carbide.vs lacks support for app registration files

[d.roettsches]

Hello,

yesterday we discovered that carbide.vs does not support application registration files.

START RESOURCE yourapp_reg.rss 
   TARGETPATH                    \private\10003a3f\apps 
END

in your mmp file causes the carbide.vs build process to show the following message:
"MMP file contains unsupported statements and they where removed during update."

I consider this another flaw in carbide.vs that makes it very inconvenient to use. As app registration files are the recommended replacement for AIF files in 2.8 SDKs my opinion is that carbide.vs lacks full support for the 2.8 SDKs.

Regards,

Dominik

[mitts]

Hi,

Registration files are used by Symbian OS SDKs starting from Symbian OS 9, S60 2.8 is based on 8.1a and thus uses the AIF etc files that are common to all S60 2nd Edition SDKs. The set of directives supported for Carbide Classic (1st and 2nd edition) SDKs and Symbian9 (S60 3.0) are also listed in the online help under the section "The MMP file". For more if´nformation on how resources are managed, see the section "Symbian OS v8.1a"->"Tools and utilities"->"Application resource tools guide"->"About application resources"

From S60 3.0 is based on Symbian OS 9.1 and thus uses the registration file and this is supported by Carbide.vs. This is one of the changes in the build going from 2nd edition to 3rd edition that resulted in the introduction of the two project types in 2.0.

[d.roettsches]

...but what is the recommended way of getting SVG application icons to work in 2.8 then? Can SVG icons be used without app registration files?

[mitts]

For how to use SVG Icons in Carbide, see the section in on-line Help called "How To Work with SVG Icons in a Project" under the "How To's" section. In essence you create a list of icons into a file (specific to Carbide) called a .miflist which is then compiled into the required .mbg and .mif files.

[d.roettsches]

exactly... but how to set an SVG icon as the application icon for the program launcher? AFAIK this can only be achieved by using registration files, even in 2.8 - is this correct?

So to come back to my initial statement: That's why I think carbide.vs lacks support for registration files in 2.8.

[mitts]

Hello,

Sorry for the delay in getting back on this one. First of all, I stand corrected on this issues, your observation is correct. To use an SVG icon for a FP3 application, you do need the xx_reg.rss file and this is not fully supported by Carbide.vs.

However, some additional comments.
- First of all, this does not mean that applications developed using Carbide.vs will not support the scalable UI. If an application is running on a FP3 phone and uses a bitmap based icon, this icon will be scaled by the phone. Depending on the icon contents this might result on more or less loss of graphic quality but it will scale with the UI. You can experiment with the quality by running the application if different sized UI windows on the FP3 emulator. Use the emulator "Tools->Preferences" view to change the UI size.
- If you want to use an SVG icon this is still possible. One way to do this is as follows: First develop and test your application using a standard bitmap icon. You can still use SVG graphics inside the application as described in the Carbide.vs Help on SVG. When the application is otherwise ready, disable automatic update of the .mmp file (this is done in the "Carbide.vs Properties" view). Next, manually update the .mmp file to define the xxx_reg.rss file, for details see the S60 SDK documentation. Using the manually created .mmp file, you can now build for ARMI and THUMB but not for WINSCW.

I hope this helps you in creating scalable applications also using Carbide.vs.