How to generate dynamic desktop icons on Windows and Mac OS X

[AndyBrice]

If you save an image (e.g. a PNG file) to your Windows or Mac desktop the document icon is a dynamically generated thumbnail of the image. I want to programmatically generate thumbnails for my own application documents.

I understand that this requires a 'Quicklook plugin' on Mac OS X. I'm not sure about Windows.

I found some documentation about QWinThumbnailToolBar, but that only seems to set the toolbar icon thumbnail, not the desktop icon.

Does anyone know of example code to do this on Windows and/or Mac? I'm sure I am not the first person to do this in Qt.

[mrjj]

Hi

"generate thumbnails for my own application documents"

On windows, I think such function is handled by a Shell extension.
a Windows Shell preview handle.

https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/CppShellExtThumbnailHandler-32399b35

maybe u can find info in
http://www.qtcentre.org/threads/32104-howto-making-a-windows-shell-extension-with-qt-open-source-edition

[AndyBrice]

@mrjj Thanks. I will take a look. Hopefully someone else can point me in the right direction for Mac OS X.

[SGaist]

Hi,

For OS X, it's a QuickLook plugin. More information here

[AndyBrice]

@SGaist Thanks. It looks like a lot of work, especially given that I don't haven't objective-C experience!

I was rather hoping that someone would have a working example that I could adapt.

[SGaist]

Not necessarily.

What is the format of your file ?

[AndyBrice]

@SGaist Sorry for the very belated reply. The file format is XML.

[SGaist]

Something like SVG ?