On 5 Jul 2001, at 17:14, don penlington wrote:

> Allen---you have something very weird going on there.  Dll's have
> nothing to do with image files. You can't open them except in
> programming language, and wouldn't want to unless you're a
> programmer.

  This isn't true.

  A .DLL is a "module" file; it shares its internal structure with
.EXE and some types of font files.

  That structure includes the ability to contain "resources" -- read-
only data that can be loaded and used at runtime.  And one family of
program resources is "bitmapped images" -- variations are use to hold
things like icons and cursors and so on.
  A .DLL may effectively contain quite a number of embedded .BMP
files.  As you say, a programmer might need to open them -- for
instance, to make changes -- and so MSPaint, when fed a .DLL file,
assumes that you are the programmer and need to modify an embedded
bitmap image.  (Modifying bitmap images for programs is essentially
the reason MSPaint exists....)

  It should not, I think, have associated itself with the .DLL file
type, unless the original poster left the "Always use this program"
box checked while doing "Open with...".

David Gillett

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