In the design we'd like to try showing app icon representations without an accompanying name label in some cases.  We already do this when the dash is small and the message tray.  This makes it really important to always have an app icon shown for every app.

It seems we have two cases to cover.

 1. an app doesn't provide an icon at all
 2. an app only provides a small "window icon"

These can occur both due to developer oversight, improperly installed apps, or apps not able to be identified/detected by the shell.

So, we can try to go and fix all the broken apps but I think we still need to provide a workable fallback app icon for these cases.

Currently, for case 1, we don't show anything at all.  And for case 2, I think we don't show an icon for the launcher but then use the small window icon in alt tab.

An additional problem with case 2 would be ensuring that the app icon doesn't change after it is launched.  App icons are important faces that are used to identify the app and must be stable.

Discussed this with Jakub and he experimented with a few ideas including using identicons and drawing the app name/initials into a synthetic icon.  However, maybe a simpler solution is best.

How about we just show a generic symbolic missing icon icon and color the background pseudo-uniquely by using the app-id (desktop file name) as an index?

It is important to be able to have some way to differentiate the various missing icon apps, as well as attempt to ensure they appear the same each time they are used.