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Thread: Changing launcher icon picture

  1. #1
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    Changing launcher icon picture

    I use the program Ipe to create drawings for my LaTeX documents. The only annoying problem I'm having is that when I run Ipe, the icon in the launcher is just the generic gray question mark. There is a cute little penguin that should be the Ipe icon.

    I searched online and found that I can create my own launcher by making a *.desktop file. I think I could probably figure this out, but since I can start the program from the dash I figure there should already be a *.desktop file somewhere already and I would prefer to just modify that file with the correct path to the icon. It seems that most *.desktop files are stored in /usr/share/applications. However, Ipe doesn't seem to be here and I can't find anything named ipe.desktop by searchin in Nautilus.

    Is there any way to figure out where the *.desktop file is?

  2. #2
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    Re: Changing launcher icon picture

    Quote Originally Posted by peterson43 View Post
    I use the program Ipe to create drawings for my LaTeX documents. The only annoying problem I'm having is that when I run Ipe, the icon in the launcher is just the generic gray question mark. There is a cute little penguin that should be the Ipe icon.

    I searched online and found that I can create my own launcher by making a *.desktop file. I think I could probably figure this out, but since I can start the program from the dash I figure there should already be a *.desktop file somewhere already and I would prefer to just modify that file with the correct path to the icon. It seems that most *.desktop files are stored in /usr/share/applications. However, Ipe doesn't seem to be here and I can't find anything named ipe.desktop by searchin in Nautilus.

    Is there any way to figure out where the *.desktop file is?
    Have a try using locate ipe.desktop from a terminal.

  3. #3
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    Re: Changing launcher icon picture

    Quote Originally Posted by philinux View Post
    Have a try using locate ipe.desktop from a terminal.
    I tried that and it didn't find anything. I think that either there is no *.desktop file for Ipe or that it is named something less obvious than ipe.desktop.

  4. #4
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    Re: Changing launcher icon picture

    Quote Originally Posted by peterson43 View Post
    I tried that and it didn't find anything. I think that either there is no *.desktop file for Ipe or that it is named something less obvious than ipe.desktop.
    Install alacarte (aka main menu) then use it from Dash and create a new menu item for ipe. That will create a new .desktop file.

    Start alacarte, fill in the blanks and select an icon.
    Your .desktop will be stored in ~/.local/share/applications.

  5. #5
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    Re: Changing launcher icon picture

    Quote Originally Posted by philinux View Post
    Install alacarte (aka main menu) then use it from Dash and create a new menu item for ipe. That will create a new .desktop file.

    Start alacarte, fill in the blanks and select an icon.
    Your .desktop will be stored in ~/.local/share/applications.
    Ok, part of the problem was that I couldn't figure out where to find the Main Menu in 12.04. I had actually used the main menu in 11.04 to create a launcher for Ipe so it already showed up. I think that the path to the icon must have changed in the upgrade to 12.04 and so the icon didn't work anymore. However, when I clicked on "properties" to change the path for the icon, alacarte crashed. Now, whenever I use alacarte, none of the buttons work except the button that removes applications from the main menu (this is true for all applications, not just Ipe).

    I was able to correctly modify the ipe launcher using alacarte on another computer, but I still can't get alacarte to run properly on my main computer. I tried reinstalling alacarte and I tried restarting the computer but nothing seems to work.

    Any ideas on how to get alacarte working properly?

  6. #6
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    Re: Changing launcher icon picture

    Quote Originally Posted by peterson43 View Post
    Ok, part of the problem was that I couldn't figure out where to find the Main Menu in 12.04. I had actually used the main menu in 11.04 to create a launcher for Ipe so it already showed up. I think that the path to the icon must have changed in the upgrade to 12.04 and so the icon didn't work anymore. However, when I clicked on "properties" to change the path for the icon, alacarte crashed. Now, whenever I use alacarte, none of the buttons work except the button that removes applications from the main menu (this is true for all applications, not just Ipe).

    I was able to correctly modify the ipe launcher using alacarte on another computer, but I still can't get alacarte to run properly on my main computer. I tried reinstalling alacarte and I tried restarting the computer but nothing seems to work.

    Any ideas on how to get alacarte working properly?
    The only thing I can suggest is to reset unity to default from a terminal.

    Code:
    unity --reset

  7. #7
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    Re: Changing launcher icon picture

    Okay, I finally got it fixed. I tried using the
    Code:
    unity --reset
    code. That didn't seem to work since alacarte still wouldn't do anything when I tried to add a new item or modify the properties of a menu item. I then tried removing alacarte and reinstalling it again. I think I tried this before, but this time I restarted the computer before trying to use alacarte again. When I restarted it I was then able to use alacarte correctly. Everything is working fine now.

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