App drawer redesign — before/after host renders

Evidence for docs/design/app-drawer-review.md and the the-app-drawer-is-redesigned OpenSpec change. All three PNGs are real Cairo/Pixman renders of the production scene()/paint_drawer paint function via k230-shell-rust --render-fixture drawer OUTPUT.png — the same code RendererCache::draw calls every live frame — at the real panel geometry (568×1232). This is a host build render, not a QEMU or board run: no compositor, no synthetic touch input, no camera. Board and real-glass verification remain open (see the OpenSpec change’s tasks.md).

Commands (exact, as run)

cargo build --bin k230-shell-rust    # nix/rust-shell-client, debug profile

original-before-redesign.png

The true pre-redesign drawer (3 columns, boxed tile plates, the “YOUR DEVICE / All apps / Everything installed…” header, the “Swipe down to return to cards” footer), captured by temporarily restoring navigation.rs/render.rs/service_ui.rs/icon.rs/main.rs to their state at d054d16b (the merge-base this change branched from, before any of this change’s commits) in this same worktree, rebuilding, capturing, then restoring the current source (git checkout HEAD -- ...) and rebuilding again. cargo test --lib/--bin both still passed immediately after restoring, confirming nothing was left behind.

env XDG_DATA_HOME=<fixture>/applications-parent XDG_DATA_DIRS=/nonexistent \
    target/debug/k230-shell-rust --render-fixture drawer \
    docs/evidence/app-drawer/original-before-redesign.png

redesign-fixture.png

The redesigned drawer against the same 24-entry throwaway fixture catalog docs/evidence/app-drawer/README.md’s earlier revision used (Files, Terminal, Camera, Gallery, … each Icon=applications-other, not resolvable in this sandbox — every tile exercises the round, theme-tinted-circle-with-initial fallback). Same command shape as above, different output filename.

redesign-real-icons.png

The redesigned drawer against this repo’s own real installed-app catalog and its real bundled icon theme. First revision of this screenshot (now replaced) got this wrong — see §“A harness gap, not a resolution failure” below for the full investigation the coordinator asked for.

XDG_DATA_DIRS is the exact, real string the board’s own session uses, extracted directly from the built k230-touch-launcher binary (nix/shell.nix’s launcherEnvironment, shared by the touch launcher and the coherent-shell session — “the systemd session does not run a login shell” is that script’s own comment for why it exists at all), not a hand-assembled approximation:

strings /nix/store/<hash>-k230-touch-launcher/bin/k230-touch-launcher | grep XDG_DATA_DIRS
# ->
# /nix/store/sk2iq19y…-k230-handheld-desktop-entries/share:
# /nix/store/in3nc21z…-handheld-theme-icons-25.10.3/share:
# /nix/store/kv21hqgv…-foot-riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu-1.28.0/share:
# /nix/store/nyy80gvh…-htop-riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu-3.5.3/share:
# /nix/store/vf5ffka7…-mpv-riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu-0.41.0/share:
# ${XDG_DATA_DIRS:-...}

env K230_ICON_THEME=Yaru-purple XDG_DATA_HOME=<empty, unused> \
    XDG_DATA_DIRS=<the exact string above> \
    target/debug/k230-shell-rust --render-fixture drawer \
    docs/evidence/app-drawer/redesign-real-icons.png

K230_ICON_THEME=Yaru-purple matches this repo’s own default bundled theme (nix/handheld-theme-default/default-appearance.json’s "icon_theme": "Yaru-purple") — --render-fixture passes no AppearanceSnapshot, so without this the resolver falls back to plain hicolor, which is not what a themed board actually runs with.

Result: every application in this catalog now resolves a real icon. No round-circle fallbacks appear in this screenshot at all. mpv.desktop additionally appears as its own entry (“mpv Media…”) — a real, faithful consequence of ${videoProbe.player}/share being one of the real session’s own XDG_DATA_DIRS roots (it contributes its icon and its own desktop file), not a screenshot artifact.

A harness gap, not a resolution failure

The coordinator asked which. Checked directly, Icon= value by Icon= value, against /nix/store/…-nixos-system-…/sw/share/applications and the real k230-handheld-desktop-entries package:

Every name resolves somewhere real, via the icon theme’s own Inherits chain (Yaru-purple → Yaru → Humanity → hicolor, already correctly implemented in icon.rs::theme_lookup, unchanged by this fix) — three of the nine (htop, foot, mpv) resolve only because each of those specific packages ships its own icon under its own share/ tree, which is exactly why the real session’s own XDG_DATA_DIRS lists them as individual roots rather than relying solely on the bundled theme package. The first revision of this screenshot used a hand-assembled XDG_DATA_DIRS (the aggregated environment.systemPackages profile plus four unrelated packages picked to demonstrate a real icon) that never included pkgs.foot, pkgs.htop or videoProbe.player’s own /share roots at all, and never set K230_ICON_THEME — a harness gap on this change’s own part, not anything wrong with icon.rs’s resolution logic or with the desktop entries’ own Icon= values.

Fixed anyway, as defense in depth: render.rs::paint_drawer_tile now retries a generic utilities-terminal icon (confirmed present in the bundled Yaru theme) before falling back to the letter circle, for any application that is a terminal emulator or runs inside one (catalog::terminal_like, reading Terminal=/Categories= directly from the raw desktop file, since gio’s bindings expose neither as a plain getter). This is not currently exercised by this catalog once the harness is correct (the table above shows every current app resolving a real, specific icon), but is a reasonable safety net matching the coordinator’s own suggested mechanism, for whatever future application ships with an icon name genuinely absent from the bundled theme.

What the screenshots show

• Before: 3 columns, boxed tile plates, ~181px prose header, a footer caption, ~15 tiles visible in the viewport.
• After (fixture): 4 columns, no plates — just a circular icon and a single-line ellipsized label — a slim handle and a pill search field instead of the header, no footer, ~24 tiles visible in the same viewport, rounded top sheet corners. The fallback circle is a strong-alpha (0.55) accent-tinted “tonal container”, not a faint tint — coordinator finding on an earlier revision (“dark and flat”) — with the initial in style.text (bright, guaranteed-contrasting), not the accent again.
• After (real icons): the same redesign against the board’s own real catalog and its own real XDG_DATA_DIRS, showing every application resolving a real icon, zero fallback circles.

Limits

• No theme/appearance snapshot was supplied (theme: None) for any of the three, so all three renders use the plain fallback background color, not a real theme’s brush.
• No touch input, compositor, QEMU or board was used. This proves the paint code renders the intended layout on this host; it does not prove touch behavior, frame timing on hardware, or anything about the real panel.