18.3. NsCDE Icon Theme
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### 18.3. NsCDE Icon Theme

NsCDE Icon theme was initially based on MATE desktop environment theme, so here and there, some non-CDE icon for objects without equivalent in CDE can be found. Apart from CDE icons, there are some old Netscape icons, many just created in style of CDE and made to visually fit in the picture. Speciality of this Icon theme, which is uncommon to Free Desktop icon themes is that part or the icons are processed by the NsCDE Color Style Manager to put current color palette theme into the parts of the icon to fit more nicely into applications. GTK based applications often use this, while Qt applications somehow escape precedence or `$HOME/.icons/NsCDE` icon hierarchy.

NsCDE Icon Theme is produced exclusively in PNG image format and the following sizes:

- 16x16: smallest pictograms - used by some programs for menus, small toolbars and helper symbols, used also by the NsCDE FVWM WindowList and such.

- 22x22: Also used by programs for toolbars, used by most file managers for small icon or detailed list view.

- 24x24: Similar as 22x22: used by programs for toolbars and small decoration, can be configured for file managers bigger view while some use them by default, for compact or detailed view of files. Used also as fallback for notifications. Used by Applications Menu submenu of the Workspace Menu:.

- 32x32: Used in NsCDE Front Panel Subpanels. Can be used by file managers for side panel icons, also used by desktop notifications. May be used for file manager's simple "icon view".

- 48x48: Biggest full set in NsCDE Icon Theme. Used by window icons on workspaces, as well as main Front Panel frame. Often used for file manager's simple "icon view".

Icon contexts or groups are standard, similar or the same as with the most other XDG compatible icon themes:

- actions: For various buttons, toolbars and ... actions

- apps: default and individual application icons conforming to this theme

- categories: categories of applications - see menu group desctiption above

- devices: removable media, system devices, parts of the workstation to control

- mimetypes: MIME types of files on the filesystem, textual, binary, directories, special ...

- places: Usually thematic directory, computer, network and various storage types and databases symbols

- status: Indicators for warnings, errors, notifications, statuses of various controls and similar

Icon theme is set by the initial NsCDE bootstrap procedure in the following places:

- FVWM: Used internally in ImagePath by default. Note: NsCDE uses also old style icon paths to NsCDE/CDE icons configured in this same ImagePath

- Qt5: `$HOME/.config/qt5ct/qt5ct.conf`

- Qt6: `$HOME/.config/qt6ct/qt6ct.conf`

- GTK2: `$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0`

- GTK3: `$HOME/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini`

During the initial NsCDE setup (bootstrap), if any of this files is found, it will be backed up in the user's home directory as a tar(1) file "gtk+qt-dot-files-before-nscde-changes-<datestr>.tar.

Icon theme is not furthermore maintained (enforced) by the NsCDE style managers, so that any manual change in above mentioned places will result in icon theme change, which can be user's choice, but may give incomplete CDE experience while using NsCDE. From time to time, there can be individual applications which are overriding icon theme, but often can be configured in their preferences to use the "system" or explicitly configured NsCDE theme. This task cannot be handled by NsCDE, so user must take a step to integrate such applications to use NsCDE icons. Some applications cannot change their hardcoded forced icon theme, while for some, which are not followinf Free Desktop icon theme format, separate icons can be copied, linked or edited like drop-ins for special one-application only theme. Indexed search program (otherwise very nice) named "recoll" is one example of the latest description: it cannot use any Free Desktop icon theme or part of it by default.

Icon theme usually resides in `/usr/share/icons`, as `NsCDE` directory, but it can also be found as `/usr/local/share/icons` on BSD systems, or in some other system path such as `/opt/sfw/share/icons` or `/usr/pkg/share/icons` XDG variable `XDG_DATA_DIRS` content directs various graphical toolkits to search icon themes and icons in configured paths. If NsCDE is installed in some non-standard place which is not hardcoded in toolkits and is not defined in `XDG_DATA_DIRS`, icon theme will fall back to hicolor or system's default, which can result in pretty ugly visual experience.

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