Trying to do a resource update for icons and I'm nearly there ...
lazarus / 67-Windows

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Spoonhorse · 2021-04-30 19:22

I have become enlightened. Will either update, or this is the best
prank ever on the next person who googles this topic. Or I died of a
heart attack.

ETA: my solution is in post #14, in return be nice to someone today.

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Spoonhorse · 2021-04-30 19:45

P.S. it looks like whoever wrote this understands the whole thing
perfectly so maybe I'll re-use their code. I'd like to understand it
better though.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35189283/change-icon-of-
application-on-runtime

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wp · 2021-04-30 21:18

Why are you doing it in the most complicated way? The easiest way is
to open the project options ("Project" > "Project Options" >
"Application") and to load the icon by using the "Load Icon" button.
Then Lazarus takes care of everything.

Or do you want to replace the icon while the program is running? In
this case, you simply can set "Application.Icon := OtherIcon", or in
more detail:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]window.onload = function(){var x1 =
document.getElementById("main_content_section"); if (x1) { var x =
document.getElementsByClassName("geshi");for (var i = 0; i type 
TForm1 = class(TForm)    Button1: TButton;    procedure
Button1Click(Sender: TObject);    procedure FormCreate(Sender:
TObject);    procedure FormDestroy(Sender: TObject);  private   
OtherIcon: TIcon;   public   end; var  Form1:
TForm1; implementation {$R *.lfm} { TForm1 } procedure
TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);begin  Application.Icon :=
OtherIcon;end; procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);begin 
OtherIcon := TIcon.Create; 
OtherIcon.LoadFromFile('C:\Lazarus\lazarus-
trunk_fpc-3.2.0\images\icons\brown.ico');  // or load an icon from
resourceend; procedure TForm1.FormDestroy(Sender: TObject);begin 
OtherIcon.Free;end;

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Spoonhorse · 2021-05-01 01:06

Thank you for the advice, wp, but what if I do not have access to the
source code of executable.exe? What if it is not written in Pascal?

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Spoonhorse · 2021-05-01 15:38

The trouble with the code I found on Stack Overflow is that the guy's
copying it from one .exe file to another rather than from an .ico file
and that's no good to me.

Here's a fresh version of my code. It is now even closer, if I look at
the updated version in Resource Hacker it tells me that the group has
nine icons, which is true, that they're 16.8 million color, which is
true, that they're all 16 x 16, which is not true, and that it can't
actually show me what they look like, which is annoying. And that they
all have the ordinal name 150.

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]window.onload = function(){var x1 =
document.getElementById("main_content_section"); if (x1) { var x =
document.getElementsByClassName("geshi");for (var i = 0; i procedure
TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);var   vResHandle: THandle;     
MyIcon: TMemoryStream;begin  // Get the icon.  MyIcon :=
TMemoryStream.Create;  MyIcon.LoadFromFile('icon.ico');  // Set the
position in the memory stream to the start.  MyIcon.Seek(0,
soFromBeginning);   // Get the handle.  vResHandle :=
BeginUpdateResource('exec.exe', False);  if vResHandle=0 then    raise
Exception.Create('System giving error message: '                     
    + SysErrorMessage(GetLastError));    try    // Change the icon.  
if not UpdateResource(vResHandle                          ,
RT_GROUP_ICON                          , PChar('MAINICON')           
             , LANG_NEUTRAL                          , MyIcon.Memory 
                       , MyIcon.Size)    then      raise
Exception.Create('System giving error message: '                     
      + SysErrorMessage(GetLastError));    finally   
EndUpdateResource(vResHandle, False);    end;  MyIcon.Free;end;

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Handoko · 2021-05-01 16:26

Quote from: Spoonhorse on May 01, 2021, 03:06:06 am but what if I do
not have access to the source code of executable.exe? What if it is
not written in Pascal?

Did you not know it is a Pascal forum?
Did you trying to do some hacking?
Did you not know it is not appropriate to discuss something illegal in
this forum?

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lainz · 2021-05-01 16:36

Quote from: Handoko on May 01, 2021, 06:26:45 pmQuote from: Spoonhorse
on May 01, 2021, 03:06:06 am but what if I do not have access to the
source code of executable.exe? What if it is not written in Pascal?

Did you not know it is a Pascal forum?
Did you trying to do some hacking?
Did you not know it is not appropriate to discuss something illegal in
this forum?


Calm down. Changing the icon of an executable is not a crime.

You can do it with any command line tool. Its useful when you have to
customize a binary, say for example Electron, that comes with his own
icon and you need to change it when distributing your app.

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marcov · 2021-05-01 16:59

Quote from: Spoonhorse on May 01, 2021, 03:06:06 amWhat if it is not
written in Pascal?

If it is not written in Lazarus/Freepascal, then it is off-topic.

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lucamar · 2021-05-01 17:06

Quote from: marcov on May 01, 2021, 06:59:00 pmQuote from: Spoonhorse
on May 01, 2021, 03:06:06 amWhat if it is not written in Pascal?If it
is not written in Lazarus/Freepascal, then it is off-topic.
Why off-topic? He's asking how to build an icon-changer in Pascal,
like Resource Hacker (a Delphi app) can do (IIRC). The "not source,
not in Pascal" is, essentially, just his target "data".

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Handoko · 2021-05-01 17:23

Quote from: lainz on May 01, 2021, 06:36:22 pmChanging the icon of an
executable is not a crime.

I am not a student of criminology but I what know is if someone change
the icon of my program without my permission, I won't happy.

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Martin_fr · 2021-05-01 17:40

Quote from: Handoko on May 01, 2021, 07:23:21 pmQuote from: lainz on
May 01, 2021, 06:36:22 pmChanging the icon of an executable is not a
crime.

I am not a student of criminology but I what know is if someone change
the icon of my program without my permission, I won't happy.

We don't know what executable. For all we know it may be public
domain, but without source, or he hasn't got the toolchain to build it
himself.

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Spoonhorse · 2021-05-01 18:10

Hi.

(1) I think I know how to do this now, I have found my fundamental
error. I need to take the icon file, split it into two parts and
inject them into two different places.

(2) Changing the Application.Icon only changes the thing in the top
left hand corner of your form. It doesn't change how it displays on
the taskbar.

(3) If I wanted to do this for illegal purposes I could do it with
Resource Hacker which I have downloaded. I want to give my users the
capacity to do this. This is the only reason why anyone would want to
do this in code.

(4) Guys, calm down. What crime could I commit and actually get away
with through changing the icon? All the copyright information would
still be there. In fact, I'm trying to do the exact opposite if
anything — I've written a free program so customizable that the last
step is to give it a new name and logo and publisher name and then
even sell it for commercial purposes if you can find a buyer. Or give
it away free, like decent people. I'm trying to give people every
facility to do that. But because of point (2), in order for my program
to do that for them I have to know how to do this. So far as I can see
the only sensible way is to copy the .exe file of my program under a
different name and do this. I have thought of one dumb way that
increase the size of my setup.exe by orders of magnitude, one fairly
sensible way which puts my users to mild inconvenience, one almost-
sensible way which I have no idea how to start to implement, and one
totally successful but incredibly lazy way which is also illegal, so
I'm going with this one.

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PascalDragon · 2021-05-02 12:20

Quote from: Handoko on May 01, 2021, 07:23:21 pmQuote from: lainz on
May 01, 2021, 06:36:22 pmChanging the icon of an executable is not a
crime.

I am not a student of criminology but I what know is if someone change
the icon of my program without my permission, I won't happy.

I've used similar approaches in the past to change the boot icon of
Windows XP (which required to modify a resource in the ntoskrnl.exe).

And even if I'd change the icon of your program on my computer what
would you care if I wouldn't distribute it? Also I wouldn't even have
to write my own software, cause I could just use one existing resource
hacker software to do that.

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lainz · 2021-05-02 18:50

Quote from: PascalDragon on May 02, 2021, 02:20:41 pmQuote from:
Handoko on May 01, 2021, 07:23:21 pmQuote from: lainz on May 01, 2021,
06:36:22 pmChanging the icon of an executable is not a crime.

I am not a student of criminology but I what know is if someone change
the icon of my program without my permission, I won't happy.

I've used similar approaches in the past to change the boot icon of
Windows XP (which required to modify a resource in the ntoskrnl.exe).

And even if I'd change the icon of your program on my computer what
would you care if I wouldn't distribute it? Also I wouldn't even have
to write my own software, cause I could just use one existing resource
hacker software to do that.

Everyone did that in that times =) Customizing Windows XP. Even there
was a time when you can add Windows Vista style to Windows XP changing
the msstyles and explorer icons, all "hacking" system files exe or
dll.

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Spoonhorse · 2021-05-03 11:27

OK people! The following is working code, don't do bad crimes with it!
You'll need to put Windows in your uses statement.

Some notes on what effects it has on the application and Windows,
because some of this is subtle.

(1) Although the application icon (in the top left corner of your main
form) can be set to be completely different from the main icon for the
program, it seems like it's overwritten to be in line with the main
icon once you do the update. 99% of the time this would be exactly
what you want. If it isn't what you want you'll have to take it from
here.

(2) File Explorer caches this stuff so hard that you won't see any
change in how the icon's displayed there unless you restart Explorer.
This is fine for my purposes, if it's a problem for you then again
you'll have to solve it yourself, sorry.

(3) This is NOT an answer to that frequently-asked question, "how do I
change the toolbar icon of my Pascal-based application while it's
running?" Because you can't do a resource update on an executable
that's being executed, whether your own or another. What you could do,
if you really must, is have your program save all its data and then
shut down after starting a program which waits for it to shut down,
changes its icon, and then starts it back up, at which point it
reloads its data. This would work, but it would take time of course,
you couldn't use it for something you'd want to change frequently like
to indicate the status of the program.

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]window.onload = function(){var x1 =
document.getElementById("main_content_section"); if (x1) { var x =
document.getElementsByClassName("geshi");for (var i = 0; i procedure
TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);var   vResHandle: THandle;     
MyIcon: TMemoryStream;      i,j: integer;      s: string;     
ImageCount: Word;      ImageSize: DWord;      ab, m:
TMemoryStream; const HeaderSize = 6;      IcoEntrySize = 16;     
ResEntrySize = 14; begin // Short explanation. An icon file consists
of (a) a six-byte header which// includes among other things
information about how many icons are in// the file; (b) sixteen bytes
of metadata for each icon; (c) the icons. // But that's how icons are
stored as files. As executable resources,// Windows considers that (a)
and (b) are one resource but (c) is a different// resource, indeed one
resource for each image, so we have to split the icon// file up and do
several resource updates. // It also requires only fourteen bytes of
metadata per entry: instead of the// last parameter being a double
word referring to the position of the image// in memory, it's a single
word conferring an ID. // Initialize stuffMyIcon :=
TMemoryStream.Create;ab := TMemoryStream.Create;m :=
TMemoryStream.Create; // Get the
iconMyIcon.LoadFromFile('icon.ico'); // Get the handle for the
resource update..vResHandle := BeginUpdateResource('test.exe',
False); // We skip forward in the memory stream to where Windows keeps
the image count and read
it.MyIcon.Seek(4,soFromBeginning);ImageCount:=MyIcon.ReadWord; // Go
back to the beginning ...MyIcon.Seek(0,soFromBeginning); // We read
the directory information into ab, modifying its format as we do
so. for j:=1 to HeaderSize do ab.WriteByte(MyIcon.ReadByte);    for
i:=1 to ImageCount do        begin        for j:=1 to IcoEntrySize - 4
do ab.WriteByte(MyIcon.ReadByte);        MyIcon.ReadDWord;  // To skip
over it.        ab.WriteWord(i);        end; // Update the icon
directory with ab, which is now in the correct
format. UpdateResource(vResHandle                      ,
RT_GROUP_ICON                      , PChar('MAINICON')               
     , LANG_NEUTRAL                      , ab.Memory                 
   , ab.Size); // Now the size of each icon is contained as a double
word in the directory// entries for each item, so we use that to cut
the remainder of the memory// stream into chunks and update them one
at a time. for i := 1 to ImageCount do    begin    m :=
TMemoryStream.Create;   
ab.Seek(HeaderSize+(i-1)*ResEntrySize+8,soFromBeginning);   
ImageSize:=ab.ReadDWord;    for j:=1 to ImageSize do
m.WriteByte(MyIcon.ReadByte);    UpdateResource(vResHandle           
     , RT_ICON                  , MAKEINTRESOURCE(i)                 
, LANG_NEUTRAL                  , m.Memory                  ,
m.Size);    m.Free;   
end; EndUpDateResource(vResHandle,False);MyIcon.Free;ab.Free;end;

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marcov · 2021-05-03 12:58

Thanks reporting back despite the pushback (and mea culpa me there
too)

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Spoonhorse · 2021-05-03 20:11

The pushback made me more likely to come back and gloat. I have
achieved the forbidden magics! Woe unto the unbelievers.