[LAD] desktop icon, wm, desktop and audio software [kind of collective bug report]

[Dominique Michel]

Hi all,

First, I will thank you all for all the great software you make.

I am both a musician and the chief developer of fvwm-crystal
http://fvwm-crystal.sourceforge.net/
I am very concerned with the look and feel of my desktop.

Many audio software are providing both a desktop file and an icon file.
The desktop file contain an Icon field of the form which is fine. That
field is used by all Freedesktop compliant desktops in order to know
the icon to display into the application menu.
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s06.html

Until then, fvwm-crystal and all other compliant desktops will find
and display your software with its icon into their application menu.

When running a software in X, most desktops can use 4 wm hints to know
the names of the software window and of its icon, for things like the
text to display into the title bar of the window or into the taskbar,
or the icon to display into the pager or icon manager if any.

Here, fvwm-crystal and other desktops are in trouble with a lot of
audio software, that because these wm hints are not consistent with
their icon name and the desktop fail to display their icon. 

These 4 files are "Name, "Icon Name", "Class" and "Resource". At
least one of them must match the icon name provided by the application,
otherwise many desktops will not know which icon to display outside of
the application menu.

As example, after starting radium, I get:
Name: ** Radium - New song. **
Icon Name: ** Radium - New song. **
Class: radium_linux.bin
Resource: radium_linux.bin

when the icon provided by radium is radium.png. fvwm-crystal (and other
wms/desktops as well) will not find the icon and display garbage
instead in places like pager or icon manager. If at least one of these
hints was just radium, it would just work fine.

Name is the text displayed into the tittle bar and task bars.
Icon Name should be appropriated but many software don't use it.
Many software are using Class or Resource. Normally it doesn't matter
which one a software is using, as long than at least one of them match
<icon_name_without_extension>. 
https://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-4.html

I publish related style workarounds in fvwm-crystal for many audio
software (just for that, it must be the desktop that have the best
support of the linux audio software), but it is so much of them out
there, and I just have a lot of other things to do than to test them
all, or to report that issue to all of the ICCCM WM-HINTS non compliant
ones. So please, consider to check your software for that issue and
apply some fix when appropriated. A lot of desktop users will
like such fixes.

Best,
Dominique