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 PROGRAM INFO / (NEWICONS)
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   "NewIcons" is not "just another set of icons".  NewIcons is a completely
new concept in revolutionizing Icon-Management within the Amiga.
   With the advent of Kickstart 3.0 (NewIcons runs on 2.1 as well),
Commodore took a bold first step towards retargetable Graphics.  There
isn't a device independent graphic engine yet, but there is a new pen
arbitration system which allows applications to obtain a given color, or
the one which is closest to it if there are not enough free pens.
   It's simply ridiculous that, on a system capable of displaying a 256
color Workbench screen, and with a pen arbitration system like the one
described above that icons are limited to 8 colors.  Now, various solutions
have been proposed, ranging from "use some colors and hope they are right"
to "allocate some pens and reserve them for icon display", but they all
miss the point, which is:

   · Why should I, the user, have to care about the icon palette?

   · Why should I set the system palette in a way decided by someone else
(the icon designer) and not the way _I_ like it?

   When you display a picture on the Workbench screen using MultiView, you
don't have to care about the palette: the system chooses it for you.  So
why should one care about the palette used by icons?  The system should
take care of it, not the user.
   Unfortunately, icons don't carry palette information.  Therefore,
NewIcons defines a new standard for icon files, and writes a system patch
to make the system recognize it. 

   · The new standard is backward compatible, that is, users not running
     the patch program should see the standard 4-color icons.

   · Manipulation of icons by users not running the patch program will not
     cause the new icon information to be lost.

   · Remapping of the icons to the Workbench palette is fast.

   · Icon data is compressed to reduce disk usage.

   · The patch works even on Kickstart 2.0 systems, with limited features.

   The new icon information gets stored in the ToolTypes, so it is
completely backwards compatible.  The "newicon.library," takes care of
reading and writing the imagery in the ToolTypes; it also hides away the
special ToolTypes so that when one asks for information about an icon only
the standard ToolTypes are shown.  A patch program supplied intercepts
calls to icon.library, redirecting them to newicon.library, so that
Workbench and all other applications transparently get the new icon
imagery.

(NOTE: The above taken from program documentation, with minor changes made)