Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

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OpenXTalkPaul
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Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

So I've uploaded to the repo a modiied copy of the Windows EXE, that if you inspect it's properties, should have OpenXTalk_org info in that window. I actually just wanted to edit the Icon, but the tool I was using was giving me errors when I clicked on the icon section of EXE's the meta data.
I didn't have to to work out what the problem with editing it's icons is, I'll take another look later.

I also had some weirdness when it tried to set the modified filetype associations, but that seems to be OK in the open/save dialogs.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

Modded.jpg
Modded.jpg (46.93 KiB) Viewed 8419 times
The icon looks a bit distorted at this smaller size. I replaced a bunch of different icon sizes that were in the exe with a single 128px ico file, so maybe I should make some more versions that are tweaked to look better at the smaller sizes.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by xAction »

Which URL has this exe?

Maybe simplify the logo for applications/documents, lose the background circle and the text.
Only 3 applications on my desktop use the app name in the Icon, one is totally unreadable, the other two are simply colored squares with the name slapped inside.
Two of them are only two text characters long in a word bubble or a circle, with no extra graphic element.
Another pair are simply stylized single letter in a colored square
Every other app with some graphic element is text free.

Looking down in the Task bar, Only 5 of 30 apps have text in their icon, and that's one or 2 letters with mostly no extra graphics, Blender Game Engine has to break the rule of course....oh and one with the full name but I can only read two of the ten letters in that name.

Did it occur to you that OXT can make a stylized person?
OXTLOGO.png
OXTLOGO.png (125.93 KiB) Viewed 8325 times
OXTLOGO32.png
OXTLOGO32.png (1.63 KiB) Viewed 8325 times
Gettin' some Blair Witch vibes.
OXTLOGOWitch32.png
OXTLOGOWitch32.png (1.04 KiB) Viewed 8325 times
File associations are managed by the registry. Some stackoverflow stuff about that.

Everytime I install a different version of LC/Rev on my machine it blurts "Files of type '.rev. etc are not associate with this program would you like to associate them?" I just say no, so that it opens the most up to date version of the program (which I probably set associations for) on a double click instead of opening the six year old IDE. Apparently there is some code built into each version of the IDE to check for that association and old versions are not aware of new version.
Hell, old versions don't even install to the same places , they are all over the place
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richmond62
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by richmond62 »

Hell, old versions don't even install to the same places , they are all over the place
That's funny.

Linux bungs them 'wherever' Linux bungs things (a complete mystery to me),
on Xubuntu the thing appears in the 'Developer' section in the Start/Applications menu.

and MacOS gives me drag-n-drop:
-
SShot 2021-11-10 at 11.37.05.png
SShot 2021-11-10 at 11.37.05.png (48.18 KiB) Viewed 8324 times
-
At which point I NEVER drag the thing into the Applications folder, but into a dedicated LiveCode folder.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

xAction wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 9:29 am Which URL has this exe?
It’s in the IDE bundle in the IDE repo on GitHub

https://github.com/OpenXTalk-org/OpenXt ... ents/Tools
IDE Bundle/Contents/Tools

On the top level of that repo there is a folder called OXT Artwork (or something similar) that has the Adobe Illustrator AI file among others. There is also a simple Stack “Flat” Icon that I found on the web that said it was Public Licensed so should be fine to use.
My Icon was basically a vector scalable redo of HyperCard’s App Icon with some styling. I created it early on so I could get moving on the rebranding/unbranding (Which again is THE first thing that needed to be done). I’m not at all against changing it to something else, and in fact I’ve leaned towards making it as easy to change, including the OXT name Itself, wherever possible, that way someone could easily fork the repo and take it in a different direction if they wanted to.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

xAction wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 9:29 am Maybe simplify the logo for applications/documents, lose the background circle and the text.
Only 3 applications on my desktop use the app name in the Icon, one is totally unreadable, the other two are simply colored squares with the name slapped inside.
Two of them are only two text characters long in a word bubble or a circle, with no extra graphic element.
Another pair are simply stylized single letter in a colored square
Every other app with some graphic element is text free.

Looking down in the Task bar, Only 5 of 30 apps have text in their icon, and that's one or 2 letters with mostly no extra graphics, Blender Game Engine has to break the rule of course....oh and one with the full name but I can only read two of the ten letters in that name.
I'm really not a fan of these Flat icons that have been trending for a bunch of years now. And for the most part (at least for me) it's led to the opposite of the consistency that I think they're all trying for, on EVERY platform that I've used (all of them).

Notice that to the right of my OXT icon in my laptop's dock is the original HyperCard Icon, this icon is being used by a "helper app" that I'm using called "HyperCard Preview". This helper app and a bit of script edits in the home stack sorts out a bug (since 7.x) where if you try to open an HC stack it crashes the engine (in 6.x it could import HC stacks). The app is Mac only but there's other cross-plaform things that can use HC stacks that could be substituted... and yes, I do know that this is nostalgia indulgence and most younger people don't care, but there is actually a sizable community of younger fans of retro computing (and of course retro gaming). I know this because I have three sons with friends that are into that (and I myself am into it a bit, in my basement I have an arcade cabinet that I rebuilt/modified)

Laptop / Mohave:
My Doc Icons.png
My Doc Icons.png (113.02 KiB) Viewed 8297 times
Big Sur:
Screen Shot 2021-11-10 at 6.46.12 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-11-10 at 6.46.12 PM.png (513.21 KiB) Viewed 8297 times
Did it occur to you that OXT can make a stylized person?
OXTLOGO.png
OXTLOGO32.png
Gettin' some Blair Witch vibes.
OXTLOGOWitch32.png
Lol, no that didn't occur to me, I sort of like the concept but that does look a bit like an angry person wearing a skirt!
Or maybe a Kilt ;)
File associations are managed by the registry. Some stackoverflow stuff about that.

Everytime I install a different version of LC/Rev on my machine it blurts "Files of type '.rev. etc are not associate with this program would you like to associate them?" I just say no, so that it opens the most up to date version of the program (which I probably set associations for) on a double click instead of opening the six year old IDE. Apparently there is some code built into each version of the IDE to check for that association and old versions are not aware of new version.
Hell, old versions don't even install to the same places , they are all over the place
There is a stack & scripts in the IDE for setting the Win registry keys, I've already edited them, but it didn't seem to work properly on my Windows 10 (64bit) install. Making an installer exe would probably be good for handling that (as well as creating the license check file that the IDE looks for on each launch (as I mentioned in an Installer thread here).
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by xAction »

Windows task bar chews up about 10 32x32 icon widths of space for the search field, another spot for the submenu gizmo, another for network, another for battery, three icon widths for the clock, another for notifactions and another for the 'start' menu icon.
So that's ...18 * 32= 576 pixels less space than the Mac Dock, at super minimized size.
Can I even make this thing bigger? Whoa nope. But I can make the icons 16x16.
Lol, no that didn't occur to me, I sort of like the concept but that does look a bit like an angry person wearing a skirt!
Or maybe a Kilt
Or the IDE formerly known as...
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

xAction wrote: Thu Nov 11, 2021 2:27 am So that's ...18 * 32= 576 pixels less space than the Mac Dock, at super minimized size.
Pixels aren't necessarily pixel sized any more. I mean not 72 or 96 PPI, a lot of screens these days are 144 or 288 PPI, and most are at least HDTV wide format. My laptop is 1080p, the other screenshot is from a screen that's 5120 x 2880 (5K res)... I realize not everyone has that, I'm sure I could simplify enough so it looks OK art 32x32. In fact the Mac .icns has sizes from 16x16px all the way to 1024x1024px and looks good enough for me even in a small list view.

But again I'm not against changing it to something better, I'm just not that concerned about it right now, bigger fish to fry.

To be honest I'm not worried about customer first impressions either because I don't have any customers.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by richmond62 »

Or maybe a Kilt
Funnily enough it made me think of an erect penis. 8-)
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by xAction »

Just playing with variations of the current Icon in the Windows TaskBar. A bit sloppy without the vector files.
OXTAlternatesTaskBar.png
OXTAlternatesTaskBar.png (38.96 KiB) Viewed 8357 times
View on 1920 monitor width for a more accurate representation of how it looks here. I guess everything looks bigger on lower resolutions? And of course everything looks good on a Mac.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

xAction wrote: Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:00 am Just playing with variations of the current Icon in the Windows TaskBar. A bit sloppy without the vector files.
OXTAlternatesTaskBar.png
View on 1920 monitor width for a more accurate representation of how it looks here. I guess everything looks bigger on lower resolutions? And of course everything looks good on a Mac.
The ones that look like HC's icon, could reduce the number of "stacks" in the pile, I used 9 of them, but the original HC icon had like 4 I think. 9 does not reduce well as black lines, they wind up looking like vertical lines. It would help to antialiasing when reducing to that small size, they would wind up being grayscale, looking like a 3d block. I just played around with a 32x32px version, I had almost forgotten what a pain in the ass it was making things look OK at that size!
OXT_tiny_32px.png
OXT_tiny_32px.png (4.81 KiB) Viewed 8348 times
OXT_tiny_32px_contrast.png
OXT_tiny_32px_contrast.png (4.74 KiB) Viewed 8345 times
OXT_tiny_32px_v2.png
OXT_tiny_32px_v2.png (4.82 KiB) Viewed 8345 times
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by xAction »

Neat looking with the cube'o'cards.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by richmond62 »

The problem is that it does look like a cube, and not like a pile of cards.
-
HCx.png
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

And now for something completely different...
Screen Shot 2021-11-11 at 1.26.47 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-11-11 at 1.26.47 PM.png (22.5 KiB) Viewed 8335 times
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

at 32 x 32 px:
small copy.png
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by xAction »

NewOXTBLACK.png
NewOXTBLACK.png (7.8 KiB) Viewed 8332 times
Quick preview in it's natural environment.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

xAction wrote: Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:11 pm NewOXTBLACK.png
Quick preview in it's natural environment.
Not sure if I like it... I would change the color at least, maybe purple. I do think it would be good to have a simplified, graphical logo that can be recognized in black and white and at tiny sizes.
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by micmac »

I like the one without the stack.

I don't think I have used the stack aspect of Livecode for the last 15 years.

Mic
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Re: Editing Windows vers. EXE ICON / META

Post by richmond62 »

Well, my largest develpmont, my Devawriter Pro, uses about 25 cards; but I gave up thinking of them as 'cards'
a very long time ago and have been thinking of them as interfaces. Similarly, my ESL programs deployed in
my school use multiple 'screens'.

And as I am also a boardganme designer I only use my playing cards (a Tarot pack) for fooling around with
at slightly infantile parties.

So, I am afraid, that at nearly 60 that simile has worn a bit thin with me: and, well, I was going to write "the younger generation",
but in my case that's crap, and I'll write "the younger generationS" probably won't even get it.
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