=== DISCLAIMER ===


I allow you to use and distribute ICON.EXE freely under the condition 
that I am in no way responsible for any damage or loss you may suffer.

Henk Kelder, 2:280/801.339@FidoNet.Org

                === NOTES ON ICONTOOL 1.8 ===

General

ICON.EXE was written in 'plain old' C using the C/2 Set compiler and 
OS/2 2.0 toolkit. No 'Som' programming was used. All information about
abstract objects is gotten out (hacked) off the ini-files. Clearly the
latter is fully UNDOCUMENTED ! (but it seems to work reasonally well.)


Drag-drop of icons

ICON.EXE is a PM program for OS/2 2.0 that I initially wrote because I did
not like the complex way to set an icon for a workplace shell object and 
other objects (read: files and directories) on my harddisk of attached
network drives. 
Furthermore, since the workplace shell claims to support drag-drop 
operations I wanted to experiment with this. Why shouldn't I be able to drag
an iconfile and drop it on something else so that the icon would be assigned
to this something else.

Initialy I tried to write it so it would show icons only and one could then
drag the icon on an object on the desktop. Unfortunately the desktop itself
doesn't seem to follow the specifications for drag-drop operations
completely. The solutions for this was that ICONTOOL allows you to open two
windows and you can do draging and dropping between these two windows.


Changing directories or drives (open other folders)

When icontool is configured to show drives and/or directories you can simply
change to these drives and/or directories by selecting 'open' or by double 
clicking on them. Icontool will no open a new folder but will replace the
contents of the open window.


Copying, moving and deleting of objects

Although not it main purpose, you could also use this program to do these
operations on most objects.



Changing object titles

When the program allowed me to do this I found that I would also like to
change the titles of objects WITHOUT changing the underlying fysical
filename of an object. I found the the workplace shell uses the .LONGNAME
extended attribute, if present, as a title. It was no big deal to show 
these .LONGNAME ea's. (It is an option you can set under 'Open->Settings'.)

If ICON.EXE shows longnames, one can change the names as one would change
the name of objects on the desktop. Please remember that only the .LONGNAME
extented attribute is changed and NOT the fysical filename.


Extracting Icons

Another nice feature would be the possibility to 'extract' an icon to an
iconfile. When this option is chosen the program first looks if there is an
an .ICON ea and if so writes this ea as a file to disk. If there is 
no .ICON ea the iconfile is constucted from the icon bitmap as it is visible 
on the screen. In the latter case the iconfile only contains a bitmap for 
the device it is extracted from.


Setting default Icon

Setting the default icon means that the .ICON ea is removed.

Abstract objects

ICONTOOL also displays abstract objects. In some cases the icon for an
abstract object is somewere deep in an OS/2 dll. In such a case I'm not able
to determine the icon and a questionmark icon is shown.
With Icontool you can open all abstract objects with the exception of the
color palette. This is that the api-call I use to open abstract objects
(WinSetObjectData(hObject, "OPEN=DEFAULT") resets a color palette object to
a 5 by 4 palette all of them being a 'New scheme'.



Known problems:

- When draging-dropping to another application (e.g. the workplace shell
  itself) the graphical display gets distorded. This is due to a bug in OS/2
  itself, don't call me, call IBM ! This problem occurs only in the original
  first release of OS/2 (GA version).

- For testing reasons a lot of error and/or warning message are build in.
  Normally you should not see them, but on the Novell Network I work with
  myself I sometimes see 'Not enoug memory' messages. These messages result
  from the Novell Requestor for OS/2 2.0 reporting very L A R G E 
  extended attribute sizes. So don't call me, call Novell !


Updates in version 1.5:

- This version now supports OS/2 2.00.1 beta (32 bits GRE)

- Also, the mechanism for reading extended attributes has been improved.
  This was needed because the new 2.00.1 (or 2.01 BETA) appearantly has
  a bug that returns un incorrect size for extented attributes when using
  DosQueryPathInfo.
  Appearantly this same bug appears to be in the Novell Netware Requester, 
  since I havnt seen the problem mentioned above after I made the changes.

- Known problems: ICON.EXE terminates or causes your desktop to hang
                  when starting in WINOS/2 Program
                  in the early 2.00.1 BETA version. It works properly in GA version.

Updates in version 1.6:

- Icon.exe now works properly after the service pack (October 1992) has
  been installed!.


Updates in version 1.61:

- ICON.EXE allows the user to specify a directory where extracted icons
  will be placed. (open->settings)

- ICON.EXE now works properly with OS/2 2.1 BETA. (Released december '92)


Updates in version 1.70:

- ICON.EXE now works properly with OS/2 2.1 BETA (Released march '93)


Update in version 1.80:

-  ICON.EXE now works with OS/2 3.0 (or WARP)

-  ICON.EXE allows you to modify several extended attributes.