Useful Icons and exported filters and auto-formatting for MLO

[Stéph]

Here's a little early Christmas present for all your MLO desktop users.

I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread for people to post useful icons, exported filters, exported automatic formatting rules or other MLO resources.  Make sure you don't breach copyright if you post icon files here.

If Andrey likes this idea, maybe he can pin this discussion thread at the top of the discussion forum, so it doesn't get lost. Andrey, the other alternative migt be to host user's contributions somewhere on the MyLifeOrganized.net website?

As a starting point, I've attached a group of GTD icons I've created for my own use.  You're free to use, distribute and edit them under a Creative Commons licence. I've included a .txt file with details of the licence and some more information on the reasons for making them flat, simple and block-colour.

I used TouchDraw on the iPad for creating the icons.

I recommend IcoFx for creating and editing icons from pictures - This is available as Portable Freeware, eg on PortableApps.com.

Share and enjoy!

Stéphane

[Andrey Tkachuk (MLO)]

Thanks Stéphane!
I have pinned the topic so that it is easily accessible on the forum.

>Andrey, the other alternative migt be to host user's contributions somewhere on the MyLifeOrganized.net website?

Yes I am thinking about it. The contribution may include templates, auto-format rules etc.

Andrey.

[Simon]

Thanks for uploading these Stéph, they are great - my personal favourite is the 'Someday/Maybe' - "And Pigs Might Fly" icon  :) 

[Roman Romanik]

Nice work.
Thanks.

Roman

[Johannes belin]

Nice!

How do I include them in MLO??  

[Stéph]

Glad you like them, guys.  (Simon, that sums up pretty-much all of my Someday/Maybe items.)

I'll post one or two more soon - I've started on some alternatives to the built-in View and folder icons.

Hello Johannes,

What you need to do is get to the "Manage icons..." window, from the "Select icon" window.  There are a few ways to do that:

Option 1) Alt-F1 to show the views pane on the right, then right-click on a view and select "Assign icon..."

Option 2) Right-click on a Workspace tab, select "assign icon" then "custom icon"

Option 3) Tools - Options - Automatic Formatting, then click on the "Automatic Formatting Rules..." button. We can have lots of fun with the automatic formatting rules - I'll post an export of my formatting in a later post on this thread.  Meanwhile, for any of the rules in the Automatic Formatting list, or a new rule that you create, click on the "Icon" button.

Whichever option you use to get to the "Select icon" window, you'll see that bottom left of that window is the "Manage icons..." button. In that window, you can click on the "Add..." button to install any of these icons that you've saved to your PC.  You can rename, reorganise or delete any of the icons, too.

If you want to experiment with other icons, just remember that you get the best results using 16x16 icons in the list and 48x48 icons for the Views and the Workspace tabs.

A note about the Automatic Formatting Rules (Option 3, above): 

You can add your own custom rules in the space marked "--- Add custom rules here ---", or you can go wild and set up your own rules among or in front of the "--- Default Rules ---". You can edit the default rules, too.  If you come up with a good set of automatic formatting rules, I'd encourage you to export them and share them (with a screenshot) on this discussion thread.

When you set up your rules, you have the choice to show your icons at any of positions 0 - 4.  Position 0 is right next to the completion checkbox for a task. I use position 0 to insert my small cross icon next to the completion checkbox, for example.

All the best,

Stéphane

[Stéph]

Here are a few more icons you can use, if you feel like a change from the stock icons.

On Wednesday, 22 October 2014 23:41:10 UTC+1, Stéph wrote:

[JimboDimbo]

Nice Stéphane. One small point. In your 'About the icons' license/text file you attribute 'Getting Things Done' to Alan Davies and not David Allan. I can see the logical mistake :-) but as a GTD'er I thought you would want to put that right.

[Stéph]

Oops! Thanks for pointing out the error. Very sloppy of me - my apologies to David Allen (and to Alan Davies, the comedian).

[Stéph]

This is one of those times when, as John Smith pointed out, it would have been good to be able to edit my original post.  I can't, because this is a conversation thread rather than an article, so I'm attaching the corrected <_About SLWE GTD Icons 2014-10-22.txt> file to this reply.

Stéphane

[Stéph]

Oh yes - and here are a few more icons, doodled on another train journey.

Stéphane

On Wednesday, 22 October 2014 23:41:10 UTC+1, Stéph wrote:

[bs]

Thanks much for the clean, modern-looking icons Steph. Nicely done.

If you ever get in the mood to create a few more, I'd like to suggest icons for:

-Delegate to 1 person

-Delegate to Multiple people

-bs

[Stéph]

Hello bs,

Well my system and, I think, the GTD system use "@Waiting For" as a context for delegated items (or, rather, @call before I've delegated, then @waiting once I've delegated). Having said that, if that's what works for you, then I'm up for a little challenge.  Hopefully the attached is the sort of thing you're looking for.

All the best,

Stéphane

[Bruce Sohn]

I like ‘em. Thanks much. You’re super.

-bs

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[Steve Kunkel]

Here’s a nice versatile custom icon set for folks to pick from.   I think we should be okay RE copy right issues.  The mods can just remove this if needed.    Read on…

The set is primarily from the Icon Manager Yahoo Group (IconMgr).  Icon Manager is(was) a freeware application for Palm OS, that faded away along with all things Palm [RIP].  The files section of the group has a bunch of icon sets that people had posted to share with others.   I've combined a bunch of the sets so they can be reused.  I posted this  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IconMgr/message/2273
message to see if anyone objected to sharing them on other forums.  There were no objections last I checked.  Actually that was a few years ago, and I'm not sure if the group is even still working...  

There are also several icons that are converted from a large set of file manager icons that I made, based on the theme of a custom toolbar skin that I made.  The file manager they were originally made for is xplorer2.  See the post about it here
http://netez.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=8827&sid=9b8e01d12cc353db014e7c6539732c96
I was going to reserve the use of the skin icons to the x2 community, but my skin was not particularly popular (as you can tell from the lack of replies), so I got blessings from the developer of x2, and have made them open for others to use. 

Over all, there are just over a thousand different images.  Maybe three or four hundred were made by me, using IconMgr, on my old Palm. Another couple hundred are the file manager icons made by me on my desktop.  The rest are from the IconMgr share folders.  Most are 16x16 .ICO files.  Looks like the convention used by MLO is to append "24x24" on ICOs of that size. I did the same.  The first 76 icons are mostly specific to my own personal use and have duplicates (a 16 and a 24 of each).  The rest are more "general" and I'm sure someone can find a use for some of them (?).  Unfortunately, IconMgr used 18x20 pixels, so converting them to 16x16 caused some blurring.  Most are still usable though.  Believe it or not, this is not even the whole lot of them…    These are the best though, and are organized by category, then batch-renamed to preserve the order.

The last thing to mention is this
http://www.iconarchive.com/largest.html
site.  When sorted by “Largest” you’ll see the amazing Fugue set…   3,560 icons that are 16x16. There are several huge “mini icon” sets—which would be more suited to MLO than hi rez sets.  Very cool.  Mostly they are available as .PNG files, but can be converted to ICOs fairly easily.  Find IcoFX from here
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page40.html#IcoFX  (or support the developer by buying the pro version! :) )

If you want to do batch re-naming, so that you can have 24x24 size side-by-side with 16x16, then get the lite version of ReNamer here
http://www.den4b.com/?x=products&product=renamer   (or support the developer by buying the pro version! :) )

Okay, that’s all I think.  :-}  

[Stéph]

Hello Steve Kunkel,

 

I remember some of your icons from the Icon Manager Yahoo Group - I used the alphabet set for tagging some of my tasks in (the much missed) Bonsai. Thanks for sharing these with us.

 

There's a huge variety in your set.  Some of them are really useful. Some others are a little complicated for my taste - I find it takes just a fraction too long to identify what they're indicating to me.  Having said that, those ones are bound to be indispensable to someone else in this group.

 

 

Whilst Bonsai didn't have computed priorities or the amazingly powerful search / text filter in MLO, it had some functions I'd love MLO to adopt.  In particular, the way you could customise how new tasks inherited properties was a great time-saver.

 

Anyway, good to see your name come up again and to have you contributing useful stuff to another outliner/task manager.

 

Stéphane

 

On Wednesday, 22 October 2014 23:41:10 UTC+1, Stéph wrote:

[Steve Kunkel]

Hey Steph!  Yep small world :-)

I hadn't even made the connection, but sure enough, your GTD Set is in the main library folder I posted to the IconMgr site.  It does look like the site is still open, by the way.  Though it doesn't get used for much anymore.  And yes, I do miss Bonsai :- (  The way that the Windows and Palm version mirrored each other is something that I've not seen in any other software--Android or otherwise.  

Anyway...  Here are some more icons.  

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=25D1CAA152E3CBA1!65696&authkey=!AHXFTeUdswLCLBs&ithint=file%2czip

(it's the one called FatCow Redistributed.zip)

These are NOT created by me.  They are the FatCow set from here.

http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons

You can read on their site that the icons are okay to share, etc.  

The icon images are not altered.  They are offered on the site as 16x16 and 32x32.  They are nice because the 16x ones are not "shrunk down" versions of the 32x ones--they are separate images and look really sharp!  I wanted to have some 24x ones, so I resized the 32x ones.  Unfortunately, it gave them that supersampled blurry look <blah>.   So I'd recommend (in MLO) to use either the 16x or the 32x.  The set is HUGE.  Nearly 4000 different images.  So I'd recommend NOT trying to import them all into MLO!    Anyway, they are really designed for developers to use, so there are lots of toolbar-like images and file-type images.  Also there are a few hundred different flags.  There are also lots that will be useful for MLO outlines though!

The above-linked zip was too big to upload here (33.3 MB), so you'll have to get it from my shared OneDrive space.

Inside of it there are 4 zipped subfolders.  They are the complete set as 16x, 24x, 32x, and a "multi-size" one that combines all three.  The combined ones are not needed for MLO, but will be nice if people like to customize their Windows folder icons, etc.  The single-sized ones are renamed with the pixel size appended, like "some_icon-16.ico," so you can put low and high versions of the same image in MLO and still tel them apart.  

 -that's all.

[John . Smith]

Hi 

Can anyone help me out with all this icon stuff? 

I am having trouble downloading Steph's zip file.

I need some small 16x16 icons for Monthly an Yearly goals. 

Can anyone supply: 

- other colours of small "!" icons to match the default weekly red & grey icons

OR

- a grey coloured flag to match the existing default flags

OR 

- a grey coloured bullet to match the exiting bullets.

I guess I could create all my own icons if I tried hard enough but it all takes TIME... !

Thanks

Many thanks

[Stéph]

Hello John,

I just tested the download and had no problem.  Try right-clicking on the download link in my post (or anyone else's which has an attachment) and select "Save target as...".

Regarding producing existing icons in different colours - that's a trivial task with the IcoFX freeware. I did a custom icon for someone previously, as I find drawing icons a contemplative experience if I'm on a train with no other pressing task. However, at the moment I'm rushed off my feet, so can't offer to do the colour conversion for you this time.

Meanwhile, if you want an icon for monthly goals, I'd suggest taking a look at the archery target icon in the set I posted (maybe on of the later attachments in this thread) and see if that might meet your needs.

Best regards,

Stéphane

[J Smith]

Okay I managed to download "CustomMLOicons.zip".

But none of the icons seem to be the ones I want. i.e. I simply want some additional colour variant on the flags, exclamation marks and/or bullets.

I tried searching my PC for *.ico files to see if I could find the default ones but couldn't find them. Can you tell me where they live as maybe I could edit them with IcoFX to change their colours.

Many thanks

J

[J Smith]

Hold that thought!
I have discovered sidebar colour in Automatic Formatting which can be sufficiently subtle and not too distracting as to do me quite nicely.

I'll see how I get on without icons at tall. Watch this space  :)

J

[pottster]

MLO icons are included in the compiled program i.e. not accessible. The Interwebs are full of free icons - just make sure you get sizes supported by MLO. Also, you might find this thread useful.

On Sunday, 11 October 2015 11:33:12 UTC+1, J Smith wrote:

[Stéph]

Ah, good reminder, Pottster.

IcoFx will do the conversion from .png to .ico, as well as AveIconifier and other apps. IcoFx can also extract icons from .exe files, so you can pull the MLO stock icons out for colour modification. Best thing is it's free, too.

MLO stock icons aren't to my taste. Too pastel and too feint to catch the attention and distinguish themselves from each other, imho.

Stéphane

[Smith, John]

>MLO stock icons aren't to my taste. Too pastel and too feint to catch the attention and
> distinguish themselves from each other, imho.

It's a tricky balance. Given that I only use very few icons anywhere (in my case only for Goals) I find that I want very subtle flags, otherwise they leap out so much visually that want to kill them!

So I would be happy to use some of the stock icons - I just want a greater number of colour variants including greyed-out options.

J

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[Stéph]

IcoFx is your friend then. If it doesn't break copyright, feel free to share your results on this thread.

If anyone needs them, I could also do a less colour-saturated version of my set. I also started on an outline version of each but decided to quit, as it reduced speed of recognition. My goal is to keep them very quick to distinguish between, when scrolling down a list.

Stéphane

[Joel Azaria]

Icons can be found freely all over the internet.  Google image search is your friend.   Restrict your search (buttons just under the search term box) to .ico only and max size 64x64 and they should work in MLO just fine.

[Andrei Bacean]

Icons for partial complete. Useful for tracking progress....

Example of use:

четверг, 23 октября 2014 г., 1:41:10 UTC+3 пользователь Stéph написал:

[Anne C.]

I really like these, and have added them to MLO (v5).

I'm stumped on how to assign them to a task, however.  Can you share how you do that?

Thank you!

[Stéph]

Hello Anne,

You can't assign icons to individual tasks, but you can assign icons to appear against any tasks which fit to rules which you define.

If you go into Tools - Options - Automatic Formatting, you can find a list of preset automatic formatting rules which define when a task has a folder icon, a reminder alarm clock icon, etc. There are 5 potential positions for the icons, with position 0 being next to the task checkbox and other positions being in the "Icons" column.

When you modify the existing formatting rules or add your own, the "Condition" button is used to set up rules for showing the icon (or other text formatting customisations), following the same process as setting "Advanced" filter rules for your custom views.

Hope that makes sense. There's more information in the manual, or I could give you some examples.

Stéph

[Andrei Bacean]

Hi Anne

I have used them as flags.

To find more about using flags, search for flags in the help manual (press f1 in the mlo to run the help manual).

br

Andrew

понедельник, 22 октября 2018 г., 12:15:35 UTC+3 пользователь Anne C. написал:

[MOK | MATSURU]

If you want to assign the icon manually, you can use them as flags. Just like Andrei suggested :-)

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[Anne C.]

Excellent - thank you so much, Andrew.  That's exactly what I needed.

[Stéph]

Ah, flags... of course! Good solution, Andrei. I should have thought of that, because I've assigned custom flag icons myself.