
                   Installing and Using Icons
                  Whiteley Research Inc. 2/4/09

Icons are used by the window management system to decorate references
to an application in menus, toolbars, and the desktop.  An icon also
typically appears in the window frames of the application's windows. 
If no icons are found for the application, default icons are generally
used.

Under Windows, icons are built into the programs, and there is no user
configuration required.  The remainder of this note relates to the
Unix/Linux releases.  It is not necessary to do any configuration,
except for aesthetic reasons, or if you want to access the programs
through menus or desktop icons.

Icons are image files of particular sizes, typically 16x16, 32x32, and
48x48 pixels.  Under Windows, a ".ico" file has all needed icons
packaged together, using a Windows-specific format.  Under Unix/Linux
and OS X, icons can use any supported image format.

This directory contains three bitmap files for use as program icons. 
The format is XPM, which is a text-based format supported by most if
not all window systems.  If necessary, the convert utility from
ImageMagick (or some other utility) can be used to convert these to
another format, such as PNG.

Using these is very dependent on the window management software, so
one may have to consult local documentation.

The GTK2 program releases transmit "xic" or "wrspice" as the base name
for the icon files.  GNOME and probably KDE look for this.  This is
true for releases 3.1.0 and later, earlier releases did not have this
parameter set, and will probably not show an icon in the window frame
under GNOME or KDE.

Below are some perhaps sketchy installation notes for a few selected
environments.


1. GNOME, on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x

The following procedure will allow a user to use the icons.  It is also
possible to set this up system-wide (consult the documentation).

In your home directory, create a directory tree using names as below

.icons/
  gnome/
    48x48/
      apps/
    32x32/
      apps/
    16x16/
      apps/

Copy the xic_48x48.xpm file to .icons/gnome/48x48/apps as "xic.xpm". 
Copy the other files similarly, under the correct size directory.  The
new files must all be named "xic.xpm" or "wrspice.xpm".

This should be sufficient for the programs to have their own icons in
the window frames.

To add the programs to the Applications menu:

In your home directory, create the directory tree

.local/
  share/
    applications/

In .local/share/applications, create a file named "xic.desktop" that
looks something like this (some lines require modification):

[Desktop Entry]
Categories=Application;
Comment=The Xic Graphical Editor
Comment[en_US]=The Xic Graphical Editor
Encoding=UTF-8
Exec=/usr/local/xictools/bin/xic
GenericName[en_US]=
Icon=/home/stevew/.icons/gnome/48x48/apps/xic.xpm
Name=Xic
Name[en_US]=Xic
Terminal=true
Type=Application
Version=1.0

Add similar files for WRspice, XicII, Xiv as desired.  The XicII and
Xiv programs also use the "xic.xpm" icon, WRspice uses "wrspice.xpm".

Note: "Terminal=true" should be given for all programs, this provides
a console window.

Then, in the Applications menu, there will be a selection "Other" that
will contain Xic and WRspice, etc., (with the icons showing).

You can also put copies of these files in your Desktop directory
to get Xic/WRspice icon launchers on your desktop.


2. WindowMaker window manager (FreeBSD or elsewhere)

for WindowMaker, add to $HOME/GNUstep/Defaults/WMWindowAttributes

  xic.Xic = {
    Icon = "/usr/local/xictools/xic/icons/xic_48x48.xpm";
  };
  wrspice.Wrspice = {
    Icon = "/usr/local/xictools/wrspice/icons/wrspice_48x48.xpm";
  };
  and similar for other programs.  The paths should be the actual paths
  to the icon files on your machine.


3. The icwwm window manager (FreeBSD or elsewhere)

Copy the icons into the directory ~/.icewm/icons

In ~/.icewm/winoptions, add

xic.icon: xic
xicii.icon: xic
xiv.icon: xic
wrspice.icon: wrspice

In custom menus, etc., refer to the icon as "xic" or "wrspice".

