We'd noticed exo's applications-other.png showing up recently in kde's application menu, thought it was a kde bug, https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317138 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=951557 turns out we only started seeing it due to a bugfix so kde more closely follows the icon spec. To quote Aaron in the upstream bug: ------------------------------- The problem is that someone installed an icon in apps/ and then expected it to be overridden. See: http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html On the Applications context in apps/: "Icons that describe what an application is, for use in the Programs menu, window decorations, and the task list. These may or may not be generic depending on the application and its purpose. Applications which are to be considered part of the base desktop, such as the calculator or terminal, should use the generic icons specified in this specification, while more advanced applications such as web browsers and office applications should use branded icons which still give the user an idea of what function the application provides." And from the documentation on resolving via fallbacks: "The “Applications” context should not use this method of falling back to more generic icons. An application must either use a generic application icon name provided by this specification, or install an icon named the same as the executable for running the application. A generic desktop application included with the desktop suite, such as the calculator or terminal application, should use the generic names provided by this specification, as described above in the “Applications” context description." I'm not a huge fan of that specification and think it could have been done a lot better, but that's an academic discussion since this is what is in use. When an icon is requested by kdelibs, it only knows the name of the icon being requested. It has not other information to go by; in theory we could require than any time an icon is being requested that will be used to represent an application that some different call is made (e.g. by adding some Context enum somewhere). That would also be fragile as it would require patching every use in any place that uses such icons .. meh. Anyways, fix the installation and don't pollute the apps/ directory. :)
ping? I just did some checking, seems the only place this is used directly is /usr/share/applications/exo-preferred-applications.desktop:Icon=preferences-desktop-default-applications /usr/share/applications/exo-mail-reader.desktop:Icon=internet-mail though probably other implicit stuff, including xfce start menu. I would suggest xfce consider doing what gnome, kde, and mate do these days, that is define a custom (possibly fallback) custom icon theme, and put these items there instead of in hicolor.
Sean Davis referenced this bugreport in commit 4c4156fcff503211f9b43b5650451fe9827d7400 Drop included category icons, both are now standard and no longer need (Bug #9992) https://git.xfce.org/xfce/exo/commit?id=4c4156fcff503211f9b43b5650451fe9827d7400
With the above commit, exo no longer installs the applications-other and applications-internet category icons into hicolor.