Icon Theme/Naming Spec for Gnome 3?

[Firefairy]

I just installed Linux Mint 13 with Cinnamon, and I am doing the usual new-install dance of trying to find a combination of icons, themes, etc. that make my desktop look and act the way I want. (I am posting this here rather than in the Cinnamon forum because I suspect I am more likely to find an answer that applies to Gnome 3 overall than a Cinnamon-specific one.) Unsurprisingly (given that this is a linux forum) I am finding that building my own collection of icons is likely to produce a more satisfactory result than any pre-made theme, with more of what I want and less of what I will never use.

I am trying to build myself a new icon theme, and in order to know what is essential for basic function, I looked for specification docs, to see if there is some standard setup. I ran across the Icon Theme Specification and the Icon Naming Specification on freedesktop.org, but neither seems to have a published revision more recent than a few years. Did the discussion just move onto the forums, or what? I sincerely doubt everyone involved just lost interest at the same time.

Does anyone know of a published document indicating what a "standard" icon set is for Gnome 3 or Cinnamon? Or should I just start dissecting one of the included themes? I prefer to work from a doc rather than having to reverse-engineer, but I can handle it if that is the only ready solution.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Ginsu543]

The only way I know of personalizing the icon theme is to pick the icon set I like (in my case Clarity) and then figure out which icons are not replaced. Playing around with it, I've come to some general principles:

1) Most icons are found in ~/.icons/<name of icon theme>/scalable/
2) Others are found in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/
3) A few are found in /usr/share/pixmaps/
4) mintTool icons are found in /usr/lib/linuxmint/