Icons and Compiler 2002 or newer

Keywords: 	  windows xp compiler icons 2002 Icon Formatting Tools

Icon Alert. Revised for version 2006B

Starting with the Winbatch 2001P ICONS HAVE CHANGED in support of XP.

All of the WinBatch icons have been updated (and new ones added).

Basically.

In the old days you could insert a 32x32 16-color icon into a compiled exe. And everything worked as expected. But it was a little tough to find the 766 byte icon files.

With the upcoming 2001P, there 6 definitions for the icon

16x16 16-color (aka 4-bit color)
32x32 16-color (aka 4-bit color)
48x48 16-color (aka 4-bit color)
16x16 256-color (aka 8-bit color)
32x32 256-color (aka 8-bit color)
48x48 256-color (aka 8-bit color)

So any new icon you add should have ALL 6 (more are allowed) of the above definitions built into it. All the new WinBatch icons do.

For Version 2006B and newer...: If you do not have all 6, the unreplaced icons will be deleted, and Windows will attempt to mathematically create the icons it needs from the provided icon(s). Resulting icons may appear rough or distorted.
For versions 2006A and older...: If you do not have all 6, some of the icons will not be replaced, and the wrong icon may be displayed at some situations.

To test, simply view your compiled exe in explorer and work thru the various right-click VIEW settings to see the different icons. Only in XP can you see the 48x48 icons.

In the 2001P WinBatch\Icons directory will be two extra special icons:

xtest-6.ico
xtest-9.ico

that you can use for viewing.

The xtest-6.ico has:

16x16 16-color
32x32 16-color
48x48 16-color
16x16 256-color
32x32 256-color
48x48 256-color

icons, where each square in the icon is 16x16.

The xtest-9 has:

16x16 16-color
32x32 16-color
48x48 16-color
16x16 256-color
32x32 256-color
48x48 256-color
16x16 high-color
32x32 high-color
48x48 high-color

WinBatch only uses the first 6. However if you wish to use IconReplace to replace an icon in another exe you must match all the various icon definitions. The max is 9, so if you have them all you are covered.

So basically ummm, the old icons will not necessarily work correctly. They will change the 32x32 16-color definiton, but the rest will not be changed and users may becomeconfused.

My condolences.

NB: In the 2002A version of the Compiler, we added a "Warning" to the compiler so that if not exactly all 6 icon definitions for the icon were updated, then a cute little message box pops up.

In the 2006B version of the compiler, the unreplaced icons in the group are now deleted. The cute warning message still pops up.

Icon Editors

Various people have found Icon editors available by third parties. These two seem to be very popular:

http://www.aha-soft.com/iconxp/

http://www.axialis.com/axicons/index.html

The icon editor from: http://www.aha-soft.com/iconxp/ has some kind of automatic resizer/copier to help with the problem of the multiple icons.

To convert a single ICO to a file with 6 icons of the format you need for compiler:

Open the ICO file in IconXP.
Go into Tools|Duplicate Image, and duplicate the image 5 more times (for a total of 6 icons).
Go into Tools|Convert Image, and select each image consecutively, and choose the settings, respectively:
```
16x16 16-color
32x32 16-color
48x48 16-color
16x16 256-color
32x32 256-color
48x48 256-color
```
Then save the new ICO file. It should now compile in the 2002 version of Compiler.

One user said, "Automatically converted icons don't always look as good as the original, but in most cases they only need a little bit of a touch-up done to make them look OK. The automatic conversion is nice because it allows me to very quickly add the 5 or so additional variants of the icon that are needed for basic WinXP compliance."

Article ID:   W15117

File Created: 2006:03:10:13:33:44

Last Updated: 2006:03:10:13:33:44

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Icons and Compiler 2002 or newer

Icon Editors

To convert a single ICO to a file with 6 icons of the format you need for compiler:

	Compiling XLS and Running as a Service
	Sample Code from Users