This Read Me file contains important information about AMICO.
What does it do?
AMICO is a utility for the apple menu. It simply lets you change the order of the items that appear in the apple menu, in a very easy way. In addition, you can insert divider lines to group related items together.
Requirements
AMICO is expected to run on any Macintosh model with system 7 or later.
Personally, I have tested it successfully on a Macintosh LC, LC III, LC 475, Macintosh IIci, Power Macintosh 6100, and Power Macintosh 5200.
Installation
Just drag the AMICO icon to your System Folder. You will be asked if you want AMICO to be placed inside the Extension Folder. Make sure you press the OK button.
AMICO will be functional after you restart your Macintosh. During the startup time you will see an animated AMICO icon. However, if for any reason AMICO fails to initialize, an Xed icon will appear.
Disabling AMICO
You can disable AMICO by pressing the "A" key during startup. In that case you will see an Xed AMICO icon.
AMICO will be disabled until the next restart.
Deinstallation
Move the AMICO icon from your Extensions Folder to the trash and restart your Macintosh.
How to use AMICO
After you have installed AMICO, open the Apple Menu Items folder, which is inside your System Folder, and choose one of the following commands from the "View" menu. Depending on your choice the Apple Menu behaves in different ways:
If you chooseﾉ
- by Name
ﾉ items in the apple menu will be displayed alphabetically from A to Z.
- by Size
ﾉ items will be sorted by size from the largest to the smallest.
- by Kind
ﾉ items will be displayed according to their type. Applications will be shown at the top, and folders at the bottom of the apple menu. Your documents will be placed in the middle.
- by Label
ﾉ items will be displayed by label. Those that have no label will appear at the bottom of the menu.
- by Date
ﾉ items will be sorted by their modification dates. Most recently modified items go first.
- by Icon
ﾉ items will be displayed by custom order.
You can use the mouse and change the order of the items inside the Apple Menu Items folder by moving them around. AMICO will scan the folder from left to right, and from top to bottom, and will display the items in the apple menu according to their relative location in the folder, as shown in the figure below.
ﾊ
- by Small Icons
ﾉ items will be again displayed by custom order.
You can use the mouse and change the order of the items inside the Apple Menu Items folder by moving them around. AMICO will scan the folder from top to bottom, and from left to right, and will display the items in the apple menu according to their relative location in the folder, as shown in the figure below.
ﾊ
AMICO Tips
Divider lines
You can insert a divider line, to group related items together, by creating a folder (or anything else) whose name begins with a hyphen (-).
Divider titles
In addition, instead of inserting divider lines, you can tell AMICO to insert divider titles. Divider titles are dimmed apple menu items that look like category labels. You can insert a divider title by creating a folder (or anything else) whose name begins with a hyphen (-) and ends with the "less than" symbol (<). Several examples of divider lines & titles are shown in the figure below.
ﾊ
If after the (<) symbol you type B, I, or U, the divider title becomes Bold, Italic, or Underline faced respectively. Also, notice the use of the "vertical bar" symbol (|) in the examples above. AMICO interprets them to columns (:).
Note
For best results, you should either check the "Always snap to grid" check box in the "Views" control panel, or clean up the Apple Menu Items folder window by yourself, every time you alter the positions of the included items.
For your changes to take effect, you may need to close the Apple Menu Items folder. This forces the Finder to save the changes you made and enables AMICO to function properly. Sometimes, however, the Finder won't save your changes until you launch an application (eg. SimpleText).
Registering AMICO - Shareware info
AMICO is shareware and not freeware. You may use it for a trial period of 10 days, but if you decide to keep it, you should pay the registration fee. Registrations for AMICO are handled by the Kagi Shareware service run by Kee Nethery.
AMICO has the following pricing:
- A single user license costs 10 USD per user.
- A Site License costs 200 USD (equal to 20 users) and covers all locations for your organization within a 160 kilometer radius of your site (100 miles). One big advantage of a Site License is that you do not need to keep track of how many people at your site are using the software.
- A World-Wide License costs 800 USD and it covers all locations for your organization on the planet earth.
Paying for AMICO is fairly simple. Open the Register program that accompanies AMICO. Enter your name, your email address, and the number of single user licenses you desire for AMICO (or Site or Word-Wide licenses). Save or Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi Shareware. More specifics on the Register program to follow.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi Shareware. Their email address is shareware@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an email message or you can Save the data to a file and you can attach that file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via email are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct Internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement.
If you are paying with Cash or USD Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi Shareware
1442-A Walnut Street #392-DN
Berkeley, California, 94709-1405
USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi Shareware cannot accept checks in other currencies, the conversion rate for non-USD checks is around 15 USD per check and that is just not practical.
If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You might want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include a copy of the form with their payment.
Kagi Shareware can not invoice your company, you need to act on my behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end.
Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Check or Invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed.
Payments send via postal mail take time to reach Kagi Shareware and then up to 10 days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi Shareware when the form is processed.
Distribution
You can distribute AMICO freely, provided that you don't modify it and that it is always accompanied by this Read Me file and the Register application.
You may include AMICO on a CD-ROM or post it to a BBS (or any other software archive) without having to ask for my permission. However, in that case you should send me an email to inform me about your actions.
Disclaimer
I, the author of AMICO, Dennis Chronopoulos, make no warranties, either express or implied, regarding the fitness of AMICO for any particular purpose. Use AMICO at your own risk. I claim no liability for data loss or any other incidental, special, or consequential damage caused directly or indirectly by AMICO.
Known incompatibilities
The only incompatibility that has been reported for AMICO 2.0 is that in some Japanese systems the Underline style of the Divider Titles (see the "How to use AMICO" section above) does not work properly.
In addition, it is very likely that AMICO is incompatible with some other extensions that also customize the Apple menu, such as NowMenus, BeHierarchic, etc.
How to send me bug reports
I have tried to make AMICO as stable as possible. However, it may still have bugs...
If you want to report a bug or any other incompatibility with AMICO, please feel free to send me an email. My email address is:
Dennis Chronopoulos <dchron@kagi.com>
The subject of your email should contain the words "AMICO BUG".
In the body of the email don't forget to mention:
- the version of AMICO that you were using when you came across the bug
- the names of other INITs that you have installed and that affect the apple menu
- the processor type of your Macintosh (i.e. 68K or PPC)
- the version of the System Software you are using
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the people who registered AMICO, those who sent me bug reports, and those who helped me test AMICO during the beta period.
Also, special thanks to:
- Brian Stern, whose help on INIT writing was invaluable,
- James W. Walker, Peter N. Lewis, and Fran腔is Pottier, for their ShowInitIcon code,
- my brother George, who created the color AMICO icons, and
- Christopher Li, for translating the documentation into Japanese.
Future Plans
- Fix potential incompatibilities
- Include Sub menus
- Support Plug-ins
Version History
2.1
- Fixed a bug that prevented AMICO from functioning in applications other than the Finder in some Macintoshes
2.0
- Rewritten from scratch using new techniques and methods
- Better memory management
- You can now have more than 48 items in the Apple Menu
- More Finder Views are supported (i.e. by date, by label, by size, and by kind)
- Uses the ShowInitIcon code, which is more stable, to show the AMICO icons at startup
- Conflicts with other inits, which alter the Apple Menu in some way, are now eliminated
- Uses less memory than before and it is faster
1.1.1
- Doesn't use the self-modifying technique any more; it instead uses a gestalt selector to access its globals
- Doesn't re-patch MenuSelect any more while the AMICO patch is being executed
- Better system environment checking
1.1
- Added balloon help to the Finder icon
- Show animated icons during startup
- Users can now disable AMICO by pressing the "A" key during startup
- Fixed bug with the installation. Now, it can safely be put inside the Extension Folder
- Reduced incompatibilities with other products (such as OtherMenu and Apple Menu Options)
