Icon Assignment For GeoWorks Files. Rob D Mind I have read the ICONEDIT.TXT file written by Cami Lee, and came to a few conclusions sometime thereafter. Below is that same file, unedited, followed by an unfortunate scenario and some warnings. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Icon Assignment For GeoWorks Files. Cami Lee (c) Lee W. Grant Copyright 1992 On a whim, I wanted to use the New Icons that were uploaded by Jim Kirkpatrick and Jay Degn. I wanted to use, in particular, the "DCAD" Icon for some of the work that I had been doing in GeoWorks. I was using a scrapbook to hold some of the work I had created, and to keep from confusing myself, I wanted that Icon for those specific files. After a number of attempts to change my Geos.INI file (not recommended by GeoWorks by the way. ;), to allow for the assignment of the Icon to the files I had in mind. I discovered that the Ini. file does not recognize icon assignments to Geos' .000 files. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I seemed to recall something about using a hex editor to change the numbers or something for Fonts, so that they would load properly. Using my PcTools 7.1 PcShell, I opened the file and "looked around". I made two discoveries this day. 1.) Changing the numbers of the file icon assignment alone, would bring up the Geos "Background" style Icon when Geos was restarted. 2.) By changing the Hex number "right next" to the name (in hex) would bring up the desired Icon. In either case, a different Icon then the one originally assigned to the file would show up, AND the file would work as normally. (Thank Goodness) ;) Anyways, unless you are familiar with a hex editor, (Which I'm not particularly, but I've been known to mess with what I don't know;) you really shouldn't try this. When the hex editor pops up (At least in PcTools it did this.) you will have the hex numbers on the left, and the "perceived" symbols on the right. In my case, the "text" that I was looking for, was on the right as "scbk" and on the left as 0016(0010) 01 00 00 00 73 63 62 6B 00 00 53 63 72 70 00 00 The hex numbers representing the "scbk" are "73 63 62 6B". When I originally changed the four sets of hex numbers to the equivalent of "DCAD" for the Blue colored Blueprint Icon, and then restarted GeoWorks, the "Background" type of file Icon came up. The scrapbook would work, but it didn't have the Icon that I wanted. So, it dawned on me that the new Icons are supposed to be written like so. *.EXE= "DCAD",255. Well, I figured that the "255" is what was missing. On sheer luck, I went back into the hex editor, and put the hex equivalent of 255 right next to the "DCAD" hex numbers, and when I returned to Geos, the proper Icon was indeed, now representing the Scrapbook file that I had saved. The hex line now looked like so: 0016(0010) 01 00 00 00 44 43 41 44 FF 00 53 63 72 70 00 00 The equals were as such, and remember to use the hex equivalents for Capital letters: D=44, C=43, A=41, D=44, FF=255. With this example, I think even the most novice of programmers (like myself) should have no trouble at all, assigning Icons to "Specific" GEOS files, as I have done. It's a bit awkward but until something is "built" to automate this for us, It's the best that I can do. ;) Your's In Geos, Cami Lee ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Now the idea is good & simple; it does work in theory. However, some adverse effects can arise, as I feel any of the GeoWorks programmers would attest to. Following is a sample scenario: Suppose a GW user changed the token name of a GeoWrite file to get a different icon to appear as described above (for the example we'll use "LETR") and was successful. Now let say that something unfortunate happens ('user's kid deleted accidentally') to the TOKEN.DB file located in the SYSTEM directory. No problem yet, because PC/GEOS will rebuild the file when the program starts up. However, you now see the old GeoWrite document icon on the file you editted. Yet, when you examine the file with the hex editor, it still has "LETR" instead of "WDAT". The more experienced user's next thought is to pull up the LETR Icon Maker file; however, it too shows up as the GeoWrite file icon. Why did this happen?!? Let's go back to some history on the setup of PC/GEOS files. The files themselves contain the icon and the token name that represents it. When the TOKEN.DB file has to rebuild, or sees a new token name, PC/GEOS appends the token name and the icon contained in the file to the TOKEN.DB file the FIRST time it comes across it. After that, any icon with the same token name and id will appear as the icon listed in the TOKEN.DB file. So, when the TOKEN.DB file started to rebuild, it came across the GeoWrite document that was editted to the "LETR" token name BEFORE it saw the LETR application, and appended the wrong icon. How can this be averted? You could keep your icons in a directory inside the GeoWorks directory and keep any editted files (as described above) on floppies, although this probably isn't a 100% solution to the problem. To the experienced users: 'Use at own risk.' To all users: 'Beware!'