System tray (notification area) icons scale differently at the same mate panel size

[ThanosApostolou]

System tray (notification area) icons scale differently in the same mate panel size. The first screenshot shows the notification area when I change mate panel from size 40 to 41. The second screenshot shows the notification area when I change panel size from 42 to 41. Some icons' sizes are different where they shouldn't:

P.S. The above problems are tested on Ubuntu MATE 16.10 and manjaro MATE which both have MATE 1.16.1 as well as at Ubuntu MATE 17.04 (daily build) which has MATE 1.17.2

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[kn00tcn]

the icons might depend on what format they're in, what icon set you're using, what theme you're using, & might happen in other environments outside of mate, so it's gotten a bit confusing https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-themes/pull/160

[ThanosApostolou]

@kn00tcn I've tried with "black MATE" and "arc" theme as well as "MATE", "AwOken" and "Adwaita" icon themes. The problem isn't that the icons scale differently with each other (that indeed happens in many panels depending on the icon theme). The problem is that icons have different size if you change panel size from 40 to 41 than if you change it from 42 to 41. That shouldn't happen, in my opinion, since the final size is the same (41 px). It's like mate-panel looks for different size icons every 2 px instead of 1. If there's a technical reason for doing that, then it should at least make icons at 41 px to be the same at icons at 40 px, regardless if you go from 40 to 41 or from 42 to 41. Else, it looks bad and it's confusing for the user who changes the mate panel size.

[cwendling]

The offending icons are not drawn by the panel but are foreign "windows" from other applications. The issue might be that the systray doesn't advertize the size properly, or that the foreign applications don't react well.

If the systray doesn't advertize the size correctly, it should be fixable fairly easily I guess. But I doubt that's it.

If the foreign apps improperly react to small changes, it might be possible to hack around that by advertizing a strongly smaller size before the new, slightly smaller one. That'd be a hack, but maybe it'd work.

[kn00tcn]

i also thought it could be bitmap vs vector, or single large icon vs icons in step sizes

one thing i wanted to find out from trying different icon sets is if the same icons are changing at the same sizes, or if it gets even more 'random'

[raveit65]

Does the issue still exists?

[4eUeP]

@raveit65 I don't know whether the issue https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/7116 is the same as this one, but the former does exist. (debian with mate-panel 1.27.1)

[raveit65]

@4eUeP Seems keepassrrc icon in debian is broken. In fedora 38 with mate-panel-1.27.1 + latest commits from master the icon displays excellent :) color-icon: monocrome:

The guake-tray icon is an internal icon ships by the application. I don't mind about the size. It is a poor 20x20px png. I am happy that gnome keeps na-tray support for this application.