Merging stack .bmps

I had a computer disaster last week. My SSD died and I didn't have current backups
to get back up to speed.

I lost ALL of the Stickies work I did last year. Everything was working beautifully. 

And I forgot so much of how I accomplished what I did.

The current problem I am having now is getting my stack to look right.

I realize that a stickie,ini and stack.ini use the same .png / .bmp image.

If I load a stickie I want to use as a template for my design (stickies_ltg)
its stickie looks just fine.
But I want to change many things in its stack.
Its stack is 'vanilla' looking and I don't know where it is getting its image from.

If I open the stickie.bmp and work with it, adding a strip at the bottom that I
want to show in my stack, and then assemble everything, it's not working
properly.
The stickie gets messed up!
And the stack isn't showing what I'd like to show.

I had this all worked out before my computer crashed. 
Guidance is appreciated to get this going again.

I can either get a stickie looking ok, but its stack is messed up,
or vice versa, but I can't get both to look as I want.

At the top of skinner is a " Edit " dropdown menu , did you fill in the stack name in " Note Skin Properties " ?

guest_today wrote:At the top of skinner is a " Edit " dropdown menu , did you fill in the stack name in " Note Skin Properties " ?

Thanks for helping out!

I'm glad that you brought this up, because I was going to ask about it.

No I didn't fill out the stack name there.

I re-read my old posts from last year and heard that it should be filled out, but I didn't do it
when I created my previous stickies/stacks that worked.

I also noticed that the name is not consistent there.
Sometimes I would put in one name and then it would change to a different one!

I will put the name there now and see if it makes a difference.

guest_today wrote:At the top of skinner is a " Edit " dropdown menu , did you fill in the stack name in " Note Skin Properties " ?

Just another update.

Yes, this time I did fill in the stack name but it didn't help. 

The stack isn't showing with any of my design. It's just a 'vanilla' stack.

The stickie is looking fine.

and one more update...

Loading my Stack.ini file:

"An error occurred loading the skin.
Are you sure the skin has a valid bitmap?"

It doesn't load the .bmp file.
I need to manually load it.

This error always been occurring.

I think it is at the root of my problem.

Wow I must have really done a number on Stickies.
The program won't even load anymore!!!

Should I uninstall and re-install?

Yeah now I could use some serious help.
In addition to the above problems I was having,
Stickies won't even run anymore!

I attempted to uninstall, not sure if it worked.
Then re-installed newest version.

I see the new version files but the program refuses to run !!!
It will load and then immediately abort. 

The yellow icon shows at the bottom for a few seconds then it's gone!!!
Poof!  Program no longer running!

Sorry for all these questions. 

I managed to uninstall and re-install.
But now it seems I've lost all of my stickie notes and stacks!

I had a backup with .db files. Are they my stickies notes?
I can't get stickie to find them. 

Guidance would be appreciated so I can at least get my data back and
start trying to fix everything above in this thread.
-------------------------------
I seemed to have miraculously recovered my data files!
Good thing I had a backup stored somewhere. 

Man this is getting depressing. 
If you ever need someone to test crash your app, I'm your man.

I was simply trying to create a new stickie/stack combo and once again
I have crashed the app!

Bam, it just disappeared totally.

Sorry for the long thread...

I realize it got complicated after the first post.

I am using the following stickies skin:

https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/skins.pl?a=show&s=stickies_ltg

The stickie part looks fine.
It loads with a 'vanilla' stack as no stack has been created with it.

All I want to do is take the very bottom of the .bmp that is used with the skin
and draw my own design there.

I did it somehow before, and it was working just fine, before I lost it when
my computer crashed.

Now any time I try to alter the .bmp, it either messes up the stickie,
or the stack doesn't show at all.

This is what my stack looked like before my computer crashed:
https://ibb.co/88dwGH9

"  take the very bottom of the .bmp that is used with the skin  "


There is no space at the bottom of the bmp to draw something else , the " empty bottom space " is used for creating the top horizontal bars in the sticky . You can add some height to the bmp bottom part to create more space . 

You can now use transparency when adding elements if you save the design as png .

guest_today wrote:"  take the very bottom of the .bmp that is used with the skin  "


There is no space at the bottom of the bmp to draw something else , the " empty bottom space " is used for creating the top horizontal bars in the sticky . You can add some height to the bmp bottom part to create more space . 

You can now use transparency when adding elements if you save the design as png .

Thanks for helping out!

Yes I realized that the bottom space was being used for drawing parts of the top of the stickies.

I must have got around that problem though before my system crashed by changing the stickie
instructions to NOT use the bottom part (and simply leave the top part bare, no coloring).
I say this because if you look at the .bmp I attached, it shows how my stack looked like.

I didn't adjust the height of the bmp. I simply painted the bottom part of it blue.

What I don't recall is how I was able to do this. Because every time I try to do this now,
my stickie gets messed up completely (and stack).

I remember trying to use GIMP to work with the .bmp but it wasn't able to change to .png
or get something happening in .bmp (it seemed to add confusing code).

So I used Paint. Now I am using Paint 3D but haven't had much success changing from .bmp to
.png so that it works.

Any time I try to load my stack.ini and skinner.exe objects (throws an error about my .bmp/.png)
I know what I'm using won't work.

If it is the blue bar you want to add it can be done without changing the bmp just add a element " horizontal strip " .

You can edit the bmp in an image sticky , just drag and drop the file into an new sticky. There are a wide range of tools in an image sticky . I even use it more than gimp unless there is transparency pixels in the png.

You can upload the bmp if you want , i can try it on my stickies to see if the cause is the bmp/png file .

guest_today wrote:If it is the blue bar you want to add it can be done without changing the bmp just add a element " horizontal strip " .

You can edit the bmp in an image sticky , just drag and drop the file into an new sticky. There are a wide range of tools in an image sticky . I even use it more than gimp unless there is transparency pixels in the png.

You can upload the bmp if you want , i can try it on my stickies to see if the cause is the bmp/png file .

Thanks again for helping!

The problem with the 'horizontal strip' is that it can't be coupled with
an 'action' (stack).

When mine was working (before I lost my data), I am sure I had
the blue pad at the bottom of the .bmp working as a
button (togglestack)  action: stack.

You can see several other skins that use this togglestack method.

But I am opting for a much larger pad area than a small icon.
I want it to be a few inches in width, so I can quickly point the mouse
to the pad and not have to be precise where it points to.

Just succeeded in crashing Stickies AGAIN, simply by creating a .bmp stack
and then an .ssk file and then attempting to load it! 

guest_today wrote:
You can upload the bmp if you want , i can try it on my stickies to see if the cause is the bmp/png file .

This is the .bmp I am trying to get to work:



It's based on an LTG stickie.

I didn't understand when you said you could edit a .bmp inside stickie. Did you mean in skinner.exe?
I can't see how to do it.

I converted the bitmap to a png with transparency and then it seems to work . Here is the ssk but the stack is just an example to see if it worked .

The error when loading seems to be that the filename is not saved in the ini file , i had to do it by editing the stack.ini but it can be i made a mistake somewhere .

I cannot have a link ( by the free wetransfer upload webpage ) as guest so i put spaces in the url .

h t t p s : / /we.tl/t-3p6P6IRHxj

guest_today wrote:I converted the bitmap to a png with transparency and then it seems to work . Here is the ssk but the stack is just an example to see if it worked .

The error when loading seems to be that the filename is not saved in the ini file , i had to do it by editing the stack.ini but it can be i made a mistake somewhere .

I cannot have a link ( by the free wetransfer upload webpage ) as guest so i put spaces in the url .

h t t p s : / /we.tl/t-3p6P6IRHxj

Wow that's great!
It works really well. I'm curious to know how you managed to change the .bmp to a .png that works?
I tried so many times in different apps.

I tried many different times to get this to work, including saving the filename in the ini file.

One more question.

When I open some stacks to expose the stickies they come out with an extremely wide width.
They are rolled up.

If I unroll them, I can adjust their width.

But when I roll them up again they go back to their crazy
wide width.

How can I set the width of the stickie so it always stays
the same (unless I grab its edge and make it wider) ?

Thanks again for your help!  

There was a post for the width problem :

h t t p s ://zhornsoftware.forumotion.com/t747-reduce-the-horizontaly-witdh


I used gimp for the conversion :

- open the bmp
-add a transarent layer
-set the layer bottom
-select by color ( the pink 255,00,255)
-edit cut the selection out
-merge the layers
-export to png

I still have not found why the original bmp seems to work but modification messed it up.
Maybe an older  skinner version will work but i deleted all old stuff   

You can use a sticky as image editor by drag/dropping an image file on a new sticky , rightclicking the image will give you the tools , more than enough for "daily" use imo.

guest_today wrote:There was a post for the width problem :

h t t p s ://zhornsoftware.forumotion.com/t747-reduce-the-horizontaly-witdh


I used gimp for the conversion :

- open the bmp
-add a transarent layer
-set the layer bottom
-select by color ( the pink 255,00,255)
-edit cut the selection out
-merge the layers
-export to png

I still have not found why the original bmp seems to work but modification messed it up.
Maybe an older  skinner version will work but i deleted all old stuff   

You can use a sticky as image editor by drag/dropping an image file on a new sticky , rightclicking the image will give you the tools , more than enough for "daily" use imo.

Thanks again for all your help!
I really appreciate it.