A-Shell/Windows/ATE enhancement: if you wish to use an alternative (i.e., your own) icon for A-Shell, you now use a standard Windows .ico file. Earlier versions of A-Shell required that the alternate icon be embedded in the A-Shell executable, and the –g switch was used to specify its name.
On the command line that starts the application, the syntax is:
-g fspec.ico
The file must be either in the PATH (which will always include the directory where the ashw32.exe is loaded from), or in a subdirectory "icons" below the %MIAME% directory (as determined by a predefined MIAME environment variable or the location of the miame.ini).
This eliminates nearly all of the need to embed application icons into the ashw32.exe, so we have removed them. Temporarily, we will include in the standard release copies of all of the icons previous embedded, so no particular action is required. However, at some point in the near future, we will probably drop them as well, and leave it to individual developers to add their own custom icon(s) to the package.
The one problem which can be foreseen is that desktop shortcuts which now use an icon embedded within the ashw32.exe will be subject to having their icon reset if Windows (or the user) decides to update the shortcut. In that case, you'll need to just use the "Browse" button in the shortcut properties to browse the %MIAME%\icons directory to locate the standalone copy of the desired icon.
To prevent that from happening, you can reset the application icon using MX_SHORTCUT, so that it points to the new discrete copy of the icon file.
Hopefully, all will agree that this is a relatively minor inconvenience compared to the benefits of decoupling custom icons from the executable.
Note: because of the need for the standalone icon file to exist in order for a custom icon to work within A-Shell, this update is best done by running the full install package (rather than just updating the ashw32.exe).
