Getting software going?

I don’t seem to have an !AMPlayer application, is it needed for MP3 files?

No. It is a source of an MP3 icon if there is not one already present, the icon can be extracted from the app.

Oh, okay, thanks! :)

However, my next question is – and we’ve covered similar ground to this already – where do I put the extracted icon?

where do I put the extracted icon?

All that is needed is an Obey file to IconSprites the Sprites file containing the icon. There is no “official” answer to this.

Alas, getting some software going for a new user (indeed, one who has dabbled in coding but is pretty green) is still proving hard. I get that many of the games are just engines, which require actual files then to run, but getting the two to parley is frying my brain.

- Clicking !Wesnoth – having copied !MyWesnoth and making sure it’s seen by the filer – freezes for a while then returns to the pinboard and bombards me with loud fantasy music that I can’t turn off.

- Even following the example of BOS as per !Help, setting up !Stratagus games totally eludes me

- !ArcEm, with an OS file, persistently claims that there is not enough memory, even though the ‘Tasks’ window states the contrary

- !lincity continues to do nothing.

There’s no complaint from me here! This is free software, worked on for free by hardworking volunteers, after all. It’s just so frustrating to have delicious fruit apparently so close and yet so far from my grasp!

Where do I put the extracted icon?

All that is needed is an Obey file to IconSprites the Sprites file containing the icon. There is no “official” answer to this.

Okay, except I was just wondering if I should store the sprites in DCDRes when I discovered that it already has the 1AD icons, plus what looks like the icons for all the other sound filetypes!

Why isn’t DigitalCD looking in there?

Okay, except I was just wondering if I should store the sprites in DCDRes when I discovered that it already has the 1AD icons, plus what looks like the icons for all the other sound filetypes! Why isn’t DigitalCD looking in there?

Hmm!! There was no 1AD sprite anywhere in DCDRes or DigitalCD as newly installed here, but I have now found a further download of file icons is to be had which does indeed have a lot of filetype icons including 1AD. These are in a file simply called Sprites22 with no instructions on what to do with it. Note that the file does contain some icons already provided by the OS. Simply putting that file into DCDRes or DigitalCD will do nothing as there is no instruction to load it.

If the whole file is iconsprited then some existing icons will be over-written, only the additional icons are required. Modifying applications has the downside that the modification will be lost on any upgrades.

At this point I would refer back to my previous answer, iconsprite the file containing the 1AD icon externally having first deleted any superfluous icons.

I kicked all this stuff off of my Pi yesterday, it is briefly back on again and I am again stuck with DigitalCD on the icon bar with no menu and no way to quit, not even from the Task Manager.

For completeness the DigitalCD downloads I used are here

where do I put the extracted icon?

I have a little home-brewed application called Sprites in Apps which Iconsprites a sprite file containing sprites I want to add to the sprite pool or replacement ones I prefer to those that would otherwise prevail.

Its Run file additionally tests for Alt to give me a shortcut to displaying the in-built Wimp sprites from Resources.

It is easily accessible if a rogue app forces any unwanted sprites on me.

I have a little home-brewed application

I do something similar, it is part of the boot.

It is easily accessible if a rogue app forces any unwanted sprites on me.

You can’t help wondering, with the theming and all, whether the IconSprites command default should be a “IfNotExist-then-load-sprites” then people can load a set of sprites they want for regularly used apps.
Maybe one of these homebrewed applications could collect all such into a resource for the loaded theme.

Or should we, in the interests of memory saving, load sprites (if not already loaded) from a search path – themes resource first then application directory then…

Ah, the manual.
Load the application, on the menu select help, dig around a little. Find the information, which is a counter-intuitive marker on the start of an entry¹ in non-obvious file in the application and likely to be overwritten during an upgrade.

Quite.

I think I prefer an entry in the !Run file.

See what you said above!

See what you said above!

You mean as in:

likely to be overwritten during an upgrade.

Yes, but the Run file is easier to find. The current, apparently correct, method is like an element of the first scene of HHGTTG.
I thought applications graduated from holding internal configuration in obscure sub-directories subject to over-writing during upgrades a decade or so ago.

Yes, but the Run file is easier to find.

True. But where a ‘fix’ involves changing the !Run file (or in fact !Boot would be more appropriate here) then I refer you back to my original comment (though for ‘LookAt’ read ‘Run’). That won’t be frelled over by an update, because you’d put the file somewhere sensible.

I thought applications graduated from holding internal configuration in obscure sub-directories subject to over-writing during upgrades a decade or so ago.

We can dream.

I’d also like to think we’ve graduated from using StrongHelp for manuals in this day and age, but apparently we haven’t. ;)

@Vince M Hudd

Some of us would like to read software manuals written in html, StrongHelp, text, whatever.

Like, the name escapes me for the moment but I’m sure it has something to do with web pages ;-)).

The boot sequence, in BootRun, sets up a handy alias for you to *ICONSPRITES any sprite files it finds in the directories it loads, which in practice is Choices.Boot.PreDesk.

So, to add extra user sprites you could do worse than just pop the sprite file(s) in there and leave it to work its magic. This approach has the advantage that it doesn’t get overwritten if you upgrade the music player application.

Of course if “protect ROM sprites” is turned on then any file type sprites that already exist can’t be trashed, but the question seemed to be about adding extra ones. Beware that the WimpMode isn’t yet set, so you’ll need to pick the resolution yourself rather than providing ‘22’ and ‘11’ suffixed versions.

Ron, I have absolutely no idea what you could possibly be talking about! None whatsoever, oh no. :p

Ron, the sentence may be too long. Try this one:

“Some of us would like to read software manuals”

:)

@ Steve (1551)

Oh I read lots of software manuals :-).

I would just like to add the one that Vince has whatsoever no idea of ;-).