Hi,
I have a USB license but whenever I use Dopus in USB mode, my icons are all messed up because they are not saved with the backup. I did a bit of reading from the forum and understand that I have to create an icon pack. Is there a simple way to create such pack? I could not find a simple tutorial to achieve this purpose. Thanks for the help.
See the sticky at the top of the Icons area:
Thanks Leo, Yes, indeed, I found the .pdf document called Icon Set Specification. But I'm not verse about .xml syntax and the process is way to complicated and lengthy for me to do it quickly. I have hundreds of icons in .ico format and just would like a way to gather them into the Dopus .dis format but it seems that there is no simple way to do it. I wish the developers would consider a simple way for us to create those .dis files. Do you think this is something that could be considered or even in development? My portable Dopus is so ugly that I cringe every time I have to use it 
It's just a text file listing the names of the icons. It's not as complex as it might look. 
The first reply in the thread I linked also gives you a web-based tool that someone wrote which will generate all the XML for you from just a list of filenames.
It really looks hairy to me so I got put off. But now that you have pointed out the web-based tool and confirmed that the process is do-able by a lay person, I'll give it another try. Thanks Leo.
If you're really stuck you can send me the zip of icons and I'll turn it into a dis file for you, but it should be a pretty simple process and it's worth learning so you can change the icons yourself if you need to.
I actually started to convert my .ico to .png and copy one by one the name paths. The task with the amount of icons was to daunting that I let the whole thing slide. Now with your guidance, I'll give it another try Leo. I'll keep the option to PM you with the zip of my icons as a last recourse because I enjoy learning and be independent. You have my heartfelt thanks for holding my hand
You can add as many paths as you want. I created two icon sets yesterday with 52 icons in each....it took me about 5 minutes.
I'm working on this and would like some further help.
I converted my .ico files into .png into 20x20, 32x32, 48x48 and 64x64 sizes.
I used the "disPHP" tool that you (Leo) mentioned earlier to have different.xml files depending on the size of the set.
Now, I have to concatenate the 20x20 and 32x32 .xml files together to have a Small set and 48x48 and 64x64 for a Large set, right? And then rename these to .dis to have a Dopus icon set file?
Actually, I should have asked first this: do I have to create multiple .png formats or a 20x20 set would suffice?
Thanks for the help and patience.
Not exactly concatenate them. There will be some common stuff at the top and bottom of each XML file that you only want one copy of in the joined file.
You just want to copy all the "set" parts from one file to the other:
File 1:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<iconset name="Name">
<display_name>Display Name</display_name>
<copyright>Copyright</copyright>
<Artist>Artist</Artist>
<set size="small" width="20" height="20" filename="test1_20x20.png">
<icon name="test1" row="1" col="1"/>
</set>
<set size="small" width="20" height="20" filename="test2_20x20.png">
<icon name="test2" row="1" col="1"/>
</set>
</iconset>
File 2:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<iconset name="Name">
<display_name>Display Name</display_name>
<copyright>Copyright</copyright>
<Artist>Artist</Artist>
<set size="large" width="32" height="32" filename="test1_32x32.png">
<icon name="test1" row="1" col="1"/>
</set>
<set size="large" width="32" height="32" filename="test2_32x32.png">
<icon name="test2" row="1" col="1"/>
</set>
</iconset>
File 1 & 2 combined:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<iconset name="Name">
<display_name>Display Name</display_name>
<copyright>Copyright</copyright>
<Artist>Artist</Artist>
<set size="small" width="20" height="20" filename="test1_20x20.png">
<icon name="test1" row="1" col="1"/>
</set>
<set size="small" width="20" height="20" filename="test2_20x20.png">
<icon name="test2" row="1" col="1"/>
</set>
<set size="large" width="32" height="32" filename="test1_32x32.png">
<icon name="test1" row="1" col="1"/>
</set>
<set size="large" width="32" height="32" filename="test2_32x32.png">
<icon name="test2" row="1" col="1"/>
</set>
</iconset>
Also note that I've used size="small" for the 20x20 images and size="large" for the 32x32 ones.
Each .dis file can only contain "small" and/or "large" sizes. What those sizes are don't matter, so one .dis file's "small" size might be huge compared to another's.
Within a single .dis file, all of the "small" icons (if any) should be the same size as each other, and all of the "large" icons (if any) should be the same size as each other.
You need to put the XML and the PNG files into a zip, then rename the .zip file to .dis.
If you want to look at an example, take an existing .dis file and rename it to .zip, then look inside.
(You might find the .dis file you look at only has one or two PNG files containing all the images in a grid. That's optional. It speeds things up a bit the very first time you load the .dis file, but that's it. So don't worry if you have separate a PNG file for every image. Use whatever is easiest for how you create the images.)
Not sure what you mean there, so this answer might not be right, but... If you only want the 20x20 size of icons, you don't need to bother with any of the other sizes, if that's what you're asking. You can make a .dis file that only contains the 20x20 size and not worry about any of the other sizes.
Wow Leo, thou art King 
Thank you for the thorough reply. I'll tackle this again tonight.
Understood. I completely missed this instruction in my reading about creating a .dis file.
That's a good point to know about speed of loading up the .dis file for the first time as I have many icons in my set.
I have separate PNG for every image because I converted my icons from ICO format using Dopus' image conversion tool where I choose at each conversion a custom size to use. I have Axialis IconWorkshop to create my icons but I have to admit, I don't know how to do a batch conversion of ICO files to PNG with multiple sizes included in them so I went with the easiest path using Dopus' tool.
What is the purpose of having multiple size in a set, aside from being able to display in large size when editing in Preferences-Customizations?
You can use the icons on your toolbars as well. Each toolbar button has a Large Icon checkbox that makes it use the larger version if it's enabled. Each toolbar also has have a setting that can make all of the buttons on that toolbar use either large or small icons.
That may not be a good idea, depending on the icons.
The Opus image conversion tool will always use the largest image from the input ICO file, and then resize that to whatever you specify.
So if you have a .ICO with, say, 32x32 and 256x256 sizes inside, and you ask Opus to turn that into a 32x32 PNG file, Opus will resize the 256x256 icon down to 32x32 instead of using the 32x32 icon. If the smaller icon was optimised for its size, and not just a shrunken version of the larger icon, then you wouldn't want that.
In that case, load IconWorkshop and then:
[ul][li]In the menus, File -> New -> File Browser[/li]
[li]Find your icons in the browser and then make sure they are all selected.[/li]
[li]In the menus, File Browser -> Batch Create Images (PNG, PSD, BMP, GIF) From Icons...[/li]
[li]Colors: 32 bits, File Format: PNG, Transparency: 32 BPP. For the sizes, use the All Sizes (create subfolders) option, unless you only want a particular size.[/li][/ul]
Thank you Leo for your tutoring and time. I succeeded to create my icon set 
.
I'm glad I've taken up this learning. I know now that for me, a layperson, it would have been better not to have read the official Icon Set Specifications document first because the task then seemed intimidating. In the end, your baby steps tutoring made the difference, so thumbs up to you Leo 
I just have a couple of additional questions about icons. In your test file, your small icon set is set at 20x20.
Is there a particular reason for choosing 20x20 instead of 16x16 or 24x24? Am I correct to assume that the appearance on the buttons and toolbars won't change, supposing that one uses the small format size only, but just the definition quality of the icons, right?
You also have two sizes (small and large) in each set (Normal and Big) of your Test file. Is there a reason for this?
Thanks for your time Leo.
Set the size to whatever size the icons are. The default Opus icon sizes are 22x22 and 32x32 but icon sets don't have to use the same sizes.
16x16 icons generally look fine next to 22x22 icons.
The only reason for including two icon sizes in an icon set is to allow people to choose from two sizes. If you don't want that, you don't have to do it.