forum.vdsworld.com

jules · Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 11:30 am Post subject:

One problem with the resource APIs that have been mentioned is that they are available in NT family OSs only. Don't know if that's a problem. I also found a lot of Google posts from people who had trouble getting them working. For that reason, I've never tried to use them.

Old versions of VDS used to change the program icon by overwriting part of the standard icon resource with the corresponding part of an .ICO file. The .ICO had to be 32x32x16 colors (766 bytes long.) You could possibly do this using BINFILE. I can't rememebr exactly which part you had to write, because the headers in a resource are not exactly the same as the headers in the .ICO file.

LiquidCode · Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:56 pm Post subject:

How's the icon program going? Wink

ShinobiSoft · Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:56 pm Post subject:

Thru my own ignorance, I hadn't noticed that the APIs I'd mentioned were
only for Windows NT machines. Although, I haven't found any docs that
support that statement. All of the required resource APIs reside in the
Kernel32.dll, so you got me there. But that neither here nor there.

As for the icon compiler, after some serious digging, I'm afraid that is
going to end up taking some time. I don't have a problem converting the
icons to .res format. The problem lies with the linking of the new icon
to the executable. Come to find out, after the resource compiler compiles
a resource and outputs a .res file, the linker then takes that .res file and
then converts it to COFF format, which I know absolutely nothing about.

I can copy one icon resource from an .exe to another .exe, but I will have
to literally modify the .exes header and such, recalculate checksums, etc.

For the Bitmap to Icon converter, I think I'll have it posted later tonight.
It will support Bmp to Ico and Ico To Bmp transitions. And can create 16,
32, or 64 pixel icons.

Sorry Chris. Currently, I know of only one free resource compiler and
resource linker, and they come with the Borland C++ Free Command-Line
Tools download. rlink.exe is the resource linker that can add the compiled
resource to an executable. I can't remember the name of the resource
compiler though.

LiquidCode · Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:00 pm Post subject:

Doh! Ok. Well thanks for the BMP to ICO converter and thanks for all the help. I'll just use the VDSico.dll and just have to use 16 color icons for now. Hopefully VDSIco works with VDS 5. Rolling Eyes

Thanks again!

jules · Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 9:41 am Post subject:

This is an area I have a lot of (painful) experience of. The reason VDS itself was limited to using 32 x 32 x 16 icons until version 5 was because of the difficulty involved. It took me about two weeks of solid work, poring over reams of paper with printed out dumps of PE files where I made small changes to the resources and then observed what happened, to get to the stage of allowing resources to be linked in to VDS 5, and we were still stuck with a fixed EXE stub because I could only add resources to an EXE that didn't already have any (hence no chance of an integrated EXE) because I couldn't figure out how to deal with the changes to existing resources. Finally, in VDS 6, we can do the whole thing, though it may not be perfect yet (only the other day I saw that UPX was trashing EXEs when it compressed them, even tho' they ran perfectly, because of a wrong value in one of the sections.) Unfortunately, the code is owned by CR so I can't pass any of it on.

Win9x is pretty obsolete now, so perhaps it isn't a big deal using APIs that aren't included in it any more. In any case, it may not be an insuperable problem as I've seen references that the APIs are provided as part of the Microsoft Layer for Unicode (unicows.dll) which *can* be installed on '9x.

There is a free linker ALink at http://alink.sourceforge.net/. There is a free resource compiler and a free linker at http://www.godevtool.com/.

ShinobiSoft · Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:31 pm Post subject:

The bitmap to icon/ icon to bitmap converter is here Exclamation

Download Here

Enjoy Cool

ShinobiSoft · Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:41 pm Post subject:

Hey Chris,

Don't give up just yet. I will keep working on the icon compiler/linker. I
guess I need to do some experimenting with this app though.

LiquidCode · Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 1:21 am Post subject:

I'll be taking a look at the converter tonight.

Ok, I'll send all my brain power to you. (as drool slowly runs down my chin) Laughing