Add support for apps supplying their icons at run-time

Bug #1607199 reported by Daniel van Vugt
14
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Canonical System Image
New
Undecided
Unassigned
Mir
Triaged
Medium
Unassigned
Ubuntu UX
New
Undecided
Unassigned
mir (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Medium
Unassigned
qtmir (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Medium
Unassigned
unity8 (Ubuntu)
Incomplete
Undecided
Unassigned
xorg-server (Ubuntu)
Won't Fix
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

Add support for apps supplying their icons at run-time.

X apps (and thus GTK apps) like to provide their app icons at run-time. We don't yet have the infrastructure to support this. But you can see the bitmaps by just running 'xprop' and clicking on a window.

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/wm-spec-latest.html#idm140200472568384

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

A good solution might just be to let clients create a surface of new type 'icon'.

description: updated
tags: added: xmir
Changed in mir:
importance: Undecided → Medium
Changed in mir (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
Changed in xorg-server (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
Changed in mir:
status: New → Triaged
Changed in mir (Ubuntu):
status: New → Triaged
Changed in xorg-server (Ubuntu):
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in unity8 (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
tags: added: unity8-desktop
Revision history for this message
Michał Sawicz (saviq) wrote :

That kind of depends on what we want to allow apps to do - do we want them to be able to animate their icon?

It does open an attack vector when apps can start impersonating another and steal credentials, for example.

A static icon has the advantage of being visible on the store - and it will always be the same on your device.

Changed in unity8 (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Yes, I think providing a static image once is sufficient. Like a MirGraphicsRegion.

However there is no good reason to limit the number of times an app can upload a new icon. Certainly you would create bugs by limiting when and where the icon gets set. An app is allowed to set its icon at any time, and failure to honour that is a shell bug - not something we could or should ask app developers to fix if their app has worked perfectly elsewhere for years.

So I understand your concern, but solving the impersonation problem is worse than not solving it :)

Changed in qtmir (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Triaged
Changed in xorg-server (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Won't Fix
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