I use IconFactory (which I wrote for this purpose) (��http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~peteruhnak/IconFactory or Catalog Browser ), it works in the same way as Pharo icons (base64 representation of the image which is then converted to a Form object).

Catalog browser offers also ExternalIconFamily but I have no knowledge of that. But I remember that someone was working on referencing external files, so maybe this is it.

Peter

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 11:28 AM, Dimitris Chloupis <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:

So how you guys covert image files to strings to be stored as method sources ?

I want to make a custom GUI that will contain a lot of images and I am a bit on a dilema whether I should put the images as method source as we do already with pharo icons OR just link to external files and find how I can download those files from Pharo.

No idea whats the best course of action . Any suggestions ?