[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Nate Graham]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Nate Graham  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 Resolution|--- |WONTFIX
 Status|UNCONFIRMED |RESOLVED

--- Comment #21 from Nate Graham  ---
Gotta close this as a WONTFIX, sorry everyone. It doesn't do anyone any good to
keep open tickets we don't intend to act on.

I understand that this is frustrating for folks, but Eike makes a lot of good
points. Many apps set really lousy window icons[1]. Often they're 32x32
bitmaps. Sometimes they're radically different from the pretty theme icons. And
they're not supported in Wayland anyway. Sometimes you have to make tough
design decisions, knowing that you can't please everyone and some people will
be negatively impacted. It's a hard call, but ultimately having consistent app
icons used throughout Plasma is important, so here we are.



[1] Some prominent examples:
- Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1371932
- Thunderbird: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1371931
- LibreOffice: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=65754
- etc.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Nate Graham]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Nate Graham  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 CC||pointedst...@zoho.com

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[JanKusanagi via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

JanKusanagi  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 CC||jan-b...@gmx.co.uk

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Daniel Scharrer via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Daniel Scharrer  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

Version|5.5.0   |5.7.1

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Daniel Scharrer via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #20 from Daniel Scharrer  ---
Created attachment 100151
  --> https://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=100151=edit
Updated patch for plasma-workspace 5.7

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #19 from Eike Hein  ---
On X11:
1. Install a desktop file named  that references the desired icon
2. Make the second part of the window's WM_CLASS be 

On Wayland:
1. Install a desktop file named  that references the desired icon
2. Set the window's appid be 

Bonus: If the .desktop's Exec= has a way to launch whatever to get tha window
back, cool. Also, you can add jump list actions there, and if you register
documents you open with the same id, we can show recent docs for you.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Carsten Pfeiffer via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #18 from Carsten Pfeiffer  ---
OK, so if there is a standard, documented way to specify which icon to use for
a window, that's fine. If you have a reference to the spec, if would be nice if
you could post it here so that one could pass it on to the authors of
misbehaving applications.

Just nitpick left: you quickly learn that clicking a certain launcher icon
results in a task with a differently looking window icon. The loss of time is
therefore a one-time penalty, compared to the constant lookup of windows with
the same icon.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #17 from Eike Hein  ---
 Re this,

> the time spent (lost) searching for the right window

Note we've both provided examples of users losing time searching for the right
window: The launcher -> app case, and the windows-with-different-icons case.
The latter are still differenciated by window titles, but the former are not as
launchers are shown sans title initially. It's also fairly uncommon for
applications to have multiple persistent windows or instances these days, much
less ones that actually set different window icons on them.

I acknowledge your pathological case -- I just don't think it's correct to
optimize for it given the many issues it brings, and the migration path to
Wayland which would make it obsolete again.

Plus it's fixable by app devs in other ways: Just like Chrome registers its web
apps (but then gets the window metadata slightly wrong, requiring a fixup), so
can VirtualBox register VMs. This also has a big advantage: When done this way,
windows an automatically be pinned as launchers, because they have a proper
identity.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #12 from Eike Hein  ---
It comes down to this: 

- I get bug reports either way.
- This avoids many more of them.
-- Because the problems stated are obvious and hard to avoid, while the other
is much rarer.
-- Meanwhile few apps have window icons differ from system icons, and of those,
most are unintentional cases or better fixed otherwise, or will get fixed
otherwise because Wayland forces them to fix it.
--- For example: The Chrome apps case you mentioned no longer applies with the
changes in comment #8, they get their individual icons now.
- It has the benefit of consistent behavior between X11 and Wayland
- I's where things are headed: The "it's inconsistent" thing is fixed on
Wayland. (But I disagree this is an issue, because tasks are not windows.)
- It improves performance and memory usage by avoiding data copies. Theme icons
are cached.

So, it's a judgement call -- and one I'm fairly confident in.  That's the
direct answer to "what's the reason?"

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #16 from Eike Hein  ---
> Do I get this right: the maintainer of the taskmanager rules decides which 
> applications can have window specific icons? Not the app developer, nor the 
> user?

No, you don't. App developers get to register their apps properly on the system
and set up their window metadata so we can match windows to apps. Chrome does
it incorrectly for their Chrome Apps windows, and the rule is a fixup to work
around their bug. Fortunately Wayland makes it much harder for them to screw up
this way, because the relevant piece of metadata on Wayland is a
freedesktop.org appId, whereas on X11 the documentation state makes it a bit
harder for app devs to get it right (though mosy are less broken than Chrome).
It's likely on Wayland they'll get it right (if not, tough: we'll resist
supporting broken apps on Wayland as hard as we can).

> just a visual thing

Features are not done until they look good. Users don't like things that look
broken. Not liking things impacts usability. This is the best way to a
not-broken-looking icon, which matters a great deal to how the system feels.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Carsten Pfeiffer via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #15 from Carsten Pfeiffer  ---
Do I get this right: the maintainer of the taskmanager rules decides which
applications can have window specific icons? Not the app developer, nor the
user?

I see the problem in a different light: showing a non-themed icon is not just a
visual thing, while having all windows with the same icon actually impacts
usability.

I agree that hidpi support is something to be considered, but IMHO that's up to
the application developer. If the author does not set a big enough icon, I
guess that'll be one of the smaller problems with that application.

And I don't think that the performance savings have any significance compared
to the time spent (lost) searching for the right window.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #14 from Eike Hein  ---
(The latter actually brings me to another case: Even when the launcher and
window icons are "the same", there can still be an ugly visual morph between
startup notification and window because e.g. the launcher icon can be a vector
asset rendered perfectly and the window icon a bitmap that gets scaled, or the
assets simply of different initial sizes. It's very ugly when you see a sharp
startup transition to a blurry final state, i.e. the visual degrades during
launch.)

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #13 from Eike Hein  ---
Also, the idea of "you fall back to the launcher icon until you get the better
icon" is wrong usability wise: I've seen many users confused (along with
reports about it) that they can't find their pinned app after launching it
because the icon changed. Additionally with shoddy toolkits the window icon is
often not the "better" icon (i.e. KDE apps will look up their icon properly,
sure, but there's plenty of apps that install a .desktop pointing at a good
icon, but stuff a crappy/different 32px icon into their window metadata - fun
on hidpi).

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Carsten Pfeiffer via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #11 from Carsten Pfeiffer  ---
Thanks for the clarification, Eike. We're only talking about those tasks that
represent windows here.

I see it this way: 
- when starting an application, all you have is the launcher icon, so that's
what you show
- when it is started and you have a window (or more), you should show the
window's icons; that's what the wm does, that's what the task switcher does and
that's what you use to recognize the window

If Wayland does not support window icons (yet), that's fine, Then it's again
consistent with the wm and the taslk switcher, because all will display the
application icon.

Just take it to an extreme, open 10 chromium apps or eclipse instances with
different icons and try it find the one you need. It becomes horribly
inefficient.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #10 from Eike Hein  ---
> The task list does not show applications, but windows.

The task list shows tasks, not windows. Tasks are an abstraction built out of
data from different sources. One of those sources is windows, but the others
are launchers and startups notifications. Launchers and startup notification
use system theme icons for applications. These different things form a
lifecycle; a button morphs between launcher, startup notification and window.

Preferring it always means that:
- Icons don't change jarringly between states.
- Buttons always use the theme icon, meaning they change reliably when changing
the system icon theme, even if the application uses an incorrect mechanism to
load its icon assets (i.e. not using the system icon theme).

Both of these not being true lead to many, many user bug reports in the past.

Additionally, on Wayland there is currently no window icon. There's only an app
id, and the app id is used to find an icon, just like is now done on X11. That
means consistent behavior between the two supported windowing systems.

The code falls back to the window icon (on X11) as a last resort when an app
can't be identified (due to not being installed or being broken).

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Carsten Pfeiffer via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #9 from Carsten Pfeiffer  ---
What's the reason to show the application icon instead of the window icon? The
task list does not show applications, but windows.

The window manager shows the window's icon, the task switcher shows the
window's icon, but the task list shows the application icon. That's not only
inconsistent, but also bad usability.

In the worst case, you have to click all tasks with the same icon just to find
the one you want to activate.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Carsten Pfeiffer via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Carsten Pfeiffer  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 CC||pfeif...@kde.org

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Kai Uwe Broulik via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #8 from Kai Uwe Broulik  ---
Git commit 92efc6ca6ec3c1c1c34a777c470337d4fde4b0c1 by Kai Uwe Broulik.
Committed on 06/06/2016 at 20:05.
Pushed by broulik into branch 'master'.

[Libtaskmanager] Add support for regular expression mapping

This allows more complicated rules, useful for matching Chrome webapps to their
respective desktop file where we need to change crx_foo to chrome-foo-default.
Related: bug 358277
FIXED-IN: 5.7.0

Differential Revision: https://phabricator.kde.org/D1673

M  +6-0libtaskmanager/taskmanagerrulesrc
M  +47   -0libtaskmanager/xwindowtasksmodel.cpp

http://commits.kde.org/plasma-workspace/92efc6ca6ec3c1c1c34a777c470337d4fde4b0c1

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #7 from Eike Hein  ---
Note I will veto a Chrome-specific heuristic; it has to be sufficiently
generic.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Kai Uwe Broulik via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Kai Uwe Broulik  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 CC||k...@privat.broulik.de

--- Comment #6 from Kai Uwe Broulik  ---
Chrome actually tells us the ID of the webapp it's currently showing, I'll have
a look if I can add a heuristic for that at least.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Jonathan Marten via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Jonathan Marten  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 CC||j...@keelhaul.me.uk

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[roman via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #5 from roman  ---
I can confirm bug with Plasma 5.6.2

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Kai Uwe Broulik via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Kai Uwe Broulik  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 CC||ceo.ro...@gmail.com

--- Comment #4 from Kai Uwe Broulik  ---
*** Bug 361442 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Jordan Anderson via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #3 from Jordan Anderson  ---
(In reply to kde from comment #2)
> Created attachment 98068 [details]
> Patch to revert to the desired behavior
> 
> For anyone willing to build from source, this patch applies against
> plasma-workspace (5.6.0, may work with others) to revert to the desired
> behavior of not using launcher icons.  There is no configurability: this
> unconditionally uses the window's icon, which is the correct behavior as far
> as I'm concerned.

Thanks! Patched and working as intended on Archlinux (with testing repos
enabled as 5.6.0 is still there).

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #2 from k...@happyjack.org ---
Created attachment 98068
  --> https://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=98068=edit
Patch to revert to the desired behavior

For anyone willing to build from source, this patch applies against
plasma-workspace (5.6.0, may work with others) to revert to the desired
behavior of not using launcher icons.  There is no configurability: this
unconditionally uses the window's icon, which is the correct behavior as far as
I'm concerned.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Jordan Anderson via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

--- Comment #1 from Jordan Anderson  ---
This issue affects all Google Chrome apps as well. Any Chrome app, pinned or
opened, shows up exactly like another Chrome window. 

I much preferred the previous option as well, as it at least allowed Pidgin to
work, and if I remember correctly, right up until Plasma 5.3, allowed Hangouts
and other Chrome apps to render their actual icon.

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Jordan Anderson via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Jordan Anderson  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 CC||me+li...@jba.io

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

k...@happyjack.org changed:

   What|Removed |Added

 CC||k...@happyjack.org

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[plasmashell] [Bug 356609] Add options to prefer window icon over application icon

[Eike Hein via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356609

Eike Hein  changed:

   What|Removed |Added

   Severity|normal  |wishlist
Summary|Task manager uses launcher  |Add options to prefer
   |icon instead of window icon |window icon over
   ||application icon

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