I have created an application in shoes and the .dmg(.app) and .exe version work on there respective target systems, but how do I control the icon that is used for the executable files?
I just can't find any documentation on this. I plan on using many little helpful shoes applications and would like to have different icons to visually distinguish between them.
Not from Shoes, no. I'll let _why himself answer this one:
1 - changing the application icon! how to?
You'll need to use a tool like IcoFX. http://icofx.ro/ Eventually, I'd like to make this more automatic, but it'll be challenging because you'll still need to design several different pixel sizes.
IF I prepare my images (uncompressed tiffs) for the different size of icons. For OS X 10.5: 512x512 256x256 128x128 32x32 16x16
I can then use /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Icon Composer.app (Included with the xCode) to create an .icns
IcoFX can then be used (on Windows) to convert the icns to a windows .icn.
So I now I have got my Mac Icon and my Windows Icon.
For the DMG on the Mac I take the .app out of the .dmg that shoes creates. I open the .app as folder by right-clicking 'Show Package Contents' then replace the Shoes.icns and /Resources/Shoes.icns
The app then need to be repacked in a dmg for distribution I could use iDMG and also add the icns as an icon for the dmg.
For the EXE on Windows I can use IcoFX Resource Editor to change the embedded icon (.icn)
My .dmg (& .app) and .exe all take on the appearance of the new icon. Until execution then the standard shoes icon appears, on the mac dock, in the upper left of the windows frame and the windows task bar.
I am unsure if the icon stays the same as the shoes icon because it is actually shoes that is running the application or because the .app and the .exe are wrappers for an embedded .shy file which maintains the shoes logo.