Ability to have different icon sizes for icons in the same zone on the same panel?

[dwbapst]

 *  * Cinnamon version (4.4.2)
   - Please specify if you are using the daily builds PPA
       - NO, but that sounds overly exciting - is there a PPA with a slightly less unstable option?
 * Distro: Linux Mint 19.2 Tina, base: Ubuntu 18.04 bionic 
 * Graphics Device-1: Intel vendor: Lenovo driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 
 * 64 bit

Hi all, I am a recent Windows convert, really enjoying adapting to the beauty of Linux Mint, and the ability to do the things I always wanted to do with Windows but couldn't. Anyway, I've been playing around with recreating my typical Windows-7-esque vertical taskbar, with start menu, tray and little launchers quickstart (as a cinnimon menu + a grouped windows list), and I just haven't been able to accomplish it.

You see the issue is that I have a lot of programs I like to have launchers for on my panel, but there's only so much room, the panel restricts them to being in a single column, and only gives me three icon sizes to play with. So if I want my cinnamon menu launcher to be bigger than the rest, it has to be in its own zone... but then I start to run out of room because if I add to many programs to the grouped program app in the center zone, it starts to 'squish' against the tray and the icons become all distorted, So this means I ever can have a limited number of programs in the grouped program list on the panel (as many as I can have before the center zone meets the bottom zone), or I can empty the center zone, which gives me more space, but means that many of my program-launching icons now look more prominent than my cinnamon menu.

(I guess alternatively than allowing for different icons to be of different sizes, it would be nice to be able to shift where the center zone is on the panel, to accommodate when the 'right/left' or 'top/bottom' zones are very inequal in size. But that seems a lot harder than just figuring out how to modify icon sizes separately within a zone.)

I've attached some screen shots - the aforementioned blue spirally ammonite icon is my personal replacement for the cinnamon menu launcher, and it looks quite lovely with my Cinnomox-Rhino theme.

Looking at the cinnamon.css files in the themes, it seems like this might be possible, but I am rather new to all this, and decided to open an issue here in case its actually a feature request.

[brownsr]

We don't have the facility I think you're looking for at the moment, if I understand right. You could have another panel on the other side of the screen if you want more space for launchers.

[smurphos]

You might be able to do something with the spacer applet to effectively push the centre zone up to the top zone....

Nice choice of theme BTW ;-)

[dwbapst]

I'll try using the spacers @smurphos, although I worry spacers will push the grouped windows in the center 'up', while also reducing space before the inevitable 'squishing' of icons begins.

PS: I've actually forked rhino to make a few minor edits (why did you put so much space between gedit menu items) and renamed my fork 'cinnamox-brontotherium'. :rhinoceros:

[smurphos]

Thanks for the feedback re the theme- I don't actually use gedit so took a look - the open document menu could do with some work, but the menu padding was by design. Does highlight another bug - inconsistency between csd and non csd apps menu highlighting. I haven't given the GTK theme any attention for a long time...time to find some time for it.

[dwbapst]

Hi all,

I'd like to report that I found a workaround method for this issue, a workaround that might work for others.

This method depends on the ability in the new Mint 19.3 Cinnamon release to give different sizes to full-color and symbolic icons. Thus, I can attain the menu I want by treating the menu icon (the icon I wanted to be larger) as a symbolic icon, and increasing the size for symbolic icons substantially. I did this by converting my icon to a .png with a transparent background, and adding the '-symbolic' tag to its name. I initially tried to achieve this with an .svg, a more typical format for a symbolic icon, but controlling the color as I wanted was more difficult, which led me to find that the Cinnamon panel only seemed to care if the icon's file name had the symbolic tag.

I had a few symbolic icons that I wanted to remain the same size as the rest of the regular application icons, so I simply made non-symbolic copies - by copying the icons and removing the '-symbolic' tag from the file name.

This is all rather hacky, and not a real solution (e.g. someone might enforce stronger restrictions on what can be a symbolic icon at some point) but for now it achieves the effect I was trying to achieve.