]

Hi Djax,

I think you are right. It means that /usr/share/icons/elementary/panel/24/audio-volume-*-panel.svg is used instead of /usr/share/icons/elementary/status/symbolic/audio-volume-*-symbolic.svg

So symbolic icons are still not used by the system indicators and not correctly supported at all...?

[Danielle Foré (danrabbit)]

Hey Stephen, that's incorrect. There are 24px icons supplied that exist in the -symbolic namespace. Gtk will always prefer the icon name specified and will only fall back if that icon is not available at all. It won't fall back if the icon is simply missing the requested size. So you can (and should) supply 24px -symbolic icons

[Stephen Brandt (ztefn)]

Hi Daniel,

Can you provide me an example path to such 24px -symbolic file? I've truly never seen such file.

[Stephen Brandt (ztefn)]

Hmm, I see elementary has a few symbolic icons in /24x24/status. Neither hicolor nor Adwaita have symbolic icons in that location, but let me be the first then:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ztefn/haguichi/1.3/revision/27
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ztefn/haguichi-indicator/0.3/revision/7

With these commits it looks okay in Pantheon/Wingpanel. Next up, check if it doesn't break in any other desktop environments....

Thanks for the suggestion so far and good luck making all third party apps adhering your extended symbolic icon spec!