like how to make one without Icon-o-matic (or other theoretical Icon software)? Is there a description of how to write an HVIF by hand in a text editor?
HVIf is a binary tightly packed format, optimized for disk space, you won’t be able to easily write it in any text editor
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There’s a blog post that explains a lot about the technical details of HVIF:
http://blog.leahhanson.us/post/recursecenter2016/haiku_icons.html
This might be interesting if you want to build a own editor or library for the format,but nephele is right,writing those files by hand is almost impossible and not what the format was designed for.
I think that, for a start, you would probably be better off using a hex editor rather than a plain text editor.
However, in order for it to really be a useful tool you still need a way to insert a generated block of data with respect to lines, curved lines, gradients, etc. That’s kind of what you’d do in Icon-o-Matic except that you wouldn’t be able to visualize the results. Being able to see a preview is essential for any user-friendly graphic editor.
At the very least you need to know the file should be arranged (file format) and the binary format/structure of each element you can add (how a curved line and it’s points are encoded). Using a calculator that can do hexadecimal math and decimal to hexadecimal conversions would save you some pain.