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Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

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Caitlin
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Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#1 Post by Caitlin »

Hello,

I'm attempting to customize my Applications menu under Stretch with MATE. It has mostly gone well except for one detail -- there are missing icons in the main menu.

When I click on Applications, this is what I get:

http://s346.photobucket.com/user/caitli ... l.jpg.html

There are nice icons next to each one of the above except Emulation (was Education) and File Management (new). My questions are: in what file are the icons located so I can change them? And where can I get an icon for file management?

I have made my changes by modifying /etc/xdg/menus/mate-applications.menu, replacing Education (useless for me) with Emulation and squeezing in File Management. I added /usr/share/mate/desktop-directories/mate-emulation-directory and /usr/share/mate/desktop-directories/mate-files-directory. I also built or changed a number of /usr/share/applications/*.desktop files.

I don't want to get into a lot of details about what I put in these changes, as everything's working the way I want it to, except for the gosh darn icons. The file mate-filemanagement-directory does contain CIcon=filemanagement, however.

I drew a cute icon for emulation, but I don't know where to install it (I had the same problem with Jessie.) For file management, Jessie automatically gave me a little file cabinet icon, but it's not there in Stretch.

There is a utility (mozo) that supposedly updates the main menu but I could never get it to work. And I don't think it was designed to make the kind of changes I want to anyway.

I recently replaced Jessie with Stretch. Rather than using upgrade and dist-upgrade, I formatted the Linux partitions and installed Stretch clean from a downloaded DVD (with amd64 architecture).

A Google search under MATE menu, Stretch, and Debian turned up nothing. A search has found a large number of picture files, with different sizes and for different desktop themes, but replacing them have made no difference. Is there an install program I have to run to implement the icons?

I've included GNOME 2 in the title because I understand the MATE menuing system is similar to the GNOME 2 one.

Caitlin

TonyT
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#2 Post by TonyT »

You can change icons using Mozo, or select an icon that's missing. Been runningg stretch for 6 months and mozo works.

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VentGrey
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#3 Post by VentGrey »

If you want a neat interface to change icons & launchers i recommend "menulibre". :mrgreen:
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Caitlin
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#4 Post by Caitlin »

Hmmmm -- I was hoping to avoid apps and interfaces to make these changes; preferring to go down to the bare metal. That's what I've done to get as far as I have, and even if I do get mozo or menulibre to work, I won't know what's being changed under the covers.

But I suppose I can try it again. Typing "mozo" or "menulibre" in a CLI just gives me "command not found"; so I suppose I have to install them first.

Thank you.

Caitlin

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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#5 Post by Caitlin »

Me again, I just installed and tried them both. Mozo has options to add, move, and remove entries; but there is no option to change the icon. Menulibre does even less; it can hide or show various menu entries but it otherwise cannot change them. Menulibre doesn't even recognize the changes I've already made; it just gives me the "out of the box" list of categories. At least Mozo works with the main menu as it currently exists.

I know the icons must be stored somewhere, otherwise there wouldn't be any icons at all. It's just a matter of finding out where.

Caitlin

TonyT
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#6 Post by TonyT »

Caitlin wrote:Me again, I just installed and tried them both. Mozo has options to add, move, and remove entries; but there is no option to change the icon. Menulibre does even less; it can hide or show various menu entries but it otherwise cannot change them. Menulibre doesn't even recognize the changes I've already made; it just gives me the "out of the box" list of categories. At least Mozo works with the main menu as it currently exists.

I know the icons must be stored somewhere, otherwise there wouldn't be any icons at all. It's just a matter of finding out where.

Caitlin
Mozo surely can change the icons. Select the menu item in list in right frame > select Properties > click on the icon in top left corner. If a menu item has no custom or application specific icon Mozo will display the default icon.

Image

Caitlin
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#7 Post by Caitlin »

@Tony T,

I stand corrected; I got into mozo again and followed your directions, and there was the list of available icons.

But when I added my own custom icon to the directory, and selected it, it didn't take. Instead, it gave me something that looked like a monitor; perhaps a default icon of sorts. (I selected the pre-installed Programming icon as a test and it liked that just fine.)

My icon is RGB color, one layer, 48x48 pixels, and has an alpha channel, just like Programming. That has a transparent background while mine is white but that shouldn't make a difference.

I'll have to play around with it for a while. (I haven't tried rebooting; I'll try that next.)

Thanks for your help.

Caitlin

EDIT: here's a picture of my icon: http://s346.photobucket.com/user/caitli ... sort=3&o=0 Isn't it cute?

kreemoweet
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#8 Post by kreemoweet »

You likely have to restart your user session for the new icon to show. Icon can be located anywhere, not necessarily in the directory where the Choose Icon dialog opens.

TonyT
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#9 Post by TonyT »

What kind of image is your icon? The supported image file formats are PNG, XPM and SVG. PNG is the recommended.
What the name of your icon? All icon names may only contain lowercase letters, numbers, underscore, dash, or period characters. Spaces, colons, slashes, and backslashes are not allowed.

Caitlin
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#10 Post by Caitlin »

Hi Again,

My icon is named applications-emulation.png and is in /usr/share/icons/mate/48x48/categories (where I'm directed to when attempting to change this or some other icon). I didn't restart the user session but (I shut completely down and rebooted) several times and that had no effect.

Caitlin

silvaf6
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#11 Post by silvaf6 »

Did you try alacarte?

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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#12 Post by silvaf6 »

Did you try alacarte?

Caitlin
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#13 Post by Caitlin »

No. No.

Caitlin

silvaf6
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#14 Post by silvaf6 »

So...

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VentGrey
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#15 Post by VentGrey »

alacarte is basically mozo, mozo being a fork for MATE, you won't see a diff there.
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TonyT
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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#16 Post by TonyT »

Caitlin wrote:Hi Again,

My icon is named applications-emulation.png and is in /usr/share/icons/mate/48x48/categories (where I'm directed to when attempting to change this or some other icon). I didn't restart the user session but (I shut completely down and rebooted) several times and that had no effect.

Caitlin
Put your custom icons in /home/icons and browse for the icon using Mozo.

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Re: Menu Icons Under MATE (GNOME 2) Question

#17 Post by Caitlin »

I think there is a list of "approved" icons somewhere. You can substitute one "approved" icon for another, but you can't add to the list.

Or maybe the icons have to be "compiled" into a binary that contains all the icons.

Just adding a .png to the same directory where the others are doesn't seem to do it.

Caitlin

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