Icon Manager 1.6a

by Christopher Antos, Copyright © 2002-2004, All Rights Reserved.
Visit the Icon Manager User Group hosted by Yahoo.


Contents:

What is Icon Manager?
Sample Icon Sets for Download
User Manual
    Icon Set List View
    Icons View
    Icon Editor
    Assemble Your Set Of Favorite Icons
MYTH - Icon Set Authors Please Read
Known Issues
History

What is Icon Manager?

Visit PalmGear to find the latest version of Icon Manager or HandyShopper.

Icon Manager works on any Palm™ based device with Palm OS 3.0 or higher, including devices from Palm, Handspring, Sony, etc. Icon Manager lets you create or edit icon sets for use with HandyShopper, DateBk5, DataShield, SplashID, and Agendus (formerly known as Action Names). Icon Manager also supports high density icons on Palm OS 5.0 devices and higher.

Some other applications also support using custom icon sets created with Icon Manager. Please refer to your application's documentation to find out if it supports custom icon sets created with Icon Manager. Icon Manager cannot edit icons that show up in application launcher programs (such as the built-in launcher, ZLauncher, SilverScreen, or etc).

FreeWare and DonationWare - Icon Manager is free for anyone to use. But if you like it, then I encourage anyone who recognizes the value of the adage "give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime" to take a look at what Heifer International is about, and see if you'd like to contribute and/or be involved. If for some reason you don't believe this is a cause worth supporting, please consider giving to a charitable organization involved in community service or medical research.

Disclaimer - This software is FREE and I cannot be responsible or liable for lost data or any other problems. If this is not acceptable to you, do not use Icon Manager!

Distribution - You have permission to distribute Icon Manager with other applications as long as (1) you include the full Icon Manager package, (2) you do not modify any of the files in the Icon Manager package, (3) you do not charge for Icon Manager (you can charge for book or disk materials, download bandwidth, other software, etc).

Support - I wrote Icon Manager as a hobby project. I have a "real job" during the day. I am not able to provide technical support for Icon Manager. If you have questions or suggestions, or if you want to share icons you've created, then visit the Icon Manager User Group.

Note to Sony Clie users with OS 4.x - High density icons can only be stored in Palm OS 5.0 format. Icon Manager can edit the OS 5.0 format icons on Sony OS 4.x devices. But in order for other apps to draw the high density icons, you will either need an updated version of the other app with special support for OS 5.0 icons on OS 4.x devices, or you can try installing v3bhack (USE V3BHACK AT YOUR OWN RISK - some people have reported it is incompatible with some apps and may require a Hard Reset). I've contacted the authors of DateBk5, Agendus, DataShield, and SplashData with information on how to support high resolution icons on Sony OS 4.x devices, so hopefully it won't be long before they support it:


Sample Icon Sets for Download

Here are just a few of the icon sets that you can find on the internet, listed in alphabetical order by artist:


Icon Set List View

When Icon Manager is first launched, it shows a list of the icon set databases on the handheld device or on the inserted expansion card(s). For each, it shows the first icon in the set (or a card icon if the set is on a card), the name of the set, and how many icons are in the set.

An icon set can contain a little over 65,000 icons (the limit comes from the Palm OS). Most apps support a little over 65,000 icons in an icon set. DateBk5 supports up to 255 in v5.0, or up to 2600 in v5.1.

The Cards checkbox controls whether Icon Manager looks on expansion cards. Expansion cards can be slow, and some users prefer not to use them. Also, in some cases issues with expansion cards can cause the device to reset, and unchecking this box can work around that problem. On expansion cards, Icon Manager looks for icon sets in the /PALM/Programs/IconMgr and /PALM/Launcher directories.

Icon Set Names

DateBk5, HandyShopper, and SplashID look for an icon set named "Icons-DATEBK5", "HS2Icons", or "SplashDataIcons", respectively. If the specially named icon set does not exist they use the default icon set, which is indicated by a star to the right of its name. Agendus always uses the default starred icon set. DataShield looks exclusively for an icon set named "DataShield Icons", and if that doesn't exist it doesn't use icons.

Context Menu

To the right of each icon set is a dropdown arrow. Tapping on the arrow pops up a menu with several actions:

Jog Dials

In the list of icon sets, Icon Manager suppports the following operations on devices with jog dials (such as Sony Clie, Handspring Treo, and Handera):

Direction Pads

In the list of icon sets, Icon Manager suppports the following operations on devices with direction pads (such as Palm Tungsten T):


Icons View

When you open an icon set, Icon Manager shows a list of the icons contained in the icon set. If the icon set name begins with "HS2" then Icon Manager shows a table of 8 columns by 11 rows of icons, which corresponds to the table HandyShopper and Agendus show when letting you select an icon. For all other icon sets Icon Manager shows a table of 13 rows by 10 columns of icons, which corresponds to the table DateBk5 shows when letting you select an icon.

Selecting Icons

To select an icon, tap on it with the stylus.

To edit the selected icon, tap it again. Or, use the Edit Icon command from the Edit menu.

To select multiple icons, tap on the Select+ checkbox to check it, and then tap on the icons you want to select. Drag the stylus to quickly select multiple icons.

Clipboard

The icon view menu has a toolbar with clipboard commands and a quick preview of the first 16 icons on the clipboard. Tap the preview area to view the entire contents of the clipboard. You can show or hide the clipboard toolbar by tapping the clipboard icon at the bottom of the screen. The clipboard commands are also available in the menus (pop up the menus by tapping the lower left circle in the Graffiti area).

Note that Cut and Copy do not clear the clipboard first. This allows you to batch up a bunch of icons to be pasted at once. You can clear the clipboard either by using the Show/clear clipboard command from the menus, or by tapping the Clear button in the clipboard toolbar (show or hide the clipboard toolbar by tapping the clipboard icon at the bottom right corner of the screen).

Color, Grayscale, Monochrome, etc

Icon sets can contain any combination of 16-bit color, 8-bit color, grayscale, monochrome, high resolution, and normal resolution icons. In fact, an individual icon can include multiple images, one for each of the possible resolutions and color depths. The 16-bit color format is referred to here as "16-bit", and the 8-bit color format is referred to here as "color".

The dropdowns in the upper right corner lets you select which images to show. There are two dropdowns if the device has a high resolution screen - one selects the color depth (Best, 16-bit, Color, Gray, Mono) and the other selects the resolution (Best, High, Low).

HandyShopper, DateBk5, Agendus, DataShield, and SplashID all support 16-bit, color, grayscale, monochrome, and high resolution icons (high resolution icons require Palm OS 5.0 with a high resolution screen). Older versions of DateBk5 may mistakenly report that the icons are corrupt, or may just crash (see the Known Issues section below).

Even if a color device supports 16-bit mode, the Palm OS defaults to using 8-bit color mode because it's faster (half as much work to draw the screen). Few applications force the screen into 16-bit mode, because it's slower and uses more memory. DataShield does force 16-bit mode, and also you can use utilities such as Screen Prefs to force 16-bit mode. The advantage of 16-bit icons is that there are 65536 colors available, versus only 256 for 8-bit icons; the disadvantage is they take up twice as much space on the device. So generally it's better to use 8-bit icons even if your device supports 16-bit color. To that end, Icon Manager defaults to creating 8-bit color images even on 16-bit color devices (unless you explicitly indicate otherwise by selecting "16-bit" from the Color Depth dropdown).

When importing from .BMP files or when adjusting an image (brightness, contrast, etc) you will get higher quality results using 16-bit icons, due to the much greater color possibilities.

Tip - If you're creating an icon set for use on a variety of devices, you can use the Resolution and Color Depth dropdowns to simulate different devices. For example, if you select "Low" and "Color" then the icon view shows the same images that will be drawn by apps running on a low density color device. Or if you select "Low" and "Gray" then the icon view shows the same images that will be drawn by apps on a low density grayscale device (OS 3.5 or higher grayscale device).

Note - OS 3.3 and lower only support monochrome images. OS 3.5 and higher support grayscale images on all devices. OS 3.5 and higher support color images on color devices. OS 4.0 and higher support 16-bit images on color devices. OS 5.0 and higher support high density images on devices with a high density screen.

Resolution

Color Depth

If an icon doesn't have the indicated image then the next available lower image is shown with a small red 'X' next to it. If no lower image is available, then a dot is shown with a small red 'X' next to it.

When opening an icon to edit it, if the icon doesn't have an image that matches the Resolution and Color Depth dropdown selections Icon Manager offers to convert one of the existing images. You can select Convert to edit the converted image and add the new image to the icon, or Edit to edit the next best image, or Cancel.

When the dropdowns are set to 'Best', you can also make Icon Manager automatically convert to the best image format, without your needing tap the Convert button. To do this, select the Conversions... command from the Misc menu, check the Convert to best image format checkbox, and tap OK.

You can pop up a list of the images contained in an icon by tapping and holding the stylus on an icon. To edit a specific image, select it from the list. Images listed in boldface are present in the icon; images listed in the standard font are not present. (High resolution images can't be drawn on devices with low resolution screens; in this case a dot is drawn instead of the image, and the boldface text indicates whether the high resolution image is present in the icon).

An individual icon can contain several image formats, to help it look as good as possible on different devices. The extra image formats take up extra space in memory. Icon Manager can remove unwanted image formats to help you save space. To do this, select the Remove Extra Images... command from the Misc menu. Then select the image format(s) you want to keep, and tap OK. Icon Manager will remove other image formats from the icon set. If an individual icon doesn't have the format(s) you want to keep, Icon Manager will find the next closest image format in the icon and keep that one (it always makes sure there is at least one image in an icon, even if your preferred image format is not available).

Tap the New button to add a new icon to the icon set. If the Resolution and Color Depth dropdowns are "Best" then the icon will be the best resolution and color depth for your device (except that to save space and help your apps run faster, it favors Color icons instead of 16-bit icons even if your device supports 16-bit mode). If the dropdowns are set to something else, then the new icon matches the dropdown selections. If adding a new icon will make the icon set larger than 255 icons then it warns you first, because some versions of DateBk5 support up to only 255 icons.

Icon ID Numbers

There are two key approaches for how applications associate icons with item records.

The latest versions of all the apps are able to use "icon ID" numbers. This enables the icon associations to be preserved even when rearranging the icons in an icon set. Icon ID numbers are used by HandyShopper 2.7.1 and higher, DateBk 5.0c preview 7 and higher, all versions of Agendus, and all versions of DataShield.

Older versions of HandyShopper (2.7 or lower) and DateBk5 (5.0c preview 6 and lower) used the icon's position in the icon set, or the "icon index". The drawback of this approach is that rearranging the icons in an icon set wrecks the association between the icons and item records.

DateBk5 and icon ID numbers - If you're using DateBk5, you can upgrade to DateBk 5.0c preview 7 or higher and refer to its documentation for how to convert it to use icon ID numbers, to allow rearranging icons in an icon set without wrecking the associations between icons and items.

Menu Commands for ID Numbers

The icon view menu has some commands to make it easier to manage icon ID numbers. Tap the menu button (the lower left circle in the Graffiti area) and select one of the following menu items from the IDs menu.

Use the "Renumber" menu commands with caution. Using them may damage the associations between icons and item records in your applications. These commands are generally not needed.

Conversions and Compression

The icon view menu also has Conversions... and Compression... commands. These commands pop up forms that let you set related options, and select related commands.

The Conversions... form lets you instruct Icon Manager to always convert to the best image format without prompting you, when editing an icon.

The Conversions form also has commands to convert all white background icons into transparent background icons, or bulk convert images to ensure each icon includes a particular image format.

In the Compression... form you can choose whether Icon Manager compresses icons to save memory. By default, Icon Manager compresses icons (note that v1.0 did not compress icons). You can clear the checkbox to disable compression. Compressed icons may be drawn slightly slower than uncompressed icons, but compression can significantly reduce the size of the icon set. Compressing icons does not affect which devices the icons are compatible with.

The Compression form also has commands to compress or uncompress all the icons in the current icon set.

Rearranging Icons

You can rearrange icons by tapping and dragging an icon. When you move the stylus to the left or right edges of the screen, the list of icons scrolls. When you lift the stylus it pops up a menu asking what you'd like to do:

Removing Non-Icon Objects

Sometimes icon sets contain objects that are not really icons. These non-icon objects can cause some apps to crash, if they expect that icon sets contain only icons.

Agendus inserts non-icon objects into all icon sets, and these objects describe the order in which Agendus will list the icons. If an icon set author happens to also use Agendus, then the icon sets he or she provides will likely contain non-icon objects.

There are two main reasons you might want or need to remove non-icon objects from an icon set:

  1. If an app keeps crashing while you are trying to choose an icon.
  2. If you want to force Agendus to list the icons in the same order Icon Manager lists them.

Use the Remove Non-Icon Objects... command from the Misc menu to check how many (if any) non-icon objects the icon set contains. If the icon set contains one or more non-icon objects, then a Remove all non-icon objects button appears. Tap the button to remove the non-icon objects.

Jog Dials

In the icon view, Icon Manager suppports the following operations on devices with jog dials (such as Sony Clie, Handspring Treo, and Handera):

Direction Pads

In the icon view, Icon Manager suppports the following operations on devices with direction pads (such as Palm Tungsten T):

Saving Your Changes

When Icon Manager opens an icon set, it makes a copy of the icon set and edits the copy rather than editing the original icon set. This gives you the freedom to make changes and later choose whether to keep the changes or revert them.

If you switch to another application while editing an icon set, the next time you launch Icon Manager it reopens the copy. The changes have not been saved back to the original icon set yet.

To save the changes back to the original icon set, tap the Close button. If there have been any changes, Icon Manager will ask you if you want to save the changes. Tap Yes to save the changes back to the original icon set, or tap No to discard the changes (this will lose your changes and there isn't a way to get them back). Tap the Cancel button to continue editing the icon set.

To save the changes without closing the icon set, use the Save command from the Record menu.

To save the changes to a new icon set, use the Save as... from the Record menu.


Icon Editor

The icon editor form lets you edit the icon images. You can draw, change colors, and drag/move or cut/copy/paste selected parts of icons. You can also flip, mirror, and rotate the icon or selected parts of the icon.

Colors

Monochrome icons

When editing monochrome icons, there are no colors to select. Tapping on a "white" pixel in the icon editing grid turns it "black", and vice versa. Tap and drag to draw freehand (if you tapped on a "white" pixel, then all pixels you drag over become "black", and vice versa).

Grayscale icons

When editing grayscale icons, there is a list of 16 gray levels to the right of the icon editing grid. Tap one of the gray levels to make that the active color (all matching pixels are also highlighted until the stylus is lifted). Tapping a pixel in the icon editing grid sets it to the active color. Tapping and dragging sets all pixels you drag over to the active color.

In the upper right corner is a pair of up/down buttons you can use to increase or decrease the gray level of the active color.

Color icons

When editing 8-bit or 16-bit color icons, there is a list of the 25 most recently used colors to the right of the icon editing grid. Tap one to make it the active color (all matching pixels are also highlighted until the stylus is lifted). To select a different color, tap on the box labeled ACTIVE. Tapping a pixel in the icon editing grid sets it to the active color. Tapping and dragging sets all pixels you drag over to the active color.

In the upper right corner are three pairs of up/down buttons you can use to adjust the Red, Green, and Blue levels of the active color.

Transparent backgrounds

For color or grayscale icons you can also choose a color that will be "transparent". When an app draws the icon, the transparent pixels are not drawn; they remain whatever was already there where the icon is being drawn. Tap the checkbox labeled TRANS to toggle whether the icon should use transparent mode. When the checkbox becomes checked, it pops up the color selector to let you pick what color will be transparent. To make that the active color (so you can make pixels transparent), tap the box to the right of the TRANS checkbox.

Drawing Tools

The big square buttons are the drawing tools. When you tap on a tool button, a tip window at the top of the screen says what the tool does. The drawing tools are:

Editing Commands

The small square buttons are the editing commands. When you tap on a command button, a tip window at the top of the screen says what the command button does. The command buttons are:

Adjusting The Image (Brightness, Contrast, Etc)

The Brightness and Contrast screen lets you adjust an icon image in several ways. Open an icon in the icon editor and use the Brightness/Constrast... command from the Misc menu. The Brightness and Constrast screen is also shown automatically when importing from a .BMP file.

For best results, use the Brightness and Constrast screen with 16-bit color icons. 8-bit color or grayscale icons have limited color possibilities, and the adjustments will be lower quality.

In the Brightness and Contrast screen there is a magnified version of the icon, and normal size "Before" and "After" versions of the icon. You can tap and drag in the magnified version to select a part of the image to adjust. Below the magnified image are a slider control and some buttons that when selected choose what kind of adjustment to apply:

Tapping a control button (above) selects a new adjustment mode, and normally the adjustments do not mix and match. That is, if you adjust the brightness and then try to adjust the hue, the hue adjustment does not "stack" on top of the brightness adjustment. Tap the Apply button to remember the adjustment made so far, and start a new adjustment. By tapping Apply in between different adjustments you can make multiple separate adjustments without leaving the Brightness and Contrast screen.

When finished tap the OK button to accept the adjustments, or tap the Cancel button to discard them. Note that even if you tap OK, you can still discard the adjustments by tapping Cancel in the icon editor.

Importing From .BMP Files

Icon Manager can import an image from a .BMP file, if you have an expansion card. Put the .BMP file on the expansion card either by using the Palm Install Tool, or by using a card reader on your PC, or check the manual that came with your handheld device for other ways. Icon Manager looks for .BMP files in the /PALM/Programs/IconMgr directory on the expansion card, or in whatever directory apps have registered as the default directory for .BMP files (this is where the Palm Install Tool will install the .BMP files).

To import from a .BMP file, first either create a new icon or open an existing icon in the icon editor. For example, if you want to import a .BMP file into a 16-bit icon, first create a new 16-bit icon (tap the dropdown at the top of the icon list view and choose 16-bit, then tap the New button).

Then use the Import from .BMP... command from the Misc menu. This will show a list of .BMP files that were found on the expansion card. Select one of them to import it. If the image is larger than the icon, only the upper left corner of the image is imported. If the image needs to be resized, resize it on your computer before importing it into Icon Manager (low res icons are 10x9, and high res icons are 20x18).

Next the Brightness and Contrast screen will pop up to let you adjust the imported image. When you are satisfied with the imported image, tap the OK button.

Note - The Zire 71 and some other newer Palm-based devices automatically convert .BMP files to .JPG files when using the Palm Install Tool to HotSync them onto your expansion card. To work around this, rename the .BMP file to .IMBMP on your computer, and then use the Palm Install Tool. Or use a card reader/writer to copy the .BMP files directly onto the expansion card.

Other Menu Commands

Here are additional menu commands that haven't already been covered above:


How To Assemble Your Set Of Favorite Icons

Remember that when you purchase an icon set, it's a violation of copyright law to give the icon set (or the icons in it) to other users. Support the artists who work hard to draw those icons. If a friend wants a copy of your icon set, ask them to purchase the icon set themselves, rather than giving them an illegal copy of the icon set.

Adding and Removing Icons

You can use the Copy and Paste commands on the Record menu to copy icons from one set to another and build up an icon set with your favorite icons. You can make apps use the icon set by copying or renaming it to one of the special names, or by setting it as the default icon set.

If the icon set is for DateBk5, be careful about removing icons because it can wreck the associations between the icons and item records (see DateBk5 and icon ID numbers). If the icon set is for Agendus or HandyShopper you can remove icons without messing up the icon associations.

Rearranging Icons

You can drag icons or use the clipboard commands to rearrange the order they appear in the icon list.

If the icon set is for DateBk5, be careful about rearranging icons because it can wreck the associations between the icons and item records (see DateBk5 and icon ID numbers). If the icon set is for Agendus or HandyShopper you can rearrange the icons without messing up the icon associations.


MYTH - Icon Set Authors Please Read

Some icon set authors use the Conversions... command to make sure there is an image for every possible combination of Resolution and Color Depth. But it's totally unnecessary, and wastes quite a bit of memory on customers' devices: it can bloat the icon set by as much as 330%! The Palm OS is designed to do as much automatic conversion as possible. The only images that need to exist for an icon set to show optimal images on ALL devices are:

Optionally, an icon set can contain 16-bit images for low and high resolution, but it's extremely wasteful to convert Color images to 16-bit. Nothing is gained by conversion, and it uses 3 times as much space as was really needed. The only way that it makes sense to have 16-bit icons, is if you have originally drawn or imported the icon using 16-bit color, and the image really needs the additional color fidelity. But keep in mind that very few customers can actually benefit from 16-bit icons anyway, since the Palm OS uses 8-bit color mode by default. In fact, normally any 16-bit icons get converted to 8-bit on the fly, and lose color fidelity, sometimes looking worse than if you'd drawn the icon using 8-bit color. Only certain apps that forcibly enable 16-bit color mode can show these icons properly. As of this writing, the only app I'm aware of that forces 16-bit color is DataShield. Some apps support using third party utilities to force the screen to 16-bit color, but some apps force 8-bit color anyway.


Known Issues


History

v1.6a (build 6628) June 28, 2004

v1.6 (build 6501) May 1, 2004

v1.5b (build 6210) February 10, 2004

v1.5a (build 5922) November 22, 2003

v1.5 (build 5701) September 1, 2003

v1.4 (build 5326) May 26, 2003

v1.3 (build 5205) April 5, 2003

v1.2 (build 5123) March 23, 2003

v1.1 (build 5009) February 9, 2003

v1.0 (build 4931) January 31, 2003