Preview Matlab shapes in Windows Explorer (utility for setting a thumbnail image for another file)

Question

Has anyone come up with a way to make miniature previews for figures in Matlab in windows?

I'm tired of saving .png along with the .fig file so that I know what was in it.

A useful helper for this would be a command-line utility for windows, which can be provided with an image file, and said to use it as a basis for previewing for a given file.

I could write a helper function in matlab that saved the .fig file, created a temporary image file, and then moved it to a thumbnail using the command line utility.

Answer 1

You can write a function in C ++ that tells Windows how to create thumbnails from your file. This link explains this. Check out the Thumbnail Image handler section. This is the function you need to implement.

From what I was able to understand, the procedure is as follows:

• Enter a COM server (DLL) that implements the IThumbnailProvider interface
• Put the dll file somewhere on your computer.
• Write a registry entry using the procedure described on this page .

This still leaves you with the problem of extracting thumbnails from a .fig file. As far as I know, fig files are nothing but mat files. I am quite sure that this is possible.

For all shapes, you will need a custom save function. It will print a thumbnail of the image (using the print command) and save it inside the shape.

I know that this is not a lot of information, but it can help you get started. You can also ask someone who appreciates COM technology for more help. Therefore, I recommend adding a COM tag to the tag.

Change (1) . I found a good tutorial on the topic: