AISS & icon types

Hi,
I am trying to understand a bit more about icons, especially toolbar icons, PNG icons, AISS
I did read the history article about Amiga Icons
http://articles.erkan.se/the-history- ... -icons-from-workbench-30/
As it does not speaks about OS4 i am losing ground from there?

I do understand AISS became part of OS4 (4.1 Update 1)
I don't understand exactly what is AISS (more than a collection of icons?) What type are they?

I do find AISS (Mason's) icons in the envarc:sys drawer
also in utilities/dockies and toolbar icons in the Prefs/Presets/tbimages.
Those last ones are png icons and although i did install in libs:
http://www.os4depot.net/index.php?fun ... e=library/misc/png_im.lha
i cannot view them properly.
I downloaded AISSView 0.15 a while ago. It does not help me neither to view them.

My main question is this: since a lot of icons are usable (viewable) directly, is it possible to have the toolbar icons usable that way?

@JosDuchIt

AISS it's native amigaos4 format icons done by Mason. That ones which come with AOS4 are not full (only basic ones). So, you need to download full archive from his page to make all programms happy.

Also there is pretty offten present PNG icons (just png image, without anything specific inside), and you can download png.module from os4depot, which will allow to you to have all png icons works (that module not part of basic aos4 setup, so you need install it manually).

Just install that png.icons module, and all icons will works for you with no problems.

@JosDuchIt

AISS is a collection of PNG images available for use by third party programs (mainly for toolbar buttons). It is a different thing from the OS4 icon set, which was also (entirely ?) painted by Mason.

Like you said, AISS images can be found through TBImages: assign.

@kas1e
@centaurz
Thanks for the information.
I did browse around and am close to what i wanted to do.
Not that i understand how applications point to their appropriate AISS toolbar icons.

To be practical:

What i was trying to do is use the AISS icons from within Gui4Cli scripts.
Gui4Cli scripts can be very sophisticated and cover practically all fields. So the set of needed toolbar icons can be as large as imagination goes.

Using existing Icons from applications is quiet straightforward
You only need those two lines

xICON L T iconname (path without the .info)
followed by the command sequence to be e?ecuted.

This works also for docky icons

I did have more problems with toolbar images (which i want to use most)
I could also use the toolbar images as in this demo script:

======
G4C

WINBIG 0 10 600 90 Icon.gc
SCREEN OrigynWebBrowser

WINTYPE 11110001

xONLOAD
Gosub #this Default

xONRELOAD
Gosub #this Default

xONCLOSE
GuiQuit #this

xROUTINE Default
LoadImage datas:AISS4.9/Images/home home OrigynWebBrowser
LoadImage datas:AISS4.9/Images/nav_west left OrigynWebBrowser ;NOREMAP
LoadImage datas:AISS4.9/Images/nav_east right OrigynWebBrowser ;NOREMAP
LoadImage datas:AISS4.9/Images/stop stop OrigynWebBrowser ;NOREMAP
LoadImage datas:AISS4.9/Images/reload reload OrigynWebBrowser
LoadImage datas:AISS4.9/Images/addressbookadd _add OrigynWebBrowser
GuiOpen #this


Image 0 0 left
xArea 0 0 20 20 NONE
EzReq left Ok var

Image 20 0 right
xArea 20 0 20 20 NONE
EzReq right Ok var

Image 40 0 stop
xArea 40 0 20 20 NONE
EzReq srop Ok var

Image 60 0 reload
xArea 60 0 20 20 NONE
EzReq reload Ok var

Image 80 0 home
xArea 80 0 20 20 NONE
EzReq home Ok var

Image 100 0 _add
xArea 100 0 20 20 NONE
EzReq add Ok var

xICON 140 0 datas:utilities/dockies/subdock.docky
EzReq "docky idon is presented OK too" OK var

xICON 200 0 datas:utilities/IBrowse/IBrowse
RUN "datas:utilities/IBrowse/IBrowse"

xICON 260 0 datas:utilities/OWB/OWBLauncher
RUN "datas:utilities/OWB/OWBLauncher"

xICON 320 0 datas:utilities/Netsurf/Netsurf
RUN "datas:utilities/Netsurf/Netsurf"

xICON 380 0 datas:utilities/Timberwolf/Timberwolf
RUN "datas:utilities/Timberwolf/Timberwolf"
=====

The result for the normal (.info) icons is not bad. The toolbar "icons" however are less sharp than when you use multiview. or as in OWB.

I then found that using the PNG_Icon_Editor i was able to transform a png file in tbimages: (in fact i redownloaded aiss49 and used the images there) in a directly viewable icon simply resaving it with a .info extension.
I then could use those icons more directly in Gui4CLi scripts and they also look sharper.

A typical 'toolbar icon' would then look like

xArea 0 22 20 20 NONE ; thes 2 lines are needed only if we want "local help"
GadHelp "GoBack" ; defines the local help
xICON 0 22 datas:AISS4.9/Images2Icons_/nav_west ; in fact pointing to a transformed nav_west.info vieuwable icon
;GadHelp "Goback" ; Local help does not work for icons
EzReq Goback Ok var ; a requester pops up as a dummy, here you would place the 'command sequence to be executed

See the grab in http://users.online.be/AD/Icongc.jpg

One thing i regret is that PNG_Icon_Editor does not come with an arexx port, to automate the transformation from images to toolbar icons.
Maybe it can be done with shell scripts ?

@JosDuchIt

You should not need to convert PNG images to icons just to display them. I don't know how GUI4Cli works but on the screenshot you posted (is it with icons or with PNG ?) the images are clearly downgraded to palette-mapped bitmaps, so maybe there is a limitation on the image format somewhere.

@centaurz


The left upper toolbar icons are the png images loaded as shown in the script.

The ones just below are the same converted to icons (using png_icon_editor) I contacted the author Paul Bloedel about the painfull conversion one by one, and he responded sending me the program ConvertToIcon which does exactly what i needed: convert a selection of images to icons.

As for now this solves the problem for Gui4Cli users.
It may be interesting to follow this path too: Creating graphical alphabets with Mason's toolbar images. Gui4Cli comes allready with such an alphabet (courtesy of G. Maddox). Then the following lines
xBUTTON 0 0 25 20 "_A"
gadfont gcGfx.font 10 000
say ' I am A"

will present the first icon of the grab http://users.online.be/AD/GraphicFont.grab.jpg
It is to be noted that using "_A" instead of "A" defines the a key as a shortcut for the command sequence (here 'say "I am A"') It would be intersting therefor to have the X,C,V 'letters' in the graphic alphabet the traditional cut, copy and paste images. This is not the case in the Maddox font.

Any comment on the possibility to use Mason's images as characters in a font ?
What tools could be used for this?