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ICONMAKE 1.0
written by Marcus Groeber 1992
Fido: 2:241/5609.1
Iconmake enables you to create your own icons for PC/Geos by converting
existing picture files (PCX and ICO). These icons can be assigned to Dos files
using the GEOS.INI settings; the method is the same as for the built-in icons
and for those from the icon collection by Geoworks themselves.
The technology
--------------
To "teach" Geoworks new icons, you'll have to create so-called "tokens". These
are references to executable programs or document types, consisting of a
four-letter-code and a number in the range of 0..65535. A token can be
assigned the name of a program, one or more icons (for different screen types)
and sometimes the name of the application that created the document.
When a directory is first opened, Geoworks loads the tokens from all
applications that are not yet known into its internal TOKEN.DB database.
Therefore, new tokens can be easily created by using a "dummy" application
that contains not much more than the token itself. By changing into a
directory with such a dummy file, the new icon is automagically installed in
the system.
The converter
-------------
ICONMAKE enables you to convert icons from PCX (PC Paintbrush) or ICO (Windows
Icons) into such dummy applications, thus giving you access to a huge amount
of graphics.
The conversion uses a code fragment from the orignal Geoworks icon collection
(which is probably (c) Geoworks).
Tokens from PCX files
---------------------
Each token requires up to three icon files (assume that the token name is
xxxx, names are only examples):
xxxx_CGA.PCX Low (CGA) resolution: 48x14 pixels, mono
xxxx_HGC.PCX High resolution mono (HGC, MCGA): 48x30 Pixel, mono
xxxx_EGA.PCX High resolution color (EGA, VGA): 48x30 Pixel, 16 col
To create a "dummy" for the token named xxxx (will be called xxxx.000), you
must enter the command
ICONMAKE m xxxx <list of pcx files>
e.g.: ICONMAKE m icons\TEST,12345 test_cga.pcx test_hgc.pcx test_ega.pcx
at the command prompt. You can also specify an additional valued after xxxx
(separated by a ",") to set the numeric component of the token to this value
(default is 255). You could for example use this feature to distinguish
various tokens with the same name in different collections.
In addition, the token name can contain a full pathname that specifies where
the dummy file will be put. An extension will be ignored; the name is always
truncated to 4 characteres. Therefore you can specify the name of the source
file as a suggested icon name in automatic batch runs, and ICONMAKE will
convert it according to its standards. An existing file by the same name will
never be overwritten, instead the program changes the filename to avoid name
conflicts.
The filename for the token file is created by taking the token name and adding
the token number (as a hex value). The extension is always "000".
By default, als pixel with color 14 will be displayed as "transparent", i.e.
the background is visible in those places. This color can be changed by
specifying a different value after the "m"-option (e.g. "m1"), "m0" will
completely disable transparency. The following color codes may be used:
black 1 dark grey 9
blue 2 light blue 10
green 3 light green 11
cyan 4 light cyan 12
red 5 light red 13
magenta 6 light magenta 14
brown 7 yellow 15
light grey 8 white 16
Extracting tokens from PC/Geos Files
------------------------------------
The command
ICONMAKE x <filename>
extracts icon definitions from existing Geoworks programs (or icon dummys)
into pcx files (the names will follow the example given above).
Tokens from ICO files
---------------------
The command
ICONMAKE w xxxx <ICO file>
e.g.: ICONMAKE w \geoworks\icons\TEST,12345 test.ICO
will create a dummy for the token xxxx (naming conventions are the same as for
pcx files) using the graphics in the given Windows icon file. ICONMAKE tries to
get as many different types of icons (CGA, HGC, EGA) from the ICO file, but it
will not attempt to convert a picture that is not available in a "useful"
resultion. Contrary to the Geoworks standard format, the icons created by this
option will usually be of 32x32 size, but this doesn't seem to pose any
problems.
Suggestions:
------------
- Once you have installed a token, any changes in the token file will go
unnoticed until you delete your TOKEN.DB in the SYSTEM directory to make
PC/Geos rebuild it. You don't normally loose any information by doing so,
because TOKEN.DB is only a work file that can be recreated from the
applications you have.
- In some paint programs (e.g. Windows Paintbrush) you can avoid color
distortions by loading and re-saving a picture.
- Of course, the fastest way to get LOTS of icons is to take an existing PD
collection for Windows and convert them using a batch command. If the pictures
are packed into an EXE or DLL file, you'll have to use an icon extractor
before starting ICONMAKE (e.g. Daniel Tietze's GETICONS). Most Windows
collections contain only icons for EGA/VGA color resolution.
- The following command line is very useful - it converts all Windows icons
in the current directory into Geoworks icons (names must be different in the
first four characters):
FOR %a IN (*.ICO) DO iconmake w %a,254 %a
This command assign the token number 254 to all the icons (this number can of
course be freely chosen).
- Two other programs that can be very useful when working with Geoworks icons
* ICONED by Thomas Wachsmann is a full-featured icon editor (currently :-)
Dos based).
* TOKENVM by Rudi Ferrari enables you to assign new icons to Geoworks
documents, e.g. a picture representing the topic of a GeoWrite text.