[SOLVED] Help changing terminal taskbar icon

andreamer · 2010-09-02 17:38:19

Hi guys, I've been trying without any results to change the taskbar icon of the rxvt-unicode terminal, maybe someone could point me in the right direction?

I've tried recompiling, changinf rxvt-unicode.desktop, in pixmaps... nothing seems to work and I would like to know how the KISS philosophy is applied to icons because i just can't understand.

Using: Openbox, tint2.

Last edited by andreamer (2010-09-03 16:33:12)

.:B:. · 2010-09-02 18:08:59

There's nothing KISS about it. It's as simple as: urxvt has no icon, so you won't see any on the taskbar. It might be part of the philosophy of the developer though .

andreamer · 2010-09-02 19:06:44

yes, it doesn't have any icon so its really ugly and it takes me a while to identify the application when its minimized, but i bet there should be a way to give it an icon.
Maybe i could think of something if i knew how the system assigns icons to applications, is it from /usr/share/ or from icon themes, it isn't clear to me.

Last edited by andreamer (2010-09-02 19:08:56)

drcouzelis · 2010-09-02 19:29:21

I have studied Linux so much, and I too barely understand how icon configuration works. O_o

I think it depends on the program and the user interface. For example, I tell Window Maker which icon to use, and Window Maker will use it as the application icon and the "ctrl-tab" icon. Window Maker uses the X registered "window name" or something. (for example, for Firefox I think it was "firefox.Firefox")

Of course, in places like the GNOME applications menu it uses ".desktop" files. These files have the name of the application, which icon to use, and other pieces of information. Unfortunately, it's only used for starting the application.

Different applications seem to get their icons from different places. For example, a GNOME application will load it's icon from the current icon theme. Firefox has it's own icon in "/usr/share" somewhere I think. Other icons have them compiled into the application somehow.

For the brief time I used tint2 I disabled icons.

I'm sorry I'm not any help. I'm not even sure if everything I wrote is correct. I too wish to better understand how icons (and themes in general) are handled in Linux.

andreamer · 2010-09-02 19:48:08

Thanks for all the help, but I just found a working solution reading some more.

By carefully reading the manual, there's an option "-icon iconfile" but it didn't work at first, I had to recompile rxvt-unicode with the flag "--enable-afterimage" and installing libAfterImage from AUR.

now i call the terminal this way and has an icon in the taskbar:

urxvt -icon /usr/share/icons/whatever...

Last edited by andreamer (2010-09-02 19:48:21)

quigybo · 2010-09-03 13:35:19

There is a generic solution that will work for all X applications, called xseticon. It will set the icon of any X app to whatever you want by passing it the window id, which is particularly easy as terminal emulators set the WINDOWID variable (hint: works well in your .bashrc):

xseticon -id $WINDOWID /path/to/icon.png

It can be found in the AUR, tell your friends .

Last edited by quigybo (2010-09-03 14:30:08)

andreamer · 2010-09-03 17:04:11

Wow thanks quigybo, the solution i found was specific to this app, but yours really solves it for any application, cool.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-09-02 17:38:19

[SOLVED] Help changing terminal taskbar icon

#2 2010-09-02 18:08:59

Re: [SOLVED] Help changing terminal taskbar icon

#3 2010-09-02 19:06:44

Re: [SOLVED] Help changing terminal taskbar icon

#4 2010-09-02 19:29:21

Re: [SOLVED] Help changing terminal taskbar icon

#5 2010-09-02 19:48:08

Re: [SOLVED] Help changing terminal taskbar icon

#6 2010-09-03 13:35:19

Re: [SOLVED] Help changing terminal taskbar icon

#7 2010-09-03 17:04:11

Re: [SOLVED] Help changing terminal taskbar icon

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