windows icons

--AF 08-08-03

This package provides functions for reading and writing windows icons to ICO, EXE, DLL, and ICL files.

--AF 26-07-04

This code has become a tklib module. See ico for documentation and other information.

CF - This is the missing link for turning a Starpack into a branded application with your Icon.

Here's a short script that accepts a gif image as the command line argument, and creates a tclkit.ico file that can be used to create a Starpack with custom icons, as decribed at http://www.equi4.com/267

(Link broken 2013-03-26). This script runs on a Linux/Unix system with ImageMagick installed. The initial .gif image must be square.

source icons.tcl
set orig [lindex $argv end]
set icoFile tclkit.ico

pack [label .l -textvariable state]

image create photo temp48 -file $orig
::ico::writeIcon $icoFile ICO 0 8 temp48

set pos -1
foreach s {48 32 16} {
  set name [format "temp%s" $s]
  set geom [format %dx%d $s $s]
  set state "$geom @ 256"; update idle;

  exec convert -geometry $geom -colors 256 $orig $name.gif
  image create photo $name -file $name.gif
  ::ico::writeIcon $icoFile ICO [incr pos] 8 $name

  set state "$geom @ 16"; update idle;
  exec convert -geometry $geom -colors 16 $orig r$name.gif
  image create photo r$name -file r$name.gif
  ::ico::writeIcon $icoFile ICO [incr pos] 4 r$name
  file delete $name.gif r$name.gif
}

set state "DONE - Icon file is $icoFile"
pack [button .b -text "EXIT" -command exit]

UKo 2008-04-14: I have made a slightly enhanced version of this nice little script that requires all needed prerequisites here Create starkit.ico for windows starpack

Anyone have an icon editor written in Tcl/Tk?

AF Not that i know of, but now that i have provided the required functionality i think it would be cool if someone wrote one since there seems to be a lack of free icon editors.

TR There is one, a bitmap editor by Ian Gay, listed on Applications in Tcl and Tcl/Tk. Find it here: http://www.sfu.ca/~gay/

It would be nice to have a version including this package here.

KPV There's also one right here in this Wiki at Bitmap Editor. RS: ... and another at imEdit.

MJ - The only really reliable way to get the correct icon associated with a file (correct in the sense that it will be the one displayed by explorer) is to use the SHGetFileInfo Win32 API call [1]. For a small C extenstion that wraps this function see Retrieve file icon using the Win32 API.

AF The latest version of ico gets pretty close by using the registry. see ico::getFileIcon.

See also

Category GUI

Category Package

Category File