Re: [tlug] Small detail - file icons

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

Josh, Birkir, Walter, Jim,

Thank you all for your suggestions.

I've experimented with the file permissions, to no effect. Making a 
non-thumbnail file match the permissions of an thumbnailed file and then 
moving it around or opening and closing it doesn't cause a thumbnail to 
be created.

I also noticed that in the file properties window that I get when I 
right click on an icon, it shows the mime type for each file. Again, no 
difference between non-thumbnailed and thumbnailed icons.

Next, I happened to get a whole bunch of files from various friends who 
had to send me some data for a project we are working on. They all sent 
me video files in either Quicktime, AVI, or WMV formats, and they sent 
me files in a whole variety of ways, such as by CD or by internet 
download. What I noticed here was that some of the files also did not 
get thumbnails, though some did. It was too chaotic a process for me to 
track any pattern, not to mention that I had to focus on the work at 
hand. But it did make clear that this was not a VMWare issue. Especially 
as some of the data came from Mac users.

I think it has to do with thumbnail creation in Gnome, as others have 
suggested.

I discovered that there is a .thumbnails directory in my home folder. 
And it has a PNG image file for every file that has been made into a 
thumbnail on my system ever.

That's actually a little spooky. I don't think I want that kind of 
history kicking around.

The last thing I've clued into is that when I right click a file and 
look at it's properties, it shows the icon in the top left corner of the 
properties window. By clicking on that icon, one can manually select a 
custom icon. However, there is no immediately apparent option to create 
a thumbnail.

So of course I hit the web trail, and found some discussion about 
possible bugs and mishandling of thumbnails:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=84140

Hmmm... well, I tried deleting all the PNG files in the .thumbnails 
directory. And then I opened a directory where there were 7 video files, 
3 of which were not getting thumbnailed. As soon as I opened the 
directory, the 4 files that had thumbnails before created them again. 
The 3 that didn't work before, still don't work.

Still very odd behaviour.

Any suggestions as to what I could try next?

--
Dave M G