General
DateBk6 only uses one icon file. However, you can copy
and paste icons easily from other collections into that one file, thereby
building your own custom icon collection with all the icons that you want to
use. If you are upgrading from a prior version of Pimlico Software's DateBk3/4/5, you may still have the older-style monochrome icon
collection installed. It is recommended that you delete that memopad record
(the one with DATEBK3 as the top line).
If you only have one icon collection installed,
DateBk6 will always find it. If you have two or more icon collections
installed, however, you should make sure that your "working" collection has
the name Icons-DATEBK (or Icons-DATEBK5 for backwards compatibility if you
already have that installed) as that is the default name that DateBk6 will look
for. You can rename the icon file using either dbIcon (in the zip
archive) or using the third party icon editor, IconMgr. Case is
important on this default name!
Installing
If you are starting off for the first time, it's
probably a good idea to just install Icons-DATEBK.prc to get familiar with how
icons work.
Other sample icon collections are stored in the Icons.zip file which in turn is stored in the DateBk6.zip archive. Start off
by unzipping the contents of the icons.zip file (the same way you originally
unzipped the DateBk6.zip file) and select the icon collection you want to
install by clicking on it. If the PRC extension is associated with the Palm
Install Tool, it will then be set up for installation. Otherwise, you will
need to extract the file, store it in a folder on your hard drive, then
launch the Palm Install tool to install it from that folder.
Using Icons
Icons are not necessarily displayed by default in
DateBk6 (they are, but only if you have a color icon file installed prior
to first launching DateBk6). In all views but the monthly view, you enable
the display of icons by going into View Display Options in the
Options menu of that view. In the monthly view, there is a popup list
on the selector control at the bottom of the screen that toggles between
displaying Appt times, icons, text and free time.
In the day view, you can attach an icon to an event in
one of two ways:
- Tap on the item, tap on the Details button
and then tap on the Icon button and select an icon.
- TapAndHold on the spot where the icon is displayed
(or would be displayed) until the icon selection dialog appears.
Using Icons from other Collections
Remember that DateBk only uses the icons in One icon
collection. If you have more than one icon collection installed, it is very
important that it has the default name of Icons-DATEBK (or Icons-DATEBK5 for
backwards compatibility) as otherwise, you cannot control which icon
collection is used by DateBk. If only one icon collection is present, it
will be used regardless of its name.
The normal procedure for building a custom icon
collection is to load all the icon collections that have icons you want to
use onto your device with a hotsync and then launch the now freeware
program: Icon Manager. Although you can use dbIcon, we now generally
recommend the use of Icon Manager as it was recently changed to a free
application and is much more powerful than dbIcon (which is why dbIcon has
not been updated in recent years).
Launch Icon Manager (which you can download from www.palmgear.com or any
other number of download sites that handle Palm Software).
In the opening screen, all downloaded icon collections are displayed. Tap on
one you want to copy icons FROM so all the icons appear on the screen.
If you are doing a lot of copying and pasting of multiple icons, you want to
check the SELECT+ checkbox so you can select more than one icon at a time.
Then:
- Tap on all the icons you want to pick up from that
database, or tap and drag across them to select them quickly. If you
accidentally tap the wrong icon, tap it again to unselect it. You can move
to other pages to select icons prior to copying them.
- Select COPY TO... from the RECORD menu and select
the icon collection you want to copy the icons INTO.
- Tap the CLOSE button.
- Tap the Icon Collection you copied the items into
and verify that they copied correctly.
- Select SAVE from the RECORD menu to save all your
changes and then tap CLOSE to finish.
The icons will then appear when you next run DateBk.
Note that if you intend to re-order the icons in the collection, it
is very important that you set the option to track icons by resource
ID rather than by index position (see Advanced Features below)
as otherwise, your existing icon assignments (which are tracked by the
position of the icon in the file) will all get shifted around! If you always
add icons at the end of the collection, then this is not an issue.
Important Compatibility Note
dbIcon included in the Icons.zip file is a simple icon
editor for handling standard density icons (i.e. for Palm devices with
160x160 resolution screens) and icon collections up to 255 icons in size. In
order to handle icon collections with high-density icons (for 320x320
resolution screens) or to handle collections up to 2,600 icons, you will
need to use the third party icon editor: Icon Manager which is available
from most Palm software archives like
www.PalmGear.com or www.handango.com.
We now recommend that all users download Icon Manager and use that instead.
High Density Icons
High density icons can be displayed on OS5 devices
with 320x320 screens or on OS4 Clie devices with 320x320 screens. If you
select a small or tiny view, the icons are displayed at halfsize. DateBk6
first looks to see if you have a low-density version of the current icon for
display. If you do, then that is displayed. Otherwise, on an OS5 device
only, DateBk6 will automatically scale the high-density icon to half-size
(never as good as a hand-tuned half-size icon, but maybe acceptable and
obviously involves no effort). On an OS4 Clie device, you must
provide a low-density version of each icon if you want an icon displayed in
the small/tiny views.
Missing Icons
If an icon is missing (you are tracking icons by
Resource ID and deleted that icon, or you have deleted icons and that icon
index position is now past the end of file), DateBk6 will display a red box
with an X in it.
Advanced Features
If you are a more advanced user, you can take
advantage of the fact that Datebk6 can track icons by either index position
(i.e. the record number in the database), or by resource ID (a tag
associated with each icon). Tracking icons by index position is fast, but
has the downside that if you delete or insert an icon, all icons past that
point assume a different index position so any existing references to
icons in DateBk6 get unexpectedly shifted. You can also track icons by
resource ID. This is slower but has the advantage of avoiding a problem with
inserting or deleting icons because the tag (resourceID) does not change as
icons are moved around. To track icons by Resource ID, go into the main
DateBk6 preference panel (Options | Preferences in any view), tap on the top
of the screen or the MORE button, and select Advanced Settings and check the box to Track Icons by
ResourceID. If you use this feature, Pimlico highly recommends the use
of the third party icon editor, Icon Manager to handle the editing of
icons. This program also has the ability to reset all the resource ID's.
This is very helpful because if you start off by resetting all the resource
ID's, they will then match the existing icon indexes, so that your
existing icon assignments are preserved (see note in following section).
Upgrading from prior version of
DateBk6
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of
DateBk that was tracking icons by index position and now want to track
icons by resourceID, you must handle this carefully in order to ensure that
all your existing icon assignments are not lost:
- Go into IconMgr, bring up the icon
collection you are using and select the RENUMBER ICON IDs option from the
IDs menu- best is to select CUSTOM ID NUMBER and enter value of zero.
After doing that, use the TOGGLE ID NUMBERS menu option and verify that
the very first icon has a number of 0 assigned to it.
- Save the database
- Exit out of IconMgr
- Launch DateBk6
- Go into Options | Preferences, tap on
title bar legend or MORE button, select ADVANCED
SETTINGS and check the box TRACK ICONS BY
RESOURCE ID (Remember to save this to all your saved views and startup
view!)
- EXIT OUT OF DATEBK6
- Re-launch Datek6
Also, note that if you track icons by
Resource ID, you must ensure that all resource ID #'s lie in the range
0-2599. Any icons number 2,600 or higher will not be displayed in DateBk6.