Sun Desk Manual

Freeware Copyright © nOne corp. 1989-90 Version 1.1 Programmed by Frédéric Miserey. Iconography by Jean-Michel Decombe. Documentation by Tom Poston - Immedium Design. Introduction SunDesk is a small INIT, or Startup Document, which loads whenever you turn on or restart your Macintosh computer. Its purpose in life is to alter the way in which the Finder draws icons on the desktop and in windows so that you and the Finder can take full advantage of the capabilities of a Macintosh with 8-bit or 24/32-bit display, and display full- color rather than black & white icons. Version 1.1 of SunDesk also introduces the capability to colorize many cursors throughout the Macintosh system, via the ability to substitute color cursor resources for black and white cursors. SunDesk works only with System 6.0.2 or later. Background What SunDesk does is similar to the function of two other freeware INITs, Icon Colorizer and Color Finder, which have been available for some time, but superior in that SunDesk allows icons with up to 256 colors, works well with Apple’s _____________________________________________________________________________________________ SunDesk Version 1.1 32-bit QuickDraw, and automatically calculates the RAM needed to display the color icons without the user needing to do any tricky editing in ResEdit. To be fair, the most recent version of Icon Colorizer also incorporated these features, but Color Finder does not. SunDesk also uses a new type of color icon resource, called “icl8”. These resources are similar to the old format “cicn” resources, but use less RAM and are drawn quicker on screen. icl8 resources will be supported by Apple in Finder 7.0, as well. Installation SunDesk is very easy to install on your Macintosh. After unstuffing the SunDesk INIT and the SunDesk Icons file, simply drag them into your System Folder and restart. While the startup screen is visible, most INITs display an icon to indicate that their loading was successful. SunDesk’s “rainbow umbrella” icon should pop up during this process. If you wish, you can prevent SunDesk from loading by holding down the shift key during the startup procedure. SunDesk works by keeping a pair of icons, one black & white and one color, stored in the SunDesk Icons file, for each Finder icon to be colorized. In order for SunDesk to work, the black & white icon, or “ICN#”, must have the exact same resource ID number as the matching color icon icl8 resource. For example, the SunDesk INIT’s ICN# ID is 108, as is the matching icl8. (You can check the ID number of a given resource by selecting it and choosing “Get Info...” from ResEdit’s “File” menu.) _____________________________________________________________________________________________ SunDesk Version 1.1 Colorization of cursors works on a similar principle: a “…