One thing I don't like about the way the platform handles multiple-icon apps is the way it handles custom parameters. Using AppNamePortable.ini's AdditionalParameters field appends those parameters to all of the icons. Also, it might be conceivable that it might be useful to have two icons both pointing to the same executable with different parameters. I've tried adding parameters to the end of the Start field of appinfo.ini, but that doesn't work. The ability to use custom parameters should be added into appinfo.ini on an icon-by-icon basis (i.e. Name1, Start1, Parameters1, etc).
New: fb2kPortable / foobar2000 (Apr 18, 2024), Platform 29.4 (Apr 10, 2024)
1,000+ portable packages, 1.1 billion downloads
Please donate today
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
We only have one app that's multi-icon at the moment, OpenOffice.org Portable, and there's not reason I can think of for it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Well the reason I was thinking of wasn't necessarily for multi-icon apps so much as the ability to create more than one icon for a single app, each using different parameters. The thing that originally made me think of this was another post elsewhere in the forums about creating an app without an exe, but really it was just opening a web app via a web browser, and you could create internet shortcut icons by using the -url command line via FireFox Portable. So I wasn't so much thinking of apps that already have multiple icons, just apps that have a lot of command-line options that perhaps you would want easy access to more than one configuration.
Quamquam omniam nescio, nec nihil scio.
Loving PortableApps.com platform! I have some reasons for different command lines per icon to add to this conversation.
The first is that I provide various PDF documents and would like to keep them all in the same portable apps folder with sumatrapdf - but have different icons to start each document (one is a readme, another is a guide). Right now I have to duplicate the entire app, including a second copy of sumatrapdf to get the desired result (at least as far as I understand the configuration options at this point).
The second is some debugging tools that run much slower when they are downloading symbols - would be great to have two configurations that can be chosen depending on whether symbols are needed or not.
Finally, I also have some built-in Windows apps (like task manager) I would like to start - so having one EXE that can receive a parameter with the App name and multiple icons would be better than independent app folders.