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READ_ME.BTM
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1991-11-20
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** How to use Mr. Bitmap **
This utility will allow you to scan through an .EXE or .DLL file and view
all bitmaps present. By using the right arrow button, the next bitmap will be
displayed and by using the left arrow button the previously viewed bitmap can
be brought back and displayed. The right and left arrow keys of the keyboard
can also be used to view bitmaps.
If the Save button is pressed, a filename may be entered and the currently
visible bitmap will be saved into a file with the .BMP format. You will be
presented with a dialog box asking for a file name. A file name is
selected via the file and directory listboxes or by typing the file name
(and if the file is not in the current directory, the complete file
path) into the edit control above the file name listbox. When the OK
button is pressed, the bitmap will be saved. If the cancel button is
pressed, the bitmap will not be saved.
If the Replace button is pressed, you will be presented with a dialog box
containing an edit field filled with the name of the currently viewed
bitmap. If you wish to change the name or number of this bitmap, you may type
what you wish in this edit field. If the Cancel button is pressed at this
time the name of the bitmap will NOT be changed. If the OK button is
pressed the name of that bitmap will immediatly be changed in the file and
you will be presented with a file selection dialog box. This box contains a
list of all files with the .BMP extension in your current directory, and a
list of directories and drives to which you can also look. A file name is
selected via the file and directory listboxes or by typing the file name
(and if the file is not in the current directory, the complete file
path) into the edit control above the file name listbox. If the OK button
is pressed the selected bitmap file will be used to replace the bitmap
currently being viewed by Mr. Bitmap. If the Cancel button is pressed,
the currently viewed bitmap will NOT be changed.
If the Add button is pressed, you will be presented with a dialog box
containing a list of all files with the .BMP extension. A file name is
selected via the file and directory listboxes or by typing the file name
(and if the file is not in the current directory, the complete file
path) into the edit control above the file name listbox. If you press
Cancel at this time no bitmap will be added to the file. If you select a
.BMP file from this list and press the OK button, a dialog box will appear
with an edit field asking for an ID number or ID name for the bitmap you will
be adding. This ID number or name will be the same ID or name you will see
in the "Bitmap Name:" field of the bitmap information displayed by Mr. Bitmap.
When the OK button is pressed the cursor will change to an hourglass and
there will be some disk activity as Mr. Bitmap readjusts the file and adds
the bitmap. If the Cancel button is pressed in the name dialog box, neither
the bitmap nor the bitmap name will be added to the file.
NOTE: At this time, you can not add a bitmap to a program or DLL that
contains no resources. Included with Mr. Bitmap is a DLL named
"emptydll.dll". You may change this name to any name you desire.
If you wish to create a DLL with only your bitmaps in it, merely
add a bitmap of your own and delete the bitmap currently contained
in the "emptydll.dll" file.
If the Delete button is pressed the cursor will change to an hourglass
and there will be some disk activity as Mr. Bitmap readjusts the file to
remove the bitmap.
This program was created as a quick way to view and maintain bitmaps in
executable programs and/or bitmap libraries (DLL's) since the available tools
(e.g. The Whitewater Resource Toolkit and Borland Resource Workshop) require
somewhat more time to perform minor functions such as this. This should
offer an easy way to quickly extract bitmaps that one wants and/or needs.
Due to the fact that the Paint program included with Windows 3.0 supports the
Windows .BMP format, I've not included an editor in this program. Any bitmap
extracted may be modified via Paint and then the Replace feature may be
used to put the modified bitmap back into the EXE file. I've tested this
program by replacing card backs in the Solitaire program and it has worked
quite well.
Mr. Bitmap can be run from DOS. An introduction screen will appear that gives
a brief synopsis of the program. Pressing 'r' at this screen will run
Windows and Mr. Bitmap, provided that Windows is in the path someplace.
Mr. Bitmap can also be run with a file name as a parameter. So, if you want
to look at the file "sol.exe" and you are in DOS, you can type:
mrbitmap sol.exe
at the DOS prompt and after the introduction screen is displayed merely
press the 'r' key and Mr. Bitmap will run with sol.exe already open.
NOTE: Due to radically different formats, Windows Version 2.1 bitmaps can not
be read by this utility. Some programs may run under both Windows 2.1 and
Windows 3.0. An example of this is WinWord. Bitmaps in such programs are
stored in Windows 2.1 format, and thus can not be read. If a Windows 2.1
program is opened by Mr. Bitmap, an error message will appear saying that
the file is in Windows 2.1 format.
NOTE: PLEASE MAKE BACKUPS OF YOUR PROGRAMS SINCE Mr. Bitmap DOES NOT MAKE
BACKUPS!
** Product registration information **
If you find this program interesting and would like to hear about future
enhancements and/or tools please send $25 to:
Patrick Deupree
Iseult Technology
4500 Sojourn, #2606
Addison, TX 75248
If you are using Mr. Icon and/or Mr. Cursor as well, a single $40
registration fee will cover information on all three products.
Please mail any comments you might have to the above address or send me
e-mail on CompuServe at user ID 76427,442. I urge people to make
comments and suggestions as that is the only way to truly see what people
like and do not like about a product.
** Changes from Bitmap Manager/Mr. Bitmap v1.0 **
Mr. Bitmap has gone through a name change since it was first written
due to previously created programs by other shareware authors bearing
the same name as Mr. Icon (previously Icon Manager). In order to maintain
some continuity between my Bitmap, Icon and Cursor programs, I changed the
name of all three when the name of Mr. Icon changed. I apologize for any
confusion that may have occurred due to the name changes during the early
months of these products. As of about late May, the name of this product has
been Mr. Bitmap. The functional changes between Bitmap Manager and Mr. Bitmap
were minimal, so I will merely cover the general changes from the early
version to this current version.
Memory: The original version of Mr. Bitmap would load all bitmaps read from a
file into memory. This has now been changed. The current mechanism
will only store the currently viewed bitmap in memory. The minute
the next or previous buttons are pressed, the current bitmap will
be disposed of in memory and the next or previous bitmap will be
directly read from the file.
Speed: The new Mr. Bitmap has a somewhat improved file adjustment mechanism
that makes replacement, addition and deletion somewhat faster than
they were or would have been before.
Features: The new Mr. Bitmap has three main features that were not present in
previous publicly released versions. The first new feature is
the ability to change the name of the currently viewed bitmap in the
file. The second is the ability to add bitmaps to a file. The
third is the ability to delete bitmaps in a file. More information
on each of these features may be found in the preceding section
telling how to use Mr. Bitmap.
Bugs: The previous Mr. Bitmap did have a few bugs. One of these was the
file open dialog box. Previously, typing a file path directly into
the edit control above the file list box would not successfully
open the file. In addition, trying to edit files on the root
directory of any drive caused a few problems. All of these bugs
have been fixed.
Another bug that existed previously involved opening more than one
session of the Mr. Bitmap program. The square that actually displayed
the bitmap would exhibit some odd behavior (e.g. opening a second
session of Mr. Bitmap would cause the display area of the first
session to be filled with the second sessions Bitmap). This has
been fixed as well.
** Registration reminders **
I've not put an "automatic" about box or timed registration reminder in this
program, the reason being I've always found such things annoying, most
people ignore them, and it's a waste of time to write the code that does
so.
** Development Tools **
You will notice that this program was created in two parts, one of which
being a Dynamic Link Library. The "ToolLib.DLL" file contains various
code sets that perform the following actions:
resinfo: This contains functions oriented toward the following purposes:
Retrieving a list of all ID's within the file of a certain
resource type.
Adjusting the ID's of resources to accomodate insertion/deletion.
Retrieving data for a specific resource type and ID.
Modifying data for a specific resource type and ID.
Adding a resource to an file either before a specified ID
or at the end of the resources of that type.
Deleting data for a specific resource type and ID.
bitmaps: This currently contains two major functions. One will read
a .BMP file and return its file header information, and its
bitmap information. The other will write a .BMP file given
just the bitmap information (the function will create the
file header based on information in the bitmap).
icons: This currently contains three major functions. One will read
a .ICO file and return its file header information, and its
actual icon information. The other two functions deal with
writing icons to a file. One will save an icon group given
the icon header from an EXE file and a list of handles containing
the individual icons that are to be saved in the group. The
other will save a single icon and create the icon file header
to accommodate that single icon.
cursors: This currently contains two major functions. One will read
a .CUR file and return its file header information, and its
actual cursor information. The second function will save
cursor information to a file. This function will create
the cursor file header for you and the cursor information is
expected in the same format as it is stored in an executable
file (that is, the cursor information is preceded by two
numbers representing the X and Y position of the hot-spot).
bitview: This is a window class that will display a bitmap, cursor, or
icon of a size less than 64K. If the item being displayed
is larger than the set space for the window, scroll bars will
appear automatically and all scrolling is handled by the
window class.
names: This is a set of functions used to manipulate the name table
of an EXE files resources.
This contains functions oriented toward the following purposes:
Addition of a name to the name table.
Deletion of a name from the name table.
Retrieval of a name given the items type and ID.
Comparison of a name, to find if it already exists in the table.
Documentation for this DLL is available, though I've not yet set a
price for it.
In addition to these tool sets, I've created a DOS program that will extract
Icon, Bitmap, and Cursor resources from an executable or resource file and
will also display information on Dialog, Menu, and String entries (such
as name, and info on menu items and controls such as item width, item ID, and
item name).
The reason I mention these is that I would be interested in finding out how
many people would like these tools. I make no promises as to the
availability of these tools as how much work I put into them depends on
how much interest there is.