Re: [Tcllib-devel] FamFam icon sets as packages - Tklib candidate - Requesting Review

[Andreas K. <and...@ac...>]

The API which gelled in my mind yesterday on the way home and sleeping
over it.

NOTE
	This doesn't contain anything brought up by the continued
	discussion today.

(Names are subject to change)

	icons::loaded
		Returns list containing the names of the icon themes
		in memory.

	icons::themes
		Returns list containing the names of all icon themes
		we can activate/load.

	icons::activate FOO
		Load package 'icons::theme::FOO'
		Switch all icons already in use to this theme if
		possible.

	icons::get name ?theme?

		Get tk image for the named icon. If a theme is
		specified pull the icon from that theme. Without a
		theme specified search through all loaded themes,
		last theme loaded is searched first.

Notes
	I am equating icon themes to packages here, with a standard
	API between the icons framework and the theme packages.

	(This API presently undefined)

	Theme discovery (see above) becomes package discovery. Which,
	while not perfect (package require __bogus +
	(tcl::tm::lisyt+glob)) we have workable solutions for.

	Not necessarily clear from the above, multiple themes can be
	activated, and the theme activated last is the 'active'
	theme. Holes in that theme, i.e. icons the application needs,
	but are not found there, are satisfied by search through the
	older theme. i.e. a stack is managed and searched from the top
	down.

	Re-activating a previously loaded theme brings it to the top
	of the stack, and all icons in use are resolved again to
	ensure that they are switched to the icon in the newly
	activated theme, if at all possible.

	The responsibility for locating the icons searched for is in
	the theme packages. Could be a virtual filesystem, or on disk
	as part of the package, on disk using system search paths
	provided by the desktop environment, etc. Whatever strikes our
	fancy and/or is relevant to how an application is deployed.

Example starpack:

	Have a desktop theme wrapped, and a theme directly containing
	some implementation of all the icons used by the app, as
	fallback for everything not found by the desktop theme.


Onward, to integrate the results of today's discussion.

Andreas.