From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Apr 29 5:46:45 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from po9.andrew.cmu.edu (PO9.ANDREW.CMU.EDU [128.2.10.109]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B7CD114FAE for ; Thu, 29 Apr 1999 05:46:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tcrimi+@andrew.cmu.edu) Received: (from postman@localhost) by po9.andrew.cmu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.2) id IAA10159 for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Thu, 29 Apr 1999 08:46:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: via switchmail; Thu, 29 Apr 1999 08:46:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unix4.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Thu, 29 Apr 1999 08:45:23 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unix4.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Thu, 29 Apr 1999 08:45:22 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mms.4.60.Jun.27.1996.03.02.53.sun4.51.EzMail.2.0.CUILIB.3.45.SNAP.NOT.LINKED.unix4.andrew.cmu.edu.sun4m.54 via MS.5.6.unix4.andrew.cmu.edu.sun4_51; Thu, 29 Apr 1999 08:45:22 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 08:45:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Thomas Valentino Crimi To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Adding desktop support (please don't) In-Reply-To: <199904290014.RAA24394@mina.sr.hp.com> References: <199904290014.RAA24394@mina.sr.hp.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Sorry to be adding more fuel to the fire, but I have a question, and then a proposal. Except for initial 'wonder what there is in /usr/bin?' type browsing, can anyone imagine actually sauntering up to to a chock-full (379 commands at my count) directory and looking at each one through it's icon? I could envision a very nice 'learn unix browser' which shows a list of each command and lets the user choose to see the short description or the man page, but really, assuming you did make about 450 new icons for each and every system binary. One alternative I'd like to propose is an icons.db file, laid out for optimum keysearch, with the .ICON elf section possibly containing a unique identifier for the binary. The .db file could contain multiple versions of each icon, in all the popular styles, and the user could have his/her own .icons.db file which is searched prior to the system list. Next comes /usr/local/share/icons.db where the administrator could install 'icon packages' to override system-default binaries as well as icons for the ports. Now, from here we would need to add in some pkg_add, pkg_delete like utilties icon_add, icon_delete which access this db.. the syntax could look like icon_add [stylename:iconfile]... where icon_add could extract the unique identifier from the binary, and then add in the iconfile. The user can then always retrieve icons of any style type from the db, and everyone can have the interface they want. I volunteer to send patches if people want this :) icond? anyone? Thomas To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message