©1995 Kevin Jaques. All rights reserved excepting that this file may be copied for non-commercial purposes, unchanged. No warranties apply. I am just a user volunteering my observations.

My Struggles (with Icons)
I just spent time trying to get better icons for my desk­top objects. You¹re right. I have no life. Instead, I have a family, and I wanted to ensure my kids could navigate the Mac to play games, draw, and write.

Neither have I any expertise. This article is all I know, based on trial and error. I welcome corrections and additions, but doubt I can answer questions.

To simplify things, I created aliases of all applications and put them in a single folder. The children will be less likely to move things out of the necessary folders, or trash them. If they do, only an alias is lost.

Many of the aliases had only generic icons.

I rebuilt the desk­top. Holding down the right modifier keys as you start up does so, but that doesn¹t create a new file. If the file itself, not just the data, is corrupted, it doesn¹t help. Further, it doesn¹t allow the preservation of comments. Various utilities allow you to do both, such as TechTool, Disk Doctor (Norton Utilities package), Desktop Reset (DiskDoubler package), etc.

Rebuilding the desktop helped a lot, but some generic ones were left. Also, folders would be more meaningful to kids if they had icons.

Since System 7, finder icons have been easy. Use Œget info¹, click on the existing icon, and paste a picture or icon. That applies to both folders or files and conceals how folders and files use icons differently.

A file must contain icon resources.

If a folder contains, at its top level, a file called ³Icon², which is typically although not necessarily invisible, and if that file has the right icon resources, the folder will have an icon.

An alias will show the icon belonging to the original file. It need not, but may have icon resources.

In all cases, if no icon resources exist, the Finder gives it generic icons, depending upon its type (control panel, folder, extension, application, DA, alias, etc.).

An alias typically has an Œalis¹ resource. I am convinced that it must have one, despite the objective evidence of using ResEdit (Apple¹s public domain unsupported resource editing program) to open one functioning alias on my desktop which contained no resources. Anyway, it may have icon resources, in which case they will be used, but if not, it will use those belonging to the original object to which the alias refers.

The Word version of this document contains a screen snap­shot from ResEdit. I opened the Œicon¹ file of a folder with a special icon, and found 6 icon related resources (top left window titled ŒIcon¹). Each of those, when opened, showed the same thing, namely a window showing a similar icon bearing the identity -16455 (top right window is sample). Each one varied in size or other minor characteristics. When I opened this -16455 object, I always got the same thing, namely the window shown below (in the Word version), which, when selected, shows the title ³Icon Family².
 
The Icon Family Window is most informative. One can see it consists of 7 resources, named ICN#, ics#, ic18, ics8, ic14, ics4, and Mask. To the right of that, one sees the resulting appearances for both large and small icons, whether normal, open, or offline. It appears that the mask is laid over the picture transparently when the object is offline, but opaquely when the object is open. Any of the 7 types can be selected and edited. You might want to do so if the standard conversion creates an unattractive or meaningless display for the small or masked versions.

I think, that the difference between ICN#, ic18, ic14 is color bit depth.

Note, your version of ResEdit must have a resource itself (either in the application or in the Preferences file) to be the template to convert the binary information of resource data into the meaningful result you see here. Mine came off CompuServe with the icon templates built in.

Also note, my ResEdit also has templates for ŒICON¹ and Œicmt¹. ³ICON² is simply a single picture. ³icmt² contains fields for version release date, version, icon i.d., and comment text. Nothing else obviously relates to icons.

Now, to return to the original task, of creating icons. As I said, the easy way is simply to copy any picture to the icon in the Œget info¹ box. But note, the offline and open icons will appear the same as the normal. An icon family does get created, but the ICN#, ic18, ic14, and Mask all appear to be identical.

You can create the pictures in any drawing program, or you can take a screen snapshot (command­shift­3) which puts a file called Œpicture¹ on the top level of your start­up disk. This file can be edited by graphics programs, including SimpleText, and, I think, later versions of TeachText.

I went to some trouble, finding and displaying icons I liked, taking screen snapshots, and collecting them in a SuperPaint file. That turned out to be stupid.

ResEdit is much better. Use it to look for Œdesktop¹ on the top level of any volume and open it. Look for ICN#, select it and copy. Create a new file with ResEdit and paste. All the icons from all the files from that disk are now in your new file, suitable for tinkering and plagiarizing. Actually, some are omitted, god knows why. Just double­click the new ICN# resource and you can see the huge list. Click to select one, copy, and it is ready for pasting into its new place. Or, you can just create a new one, and draw it to your taste, and copy it. Of course you can do install it the old fashioned way (pasting directly into the file with ResEdit) or the new fashioned way (pasting into the Œget info¹ box).

Please note, when drawing the icons, that although white space appears no different, it is different. If you leave it a space empty (white), underlying objects will show through, and clicking on that space does not select the object. But if you paint it white, the object is solid and the white space is clickable. ResEdit offers you a menu option to automatically make the non­drawn part white.

So, to summarize. The simplest way is to 'get info', select the icon, and paste a picture. ResEdit can help you gather icons and can help you set-them up so they will remain attractive and meaningful at different sizes and statuses. If you do it this old-fashioned way, put the resource directly into a file (optionally into an alias) but for folders, put it into an  file called 'icon' and put that file at the top level in the folder.

This ³Article² was brought to you by:

Kevin Jaques, B.A. LL.B.
of the
Jaques Law Office

#101 - 2515 Victoria Avenue	Fax: 525­4173
Regina, Saskatchewan	Home: 586­2234
S4P 0T2	Tel: 359­3041