TurboFiles

ICO to TSV Converter

TurboFiles offers an online ICO to TSV Converter.
Just drop files, we'll handle the rest

ICO

ICO is a file format for computer icons, primarily used in Microsoft Windows environments. It supports multiple image sizes and color depths within a single file, allowing scalable icon rendering across different display resolutions. ICO files typically contain bitmap images encoded in PNG or BMP formats, with transparency support and compact storage for system and application icons.

Advantages

Compact multi-resolution storage, built-in Windows support, transparency capabilities, small file size, easy scalability across different screen sizes, and native integration with Microsoft platforms and applications.

Disadvantages

Limited cross-platform compatibility, potential quality loss during resizing, restricted to specific color depths, and less flexible compared to modern vector-based icon formats like SVG.

Use cases

ICO files are extensively used for creating desktop application icons, website favicon images, file type representations, taskbar and start menu icons, and system tray application indicators. They are crucial in user interface design for Windows operating systems and web browsers that display site-specific icons.

TSV

Tab-Separated Values (TSV) is a simple, lightweight text-based file format used for storing structured tabular data. Each record is represented by a line of text, with individual values separated by tab characters. TSV provides a clean, human-readable method for representing spreadsheet or database-like information, offering straightforward data exchange between different applications and platforms.

Advantages

Lightweight and compact file format. Easy to read and parse. Compatible with most programming languages and data tools. Supports Unicode. Requires minimal processing overhead. Simple to generate and manipulate programmatically. Works well with command-line tools and text processing utilities.

Disadvantages

Limited complex data representation capabilities. No built-in data type preservation. Lacks advanced formatting options. Potential issues with values containing tab characters. No standardized method for handling nested or hierarchical data structures. Less feature-rich compared to formats like CSV or JSON.

Use cases

TSV is widely used in data science, scientific research, data migration, and analytics. Common applications include spreadsheet exports, data analysis, machine learning datasets, log file processing, and cross-platform data interchange. Researchers and data engineers frequently use TSV for storing genomic data, survey results, statistical information, and large-scale numerical datasets.

Frequently Asked Questions

ICO files are binary image files specifically designed for Windows icons, containing multiple image sizes and color depths. TSV files are plain text files using tab characters to separate data fields, representing information in a structured, human-readable tabular format. The conversion requires extracting binary icon metadata and translating it into text columns.

Users convert ICO files to TSV to analyze icon properties, create inventories of graphic assets, document icon characteristics, or prepare icon metadata for spreadsheet-based workflows. This conversion enables detailed examination of icon attributes like dimensions, color depth, and embedded image variations.

Graphic designers managing large icon libraries might use this conversion to catalog icon collections. Software developers tracking UI asset inventories could benefit from converting icons to a spreadsheet-compatible format for comprehensive documentation and tracking.

The conversion from ICO to TSV primarily preserves metadata and structural information rather than the visual icon itself. Some pixel-level details might be lost, but critical attributes like dimensions, color depth, and file references are typically maintained with high fidelity.

TSV files are generally smaller than ICO files, with size reductions around 50-80%. A typical 10KB icon file might compress to a 2-5KB text representation, depending on the complexity of embedded icon data.

The conversion cannot reconstruct the original icon image from the TSV file. Only metadata and structural information are preserved. Complex multi-resolution icons might lose some nuanced encoding details during translation.

Users should avoid converting if they require the actual visual icon representation, need to maintain exact binary encoding, or are working with highly specialized icon files containing unique embedded information not easily represented in text columns.

For comprehensive icon management, users might consider specialized icon management software, metadata extraction tools, or maintaining original ICO files alongside TSV documentation.