>I am attempting to create an application that is basically a compiled container for images. We attempting to put all of our images into an application that itself can be rebuilt when images change or are added to, without having to rebuild the application that access these images. I guess my question is if anyone has done this before, or is there an easier solution that I'm missing.
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>Any help would be appreciated.
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>John Rowlinson
>Microworks POS Solutions

John,

If I understand you correctly, you want to be able to extract and display images from within VFP by accessing the resources in another file the way Windows does. Windows can extract images stored as resources within DLLs and EXEs. For example, there's the MORICONS.DLL and CARDS.DLL which house the various images used by the system and the card games.

I use the icon stored in my EXEs for the "About...". This technique, however, has a number of limitations. Specifically, the problem is that since VFP doesn't "know" about the image, if the application is minimized or set to the back of the z-order, the image may not properly display when this status of the window changes. Further, given the amount of work that would be involved (I've never tried extracting and displaying a bitmap resource), I think you might be better off embedding the various images in the host executable.