I have an issue where the 16x16 bitmaps in an imagelist get corrupted and are displayed as monochrome black and white images. This tends to happen between sessions in the IDE, so that after saving the project to disk, exiting the IDE, and opening up the project once again, lo and behold the images have transformed! This requires rebuilding the imagelist and is very annoying. A before and after example image is attached.
This project is being developed (and shuttled between) WindowsXP and Windows 7 x64 using Delphi 4, which is installed on both operating systems. The problem occurs rarely in XP and frequently in Windows 7. Does anyone have a clue as to what is going on here?
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I have a VCL application that works fine with D10.4. Created with D11, all elements of the form are displayed greatly enlarged at runtime.
Depending on the project settings (Project/Options/Manifest) you can make the program run on the development computer with a 4K monitor in the specified font (everything set to 8 points).
If you start the same program on an HD monitor, all elements except the main menu (!) are displayed in a larger font.
Windows settings on the 4K: 200% scaling, on the HD: 100%
The Delphi has all patches up to 2/22.
The exe, created with 10.4, runs perfectly on both test computers.
Is there a solution for this or do I actually have to build an own environment for VCL apps?
Is there maybe a hidden option to disable all this scaling stuff?
Thanks for every hint!
Many greetings
We have a legacy application developed in Delphi 6 (yes, I know this is an ancient IDE now), which we are trying to update to look more modern. We have added in a Manifest and now have it using version 6 Windows controls and taking on the Windows Visual Theme (all good).
However, when trying to replace the old 4 bit toolbar and menu icons with True Colour with Alpha Channel (32 bit) transparency we have hit a problem. It appears that Delphi 6 only supports transparency based on the bottom left pixel colour (http://delphi.about.com/od/delphitips2007/qt/timage_transp.htm) and does not support more modern alpha-blended transparency. This is causing an issue, as all the graphics we have had created are in this format and do not look good when added to the toolbar due to anti-aliasing creating a fringe effect (in the background colour on which they were created, transparent becomes white in this case) around them.
I have been scouring the internet for hours trying to confirm whether or not Delphi 6 does or can be made to support these image formats, but, as Delphi 6 is so old now, I am only finding references to Delphi 7 and above.
Can anyone confirm whether what we are trying to achieve is possible or if there are any workarounds for this apparent limitation? Please note that upgrading to a newer version of Delphi is not an option for this particular project due to limited budget and time.
What is the right way to define a win7-compatible icon set in a Delphi application ? ( variable size on desktop )
I have designed a 256*256 icon then made the 16*16, 24*24, 48*48 variants. ( in Microsoft UX guide, they seem to say that these sizes should be included for a correct display on the desktop).
I've put all icons variations in a multiple layer document in Gimp and exported the whole stuff as an ico. Then I've put it as the application icon in the project options, following the straight way to assign an icon to an application.
FInally I've put a shorcut on Win desktop (win7) but when making "Ctrl+Wheel" (resizing of desktop icons, if you don't know it yet...) on the desktop (Win 7), correct icon is not displayed, after 48*48 it keeps the same size ( I suspect that only the 48*48 version is used).
The 256px sized icon should be a compressed PNG icon. I suspect that the resource compiler shipped with Delphi 2007 won't like that format so you'll need to use the MS resource compiler, rc. The icon should be named MAINICON. That said, I suspect that a 256px bitmap will work, it will just be exceedingly large.
What's more, IIRC, the Delphi IDE doesn't like 256px PNG icons so it's no good adding the icon to the project through the IDE. You need to build the .res file yourself and link it with a {$R ...} directive.
Finally, its possible that your .ico file may not be correct. The 256px image is actually stored with width and height equal to 0 because that field is byte sized and 0 was formerly invalid. Perhaps this is what the IDE gags on. Check the .ico file out in a different tool, e.g. IcoFX.
There may be other problems—these are just the ones I can recall encountering over the years. If I had to guess as to which issue was biting you, I'd say it was the inability of the IDE to handle 256px icons.
I believe that the IDE has got progressively better in this area in more recent versions, but even in D2010 which I currently use, it's not perfect.
I've been working with a program someone else has made and I wanted to change the icon.
The icon I have is 256x256. I used http://converticon.com/ to create the icon (from a bmp I think). I used the icon in Inno Setup to create an installer and it worked fine
So I go to Options -> Application and attempt to load it. However, Delphi 2007 gives me an error 'The parameter is incorrect.' with this info: http://i.stack.imgur.com/vRCgs.png
When I do the same thing in Delphi XE, it works and loads the icon and changes it on compile. I can't use XE right now because the program uses a math parser that has a problem with unicode (thats something to fix for later haha)
So, what I did was open the project in XE, change the icon, save it, delete the dproj and open it in 2007. This works, compiles and displays the correct icon, but when I go to the project options, it gives me the same 'The parameter is incorrect' error.
The workaround isn't a big deal, but I shouldn't need to do it. Does anyone know why I can't change the icon in Delphi 2007?
Edit: I just used that same converticon site to convert the 256x256 icon to 192x192 and smaller and now it works perfectly. Thanks for the answers
The "icon" file is actually a collection of images, at different resolution and using different encodings. When I'm creating my icons I'm making sure they don't actually contain the 256x256 PNG-encoded version because development tools built before Windows Vista don't understand that. And that includes your Delphi 2007 and my Delphi 7. I also remove the alpha-encoded 256x256 icon because it simply makes the file needlessly large.
You've got two fixes possible:
Find an ICO editor and remove all of the larger formats until your Delphi accepts the icon. I personally never seen the 256x256 used in the real world, they'd take up huge amounts of space on user's Desktop or in Windows Explorer.
Use a dummy icon and replace the icon resource in the generated exe after Delphi is done with it. This way you can keep all of the larger image formats, including the 256x256 PNG image.
Edit to correct an error
If possible, always include the 256x256 image, Windows scales that down for everything above 64x64.
I always assumed Windows Explorer would show an image that's based on the closest matching image size available in the ICO. That is, if a 128x128 image is necessary, Windows would use the 128x128 image if available, or scale down the 256x256 image if that's available, or scale up the 96x96 image. Apparently that's not so. I've just made a test icon consisting of several image formats, including 32, 48, 72, 96, 128 and 256 consisting of simple blobs of color (using the flood-fill tool). In Windows Explorer I cycled throw the various Display Modes, and it became apparent that starting with "Large Icon" (and that's not very large) Windows will scale down the 256x256 icon, and if that's not available, use the 48x48 icon, unscaled! The result is truly ugly and unexpected. The 72x72, 96x96 and 128x128 icons were simply ignored.
Thank you David for pointing this out.
Older versions of Delphi don't support 256px Vista icons. I believe that 2010 does not support them so I guess the limitation was fixed in XE.
When working with an older Delphi you'll need to keep the 256px icon out of the IDE. You can still build an executable with a 256px icon from the command line compiler - I used to do just this before upgrading from Delphi 6. But to do this requires the use of a competent resource compiler, for example the Microsoft one.
2007 will let you select icons with a 256 pixel image. Here is what I tried:
The default icon for Delphi XE contains several image sizes, including a 256 pixel image.
If I extract the icon from a Delphi XE application using a resource editor, I can add that icon to a Delphi 2007 application using the IDE's project options. I don't get an error, and the icon images show as expected in Windows Vista/7 using Explorer at different sizes.
If I take the same icon that worked in Delphi 2007 and remove all of the image sizes other than the 256 pixel image using IcoFX, and try to select it again, then I get an error.
Try creating a .ico that includes other image sizes and see if that works for you.
Anyone that used the (not anymore) freely available TPngImage by by Gustavo Daud tried porting their projects to Delphi 2009?
In my case, it seems that all TImage png images that displayed just fine in D2007 are now blank when opening the form in D2009 (if I re-add the image in D2009, save the form and open it in D2007 then the image is blank again).
Comparing the Picture.Data between D2007 and D2009 for the exact same images shows that the data is different.
Anyone noticed this problem? I have dozens of png images on all my projects and I would hate to have to re-add them in D2009 and loose backward compatibility.
I just read this blog few minutes ago before see your question, I think it fixes the same problem:
Converting to D2009: How to keep PNGs in TImage