Pimlical Android Help

User Icons

Each event can have up to four user-defined icons assigned to it - these icons are displayed ahead of the description line. Pimlical comes with a small, sample icon collection, but you can also import standard JPG or GIF graphics into the icon collection, using the Pimlical/Desktop Icon Management feature. The icon collection in the Pimlical/Desktop can be exported with the EXPORT button and the file IconArchive.dat created in that same folder as the icons is then copied to the Pimlical Folder on the Android device where Pimlical/Android will use it (see more detailed steps below):

Migrating Pimlical/Desktop Icons to Pimlical/Android

Converting a Palm OS icon collection into Pimlical-Android

For those users who previously used a Palm OS handheld and had a custom icon collection (or any Palm icon collection), there is a way to convert the icons into a format where Pimlical can use them. The first step is to convert from Palm OS format into a set of PNG (recommended) or JPG graphics in a single windows folder. See the Pimlical User Manual: http://www.PimlicoSoftware.com/pimlical-manual.pdf, Appendix A, Using DateBk Icons for instructions on how to handle this conversion. The conversion program creates several folders of the icons at different bit densities. Usually the folder marked as 8-bit d144 is the one that you will want to use.

When this has been done, you can then import the icons into Pimlical/Desktop using the Import button in that dialog. The Export button can take the same existing file folder of graphics and create a compatible IconArchive.dat file as shown in the above steps.

Customizing your Icon Collection in Pimlical/Desktop and exporting to Pimlical/Android

You can customize your icon collection using Pimlical/Desktop and then export a matching version for use on Android devices. The first step is to locate the folder that has all the Default Icons installed in Pimlical. That is usually in: C:\Program Files (x86)\PimlicalApp\PimlicalFiles\iconFolder (or C:\Program Files \PimlicalApp\PimlicalFiles\iconFolder on 64-bit versions of  Windows). You may wish to COPY this folder to an unprotected folder in your desktop - that way you can freely modify them, but still have the original collection stored in the PimlicalApp folder.

The second step is to realize that Pimlical/Desktop and Pimlical/Android have to have different versions of the archive due to architectural differences in Java on the two platforms. On the desktop, the icon file is called UserIcons.dat and is located in the Pimlical folder (same folder that your preferences are stored in). On an Android devices, the file is called IconArchive.dat and it is also stored in the Pimlical folder. Both of these files are created from the icon folder and that is a one-way path - i.e. you can not extract icons from UserIcons.dat or IconArchive.dat to re-create the original icon folder.

The third step is to understand that the filenames for the icons are important. Every icon has a unique, numeric index key which is used to access the icon, so you can move icons around, delete them, etc. without causing any problem in referencing the icons. That numeric key is embedded in the filename, so be very careful in constructing your filenames to avoid confusion by using a number as part of the filename!

Wrong Filename: The 24 hour Alarm clock_1145.png

Right Filename: The Twenty-Four hour Alarm Clock_1455.png

In the Wrong case above, the icon will erroneously get the unique ID of '24' - since that's the first number in the filename. So avoid using digits as part of the filename other than to set the uniqueID. If you have no digits in the filename, Pimlical will automatically assign the next sequential icon number, but this is discouraged because if you do a lot of editing, that number might change the next time you export a copy of the collection.

So it's best to start with a unique ID bigger than any existing icon. How can you quickly find the largest icon number used so far? Very simple: go into menu | Icon Management, make sure you are on the last page of icons, tap on the # button so that all uniqueID"s are displayed and tap the SORT button - the last icon displayed is the one with the highest number, so start at that number plus one. After doing that, remember to Cancel out of the dialog so you don't inadvertently end up re-sorting all your icons!

Acceptable file formats are those that Java can handle - JPG, GIF and PNG, with PNG being recommended. There is no specific requirement on the size of the graphic being imported (other than keeping it below say 500k bytes), but for consistency, it's probably a good idea to keep the icons near the recommended size of 56x56 pixels, and to resize large graphics using a graphics program that does a good job of resizing (i.e  by using techniques such as bi-cubic spline interpolation, rather than just arbitrarily dropping out pixel rows and columns from the original image). The free app, Paint.NET is a good choice under windows for this.

You can drag and drop icons around to sort the collection into ways that make sense for you. Keep in mind that if you press the SORT button, all the icons will then be sorted based upon their numeric ID which may or may not be what you want.

To import new graphics, use the ADD button to just add a single graphic, or the IMPORT button to import all the graphics in a particular folder. In the latter case, you will be asked if you want to delete all the existing icons (respond yes if you are building a new collection from the icons in that folder).

Customizing your Icon Collection directly in Pimlical/Android (Subscription only feature)

You can customize your icon collection directly from Pimlical/Android (a new feature in V-4.0.20). In the Icon Dialog you will note a [++] button at top right. This button will import a single icon. The tiny + in the top right corner indicates that this button ALSO responds to a long-press to provide additional functionality – in this case a long-press allows you to import ALL icons in the specified folder. The [++] button launches a file navigator so you can navigate to where the file or folder is located that you are going to import.

Remember that icon files have the key number embedded In the filename (that way you can move icons around etc. without affecting any assignments of icons to events as the assignment is tracked by this ‘key number’). If there is no icon key number, Pimlical assigns one automatically, AND rewrites the icon file name with that icon number embedded in it (see above section describing "right" and "wrong" icon filenames).

In theory, there is no need to rescale the graphics. HOWEVER, there is a size limit that Android appears to impose of about 1mb (for safety, Pimlical uses 0.5mb) – so don’t try and use an original 100MB jpeg file – that definitely WON’T work! Icons are typically 56x56 which is only 3k bytes or so. Recommended file formats include JPG, PNG and GIF. If it's in some other format, simplest solution may be to just take a screen shot and save that as a graphics file.

If you want to see the icon in your Pimlical/Desktop collection too, you will have to copy the icon file to Pimlical/desktop and import it into that collection. For that reason, it is recommended that you set up an explicit folder for icons (perhaps something like .../Pimlical/PimlicalIcons) to make it easier to keep track of newly added icons. It is expected that this long-standing compatibility issue (caused by the differing implementation of graphic formats in Oracle Java and Android Java) will get addressed so that there will be a single icon file with an identical format for both P/A and P/D.

Deleting Icons (Subscription only feature)

To delete an icon, long-press the icon in the main display (tap All Icons button if the Recent list is displaying), and then tap the Delete button in the dialog that displays the Icon ID (Key) Number and Filename.

Backup and Restore (Subscription only feature)

The IconArchive.dat file can now be backed up and restored by tapping the Backup/Restore button at the bottom of the screen. When this button is tapped, you can tap the BACKUP button to backup the file (it backs it up as IconArchive.bk1, and then ripples the .BKx versions of all the older backups in the same manner that the backup/restore works for preferences, or local databases. The preference NumberOfBackup controls how many backup copies are maintained. Tapping the Restore button brings up a list of all the available backup files and allows you to select the one you want to restore.
To make room for this new button, the Cancel button now just appears as a button with a red X.

Freezing the Recent Icons List

The Icon Selection Dialog now includes a page of the most recently accessed icons to speed up icon selection. This page can be selected by tapping the Recent button in that dialog. There is also a preference: IconStartWithRecentList (default is false), which, if set to True will always bring up that Recent Icons list first by default to select a new icon (Unless an existing icon is selected, in which case, the page with that icon is shown). When the Recent Icons List page is being displayed, the Recent button  is replaced with an All Icons button to return to the full display of icons. A long-press on any icon in the Recent Icons List Page will also display buttons to remove the icon from the Recent Icons Page or to move it to the top of the page.

The recent list of icons is maintained in a text file with the name RecentIconList.txt. This contains a list of all the icon ID's separated by a comma. You can force this file to be read-only by inserting the text .NoUpdate at the very beginning of the file. Spaces and End of line codes are ignored in this file. So if you want a permanent version of your Recent Icon Page, you can select icons and move them around until they are in a satisfactory order, and then edit the file to insert .NoUpdate at the start of the file to avoid having Pimlical make any further changes to that file.