Why is the icon for the 'copy dialog' indicator a mouse pointer? [closed]

unity

When copying or moving a large file I have noticed the icon for the copy dialog indicator is a mouse pointer.

Is this suppose to be, or is it a bug?

This is really confusing.

Solution 1:

This depends on the icon theme you choose.

Ubuntu Mono Dark
enter image description here

Oxygen:
enter image description here

Humanity:
enter image description here

Hight contrast inverse:
enter image description here

Solution 2:

The icon in question is system-file-manager-panel.svg.

In Ubuntu 10.10 and earlier, the ubuntu-mono-dark theme did not include its own version of the icon, so it was automatically inherited from the Humanity-Dark theme instead. The version in the Humanity-Dark theme portrays a mouse pointer dragging a folder:

Bug #553256

On March 23, 2011, a major complete redraw of all the mono icons was committed which added a replacement for the inherited icon that better fit the mono icon theme.

I cannot find any written justification for the decision to use a mouse pointer in the image, but given its history my speculation is that this is simply a case of descent with modification; the new icon is a functionally arbitrary stylization of the previous one.

Whatever the justification is, it is clear that the image was chosen intentionally and is not a software bug.

Solution 3:

There was a bug reported that ubuntu-mono-dark (the default icon theme that provides the icons for the appindicators) doesn't have any icon for file operations.

A broader bug was filed and the icons were completely redrawn. Unfortunately, there seems to be no public design discussion between Otto Greenslade (Visual Design Lead) and Daniel Fore (Artist). I couldn't find any IRC logs between chaotic and DanRabbit (their handles). Maybe someone else's IRC searching is better than mine?

Changing The Icons

If you don't like the icon, try this command to see what file operations icons the other themes on your system provide.

find /usr/share/icons -name "system-file-manager-panel.*" | sed -e"s/.*/<img src=\"file:\/\/&\" alt=\"&\" \/>&<p\/>/" > ~/icons.html
xdg-open ~/icons.html

I have elementary and faenza installed, but there still aren't any good options.

So what I did was use the fog icon from ubuntu-mono-dark. It looks like three squiggly lines and I think that represents motion (moving files) better than a pointer:

weather-fog.svg from ubuntu-mono-light (since that should show up better on AU's light background)

Then you can create your own lightweight theme (as I described here) that replaces the icon you dislike with your preferred icon. In my example I'm using weather-fog.svg.

# Create a new theme containing the icon we want
mkdir -p ~/.icons/mono-seth/actions/scalable
ln -s /usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/16/weather-fog.svg ~/.icons/mono-seth/actions/scalable/.
# Copy the theme config and modify it for our new theme
cp /usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/index.theme        ~/.icons/mono-seth/.
sed -i -e "s/Name=ubuntu-mono-dark/Name=mono-seth/g"    ~/.icons/mono-seth/index.theme
sed -i -e "s/Inherits=/Inherits=ubuntu-mono-dark,/g"    ~/.icons/mono-seth/index.theme

Now open Appearance and change your icon theme to mono-seth. (If your preferred icon theme is not ubuntu-mono-dark, change Inherits=ubuntu-mono-dark to Inherits=your-theme-here. Make sure the name matches one of the themes in /usr/share/icons or ~/.icons.)