Saturday, April 23, 2011

Icon-o-matic


Having set up macros to easily switch from one keyboard layout to another, I wanted to get some distinctive icons that I could include in the LaunchBox dock.
Haiku boasts a nice app to create your own vector icons, which are the only type supported by Haiku, called icon-o-matic.
There's a thorough user guide as well as a short video-tutorial which I used.
However, I found icon-o-matic difficult to master but then, I really have no artistic skills whatsoever so I think I just need a litle more persistence.
My intention was to create icons containing the US flag (for English) and a Brazilian flag (for Portuguese) but this level of complexity is not for the uninitiated like me.
So, I had to settle for something much simpler but still functional and useful.
For this, I availed of a nice feature of icon-o-matic wherein text can be drag&dropped from a text editor to the icon editor and thereby form part of the icon.
Here's what the Users Guide says:

There's an easy way to produce letters, even if Icon-O-Matic doesn't provide such a tool. Just enter the text in a text editor such as StyledEdit, adjust font type and style, and drag&drop or copy&paste the selected text into Icon-O-Matic. This will create the according paths and shapes.

You can see the results of my meager efforts in the LaunchBox of the screenshot.

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