Windows resources and windres

A general good introduction to windows resources can you get from Colin Peters . Nowadays is it simpler to create a dll with dllwrap than the method he describe and several new tools has come to get the symbols from dlls and .libs. But it still a very good introduction.
If you just want to have a icon and some menus is it easy to create the .rc resource file with a simple text editor and let windres compile it to something that can be linked into your program. More fancy stuff is harder and some kind of visual editor can be useful. The lcc compiler has such a resource editor and it can be downloaded from the lcc page or as a separate download from the vide page .

All works well as long you restrict yourself to self made resource files. Compiling resource scripts from other programs can be harder. The first step is to update the windres tool from the latest unofficial release. Sample code often come with both .rc and .res files the .res can mostly be compiled. If nothing works do you have to edit the .rc file. Here is some common problems and some solutions :

lower case keyword

The error messages is often that windres can not open a font file but the error is lower case keywords such as begin, end, icon, menu and so on.

missing commas

This gives a parse error. Here is a example:
MENUITEM "Set Capture &File..." IDM_F_SETCAPTUREFILE
is missing the comma after " so it should be altered to
MENUITEM "Set Capture &File...", IDM_F_SETCAPTUREFILE

missing include files

Not much to do about this but one can always try to comment out the include.

illegal lists

I do not have a good name to describe this. You get a parse error because the syntax is too relaxed for windres. One common example:

    BLOCK "StringFileInfo"
      BEGIN
        BLOCK "040904E4"
          BEGIN
            VALUE "CompanyName", VERSIONCOMPANYNAME
            VALUE "FileDescription", VERSIONDESCRIPTION
            VALUE "FileVersion", VERSIONSTR
            VALUE "InternalName", VERSIONNAME
            VALUE "LegalCopyright", VERSIONCOPYRIGHT
            VALUE "OriginalFilename", VERSIONNAME
            VALUE "ProductName", VERSIONPRODUCTNAME
            VALUE "ProductVersion", VERSIONSTR
          END
        BLOCK "041104E4"
          BEGIN
            VALUE "CompanyName", VERSIONCOMPANYNAME
            VALUE "FileDescription", VERSIONDESCRIPTION
            VALUE "FileVersion", VERSIONSTR
            VALUE "InternalName", VERSIONNAME
            VALUE "LegalCopyright", VERSIONCOPYRIGHT
            VALUE "OriginalFilename", VERSIONNAME
            VALUE "ProductName", VERSIONPRODUCTNAME
            VALUE "ProductVersion", VERSIONSTR
          END
      END

Must be changed to this:

    BLOCK "StringFileInfo"
      BEGIN
        BLOCK "040904E4"
          BEGIN
            VALUE "CompanyName", VERSIONCOMPANYNAME
            VALUE "FileDescription", VERSIONDESCRIPTION
            VALUE "FileVersion", VERSIONSTR
            VALUE "InternalName", VERSIONNAME
            VALUE "LegalCopyright", VERSIONCOPYRIGHT
            VALUE "OriginalFilename", VERSIONNAME
            VALUE "ProductName", VERSIONPRODUCTNAME
            VALUE "ProductVersion", VERSIONSTR
          END
       END
    BLOCK "StringFileInfo"
      BEGIN
        BLOCK "041104E4"
          BEGIN
            VALUE "CompanyName", VERSIONCOMPANYNAME
            VALUE "FileDescription", VERSIONDESCRIPTION
            VALUE "FileVersion", VERSIONSTR
            VALUE "InternalName", VERSIONNAME
            VALUE "LegalCopyright", VERSIONCOPYRIGHT
            VALUE "OriginalFilename", VERSIONNAME
            VALUE "ProductName", VERSIONPRODUCTNAME
            VALUE "ProductVersion", VERSIONSTR
          END
      END

icons in dialogs

windres seems to have problems with icons in dialogs but if you change the type does it works

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