This appendixsection explains how to use ilv2data, a tool provided with Views to safely package application data files together with your Views application in the same executable.

The ilv2data executable file allows you to put all the application resources, such as .ilv and .dbm files and bitmaps (.gif, .bmp, .pbm, and so on), in a file generated by ilv2data that you will then add to an application project (on PCs) or compile and link with your Views application (on UNIX).

This file is a data resource file on Microsoft Windows (.rc) that can be compiled with the Microsoft Resource Compler (RC.EXE). On UNIX platforms, this file is a regular C++ source file that contains only the definition of static data. This file can be compiled with your regular C++ compiler. We call this file a resource file in the rest of this section.

A resource file stores a set of data blocks that can be retrieved at run time using the name with which they were associated when building the resource file.