Creating a Program Icon
Now you have created your basic icon, you need to prepare it for use with your program.- The Series 5/5mx uses 3 sizes of icon for the system screen (one for each of the 3 zoom
levels), each of which also has an associated mask. To explain:
- The icons are sized 48x48, 32x32 and 24x24 pixels.
- You can use just one 48x48 icon and let the Series 5/5mx automatically scale the icon to the smaller sizes itself as the screen is zoomed. This may be acceptable for some styles of icon, but it loses resolution.
- The more reliable and recommended method (described below) is to create the 3 sizes of icon yourself from the master and optimise each for the size.
- Each icon must be supplied in 2 forms : the picture and its mask. A 'mask' is just a silhouette of the icon itself, all in black, that allows EPOC to mask out the screen background where the icon is situated. i.e. it lets white areas of the icon stay white. Without the mask they would be transparent and let the background screen colour show through (e.g. the EPOC logo).
- Use a PC paint program (Paint Shop Pro is an extremely good choice, and for its shareware price, very reasonable) to create the required bitmaps from the master icon as follows.
- Make sure the icons are all saved as Windows bitmaps (.BMP), subtype RGB encoded, with 4 bits/pixel and max 16 colours.
- In my JWIN for EPOC program, the icon file has been left with the original 3 colours it had in its Series 3 form - black, white and grey. However, it is possible to add another shade of grey, as 4 colours are routinely used in the Series 5/5mx. Note though, that we haven't always had success with using 4 colours as one grey shade sometimes gets lost in doing the conversion (the reason hasn't yet been tracked down).
- Start by taking the original 48x48 icon and use "Save As" with the name xxxxx48.bmp (xxxxx being any name of your choice). All these names are optional, but this is an efficient system for simplicity and organisation. Basically though, as long as you know what they are called for use in step 11, anything is OK!
- Use this icon (xxxxx48.bmp) and, for all areas enclosed by the outline of the actual icon, fill in with black - i.e. replace all grey and white pixels within the icon and make it into a silhouette. This will be the mask that EPOC requires. Save it as xxxxx48m.bmp. If you're still not sure about what a mask should look like, see the example pictures later on this page.
- Take the xxxxx48.bmp again and resize it to 32x32. Then tweak and touch it up until it looks good again. This is very subjective, but you'll have to lose some detail and simplify it for the smaller size. When done, save it as xxxxx32.bmp.
- Repeat Step 4 on icon xxxxx32.bmp to make its mask and save it as xxxxx32m.bmp.
- Take the xxxxx48.bmp again and resize it to 24x24. Once again, tweak and touch it up until it looks good! When done, save it as xxxxx24.bmp.
- Repeat Step 4 on icon xxxxx24.bmp and save it as xxxxx24m.bmp.
- You should now have 6 bitmap files:
xxxxx24.bmp
xxxxx24m.bmp
xxxxx32.bmp
xxxxx32m.bmp
xxxxx48.bmp
xxxxx48m.bmpTo make things a bit clearer (especially concerning the masks), these images are the ones used to make the program icon for JWIN for EPOC:
Image\Size 48x48 32x32 24x24 Normal Icon 
Icon Mask 
- Copy the BMCONV.EXE program to this directory (you can delete it again from here after use), or make sure the program is within one of the PATHS specified in your Autoexec.bat file.
- You can run this program by specifying the each of the output and input files on the command line (Tip: execute BMCONV without any parameters to see the usage instructions). However it is easier to use Windows Notepad (or another text editor) to create a simple command file as follows:
xxxxx.mbm xxxxx24.bmp xxxxx24m.bmp xxxxx32.bmp xxxxx32m.bmp xxxxx48.bmp xxxxx48m.bmp
The following points apply to the file you've created:- The first line xxxxx.mbm is the filename you are going to create for the Series 5/5mx, i.e. the BMCONV output file.
- The next 6 lines are the bitmap icons you've created, and will be the input files for BMCONV.
- It makes sense to list them in the sequence above (24 icon, 24 mask, 32 icon, 32 mask, 48 icon, 48 mask). However, as long as the icons are in pairs, the order should not make any difference to the final file, although this (as of yet) has not been checked.
- A very important thing to note - there must be a carriage return (ENTER) on the last line, such that the cursor moves to the next and last line of the file. The program fails to run without this linefeed.
- Now, save this file as (for example) "MAKE.TXT" in the directory with the icons and BMCONV.
- In Windows '95/NT 4.0, use Start|Programs|MS-DOS Prompt and then in the DOS window navigate to the directory which holds the icons and the text file you created. At the DOS prompt enter:
BMCONV MAKE.TXT
The BMCONV program should then run and tell you the following:Compiling Multiple bitmap store type: File store Psion file: xxxxx.mbm Bitmap file 1: xxxxx24.bmp Bitmap file 2: xxxxx24m.bmp Bitmap file 3: xxxxx36.bmp Bitmap file 4: xxxxx36m.bmp Bitmap file 5: xxxxx48.bmp Bitmap file 6: xxxxx48m.bmp Success
You should now have a file called xxxxx.mbm in the same directory! If it fails you've probably got a filename wrong. - To use this new MBM, copy it from your working directory to where you're developing your program (i.e. either a Series 5/5mx machine or the relevant WINS directory). Then, make the relevant call to it in the APP...ENDA section of OPL. This will appear something like:
APP AppName,AppUid& ICON "C:\CodePath\IconName.mbm" ENDA
Extracting Icons from MBM files
The above instructions deal with icon conversion/creation. However, you will obviously want to create MBM files for toolbars or other uses in your programs. The same principals apply, but here are a few more useful pointers...- Toolbar icons are 24x24 in size.
- A lot of toolbar icons you may not need to draw from scratch! You could copy one of the ROM application's MBM files to your local disk, to use the pictures it contains - if you don't know how, a very simple OPL program like this will do it (simply enter the path of the MBM file you want manually then re-translate):
PROC CopyFromRom: COPY "Z:\SYSTEM\APPS\WORD\WORD.MBM","C:\OPL" PRINT "File copied OK. GET ENDP
There is also a far easier way, thanks to a program I mentioned at the top of this page called MBMView by Lieuwe de Vries. This will allow you to view and save any embedded picture from any MBM file (including those on the ROM)! - Once you have the file on your local disk, copy it to the PC and do a reverse BMCONV to extract the Window bitmaps from the MBM file. You can do this the easy way by creating a file similar to the "MAKE.TXT" example above, only use something like this:
/U WORD.MBM REV_00.BMP REV_01.BMP REV_02.BMP REV_03.BMP ........ (Insert a new line for every new .BMP here!) REV_100.BMP
- Save the file as "REV_MBM.TXT" (or whatever you want). Once again, either copy BMCONV.EXE to the directory where the new text file and MBM file are, or make sure the program is in your PATH's. After that, simply run it by typing this at the DOS command prompt:
BMCONV REV_MBM.TXT
That's it! You then end up with the specified number of .BMP files which contain corresponding icons extracted from the multiple MBM file. If BMCONV runs out of MBM's to decompile, it will stop with an error message, but you will find that it has created the .BMP files for all the icons present. There's no way of telling how many .BMP files will be produced, so some trial and error is required - if all 100 files output without BMCONV failing it's probably certain that there are more in the file! - View all the .BMPs in your PC paint package, or preferably use some sort of "Thumbnail" function (again, Paint Shop Pro comes in very handy here), to find out what they all are.
- Once you've sorted through all the BMP files you've got, and have found some you want to use in your toolbar, you can either use them as is, or modify them to suit your program's purposes. Use exactly the same method as described at the beginning to make one big MBM with them all in.
- You don't actually need to bother creating the silhouette masks for each icon, as they work fairly successfully without. When you load the icons to your toolbar in OPL, just load the same icon index in twice (once as the icon and again as the mask).
- However, better results can be obtained by creating an equivalent silhouette mask for each toolbar icon. This will allow white areas of the icon to stay white, and not be transparent and let the grey background of the buttons show through.