If you have problems with the La Capitaine icon theme, please read the following sections before submitting an issue on GitHub. This document attempts to outline most of the common problems one might encounter with icon themes.
.desktop files are text files that can usually be found in either
/usr/share/applications/ (accessible for all users) or in
~/.local/share/applications/ (accessible for the current user). These files
tell your desktop environment how to display and create launchers for your
desktop applications.
A .desktop file also contains the name of an icon image, or a path to an icon
which should be used in the desktop launcher. Sometimes the information in
these files might cause some problems with theming.
To start your diagnosis, first look through this repository. You will likely
find an appropriate icon somewhere. To see if some application icon is
available in La Capitaine, just browse apps/scalable/ in this repository;
try searching for the name of a particular application, or a keyword that is
related to the application (e.g. search for "gedit" or "editor" if the launcher
for your GNOME text editor looks funny).
If your application launcher looks funny after applying La Capitaine
as your desktop icon theme, 1) there might be a problem with the .desktop
files on your system, or 2) the application might not yet be themed.
- The icon path in the relevant
.desktopfile is malformed
Sadly, this is somewhat common. Some maintainers and packagers hardcode the
application's icon in the .desktop file, so the application will always use
the default icon. You can at least edit the file manually, and even better,
report it to the developers/maintainers.
If the icon for the problematic application exists in La Capitaine, just edit the given path to a more general icon name.
Example: if foo-application is not themed properly, look for "foo" in the
apps/scalable/ directory. If you find foo-icon-name.svg, you can add
Icon=foo-icon-name to the application's .desktop file, assuming
apps/scalable/foo-icon-name.svg exists.
The following list contains applications which may ship with hardcoded icons:
| Name | Find in the .desktop file |
Replace by |
|---|---|---|
| Nemo | Icon=folder |
Icon=nemo |
| Gcolor2 | Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/gcolor2/gcolor2.xpm |
Icon=gcolor2 |
| PyCharm | Icon=/opt/pycharm-xxx/bin/pyCharm.png |
Icon=pycharm |
| Most intelliJ IDEs in general | Icon=/opt/intellij-ide-name/bin/ide-name.png |
Icon=ide-name |
| Python 2.x | Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/python2.x.xpm |
Icon=python2 or Icon=python2.x, as you wish |
| Python 3.x | Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/python3.x.xpm |
Icon=python3 or Icon=python3.x, as you wish |
Applications installed through Ubuntu Software (specifically on unbuntu 17.04+ or using snap) have a tendency to be hardcoded. The .desktop files for these apps can be found in /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications and can be edited manually as mentioned above (assuming
apps/scalable/foo-icon-name.svg exists) .
This list is just what we have noticed, it might or might not be true on your machine. If you found another candidate for the list, tell us!
- The icon may simply not have been themed yet.
If you can't find anything in this repository, and you're certain there are
no absolute paths in your .desktop file, open an issue and I'll try to fix
the problem. It's possible the icon has not yet been included. Feel free to
submit an icon request
or a pull request.
If you want to submit a request, please be sure to read the wiki carefully, so
as not to waste my time.
If some or all icons are not themed on your system, and you have correctly applied La Capitaine as your icon theme, then you may have one or more of the following problems.
- Your environment is not supported
Your desktop environment or system might not be supported. Some older environments do not support SVG icons. The solution to this would be to rasterize the vector graphics, however this is not officially planned. See supported environments on the wiki for more information.
- The icon theme installation is faulty or not accessible
First of all make sure that you have copied the la-capitaine-icon-theme
(name doesn't matter) folder into either /usr/share/icons or ~/.icons, as
described in the README.
If you have installed the theme correctly, then it should be visible in your desktop environment's Appearance or Theme settings. This varies by DE.
If that doesn't work either, double-check if the icon theme folder was copied
properly to the correct location for a given user, or /usr/share/icons for a
system-wide installation.
You may also need to correct file permissions. Files (images, text documents,
etc.) should be rw-r--r-- or 644 in octal, directories or inodes should be
drwxr-xr-x or 755 in octal.
Feel free to contact me.