Re: Bad icons on the GWorkspace dock

[Bertrand Dekoninck]

On 2020-06-11 00:31:20 +0200 Patrick Cardona via Discussion list for the 
GNUstep programming environment <discuss-gnustep@gnu.org> wrote:

> Hi Riccardo,
> 
> 
>> Hi,
> 
> 
>> Patrick Cardona via Discussion list for the GNUstep programming environment 
>> wrote:
[...]
> 
>> AClock for me has no icon at all, you see when you launch it. It only has 
>> the "running clock" which is unfortunately not displayed.
> 
This has bothered me for years.

> You mean not displaying the time in the Dock, because mine is displaying the 
> time in the minified icon on the bottom of the screen.

It's time to learn about appicons...
I think the minified icon is called "MiniWindow" and the icon is called 
"AppIcon" in GNUstep.
Think of osX dock : appicons are on the left and minified windows go to the 
right of the dock.
In WindowMaker, appicons can be docked on the vertical dock at the right side 
and miniwindows go to windolist at the bottom of the screen.
You can set GNUstep not to display  AppIcons in SystemPreferences (see the  
"Defaults" section)  but not when using windowmaker : this one creates its own 
AppIcons if gnustep hides them.

When Ricardo said it has no icon at all, he meant that there isn't any "NSIcon 
= " line in AClock/Resources/Info-gnustep.plist (you can open the application 
bundle in GWorkspace to find this file ; see the "Open Folder" menuentry).

So AClock uses the generic gnustep appicon : the gnustep logo.

If you change the theme to Rik, for instance, you will see that this icon will 
change to another generic one, provided by the theme.

In fact AClock has an AppIcon in its Resources folder, it's the file 
AClock/Resources/AClock.tiff", but this file is the generic gnustep appicon.

If you had "NSIcon=AClock.tiff," in AClock's Info-gnustep·plist file and if you 
replace AClock.tiff by another one in the Resources folder, then after a 
GWorkspace restarts (and maybe after running make_services in  a terminal), 
your icon will be displayed in the dock instead of the default one.

Note that  the Rik theme provides an appicon (a clock icon) for AClock. I just 
never bothered to send a patch to Ricardo. If you have patched 
Info-gnuspep.plist, it will be displayed by Rik.


[...]

> Also I found some kind of EasterEgg : then You click on the running clock in 
> the Info Panel, it shows a new window, which has this title :
> "Memory Panel" and which shows this table : ClassName, Current, Total, Peak...
> 

Nice catch.
There's another one : AClock can display an alert at any time, but this must be 
set by hand in AClock's defaults file.
> 
> 
>>> It is the same behaviour with AClock.app.
> 
>>> Also, I wonder why AClock does not dock the running Clock like do some 
>>> dockable apps within Wmaker dock. Is this a limitation of the GWorkspace 
>>> dock ?
> 
>> Yes, unfortunately it is a limitation of the GWorkspace dock, there is no 
>> way to retrive the icon. I do not like it... I'd love if there was some 
>> kind of extension, some kind of way to show in the doc the same AppIcon

In fact, I think there is class of apps that should not display any appicon at 
all in GWorkspace's dock : AClock, Batmon, TimeMon... (think of any windowmaker 
dock app)
All the functionality is available in their miniwindow. If GWorkspace replaces 
the AClock's appicon by its miniwindow in the dock then you will end up with 
two clocks running on your desktop. That makes no sense.

I patched my version of GWorkspace not to display AClock in the dock. Not 
really complicated, but it's only a hack.

I don't think there exists in gnustep something to distinguish dockapps from a 
regular app.  I would be happy to know if'm wrong here.
Because that would be a solution to easily hide them in GWorkspace 's dock.


Cheers, Bertrand