Brought to you by the authors of Greg's Buttons, Greg's Browser, and DoubleScroll.
greg@math.harvard.edu (Greg Landweber) — for everything except the windows and scroll bars
ISYSDev@aol.com (Ed Voas) — regarding the windows and scroll bars
(We do not provide snail-mail or telephone support for Aaron.)
Please note that we are each getting several dozen e-mail messages a day regarding Aaron. While we do read every message when it comes in, you may not get a prompt response, particularly if you ask a question that is answered here. Please do NOT include screen shots or long lists of all your system extensions. These take up a great deal of space and are rarely useful. If we need such information, we will ask for it.
Please do NOT distribute modified versions of Aaron. It is difficult enough to support the versions that we release, and it becomes a nightmare if we have to support versions that we have never seen. Also, please distribute Aaron as a complete package, including Register, Espi Sans 10, and this documentation file.
Aaron is a small extension that transforms your Mac's user experience to resemble the Copland 3-D style as shown in recent issues of MacWeek, MacUser, and MacWorld magazines. To use it, just drop it in your Extensions folder, or drop it on your System (MacOS) folder and let the Finder put it where it belongs. When you restart, you will see the changes listed below. To temporarily disable Aaron, hold down the mouse button while it loads at startup.
Aaron is a “Fat Binary” containing both 680x0 and PowerPC native code for optimum performance on both Macs and PowerMacs. In other words, Aaron is Accelerated for Power Macintosh. Aaron requires a 68020 or better, so in particular it won't work on a Mac Plus. Sorry.
Shareware registration info
Aaron is shareware; it is NOT free. If you use Aaron, you should pay a $10 registration fee. Registrations for Aaron ar handled by the Kagi Shareware service run by Kee Nethery (kee@kagi.com). In addition to cash in various currencies and US dollar checks drawn on US banks, Kagi Shareware also accepts credit card registrations by mail, fax, or e-mail (your card number is scrambled). For organizations, they handle invoices and site licenses, too. For more information, run the enclosed “Register” program. It creates a customized registration form and tells you where to send it.
After you register, you will be sent a trick to disable the Annoying Shareware Message™ that appears at startup. Because of this, it is vital that you give your e-mail address or request a paper receipt (for $1 extra) in Register.
Please note that we do not send out updates of Aaron or notification of new verions. A mailing (or e-mailing) list of that size would be unmanageable, and we want to spend our spare time coding, not stuffing envelopes. However,
we do make updates available on all online service and internet Mac software archives. Once you register, you remain registered for all future shareware versions of Aaron, even if we add zillions of feature and raise the price.
List of features
• Substitutes Espi Sans Bold 10 for Chicago 12 as the system font.
• The menu bar and menus use a light gray background and a dark blue highlight color. In addition, the menu bar takes on a subtle 3D effect.
• Replaces the standard push buttons, check boxes, and radio buttons with Copland-style 3D shaded ones.
• The header information in Finder windows (the # items... and Name, Size, Kind,... lines at the top of the window) is drawn using a gray background and a subtle 3D effect.
• Automatically installs 3D Copland-style folder icons. There are many versions of these icons floating around in cyberspace. The ones included with Aaron have been tweaked to match the various Copland screen shots as closely as possible. Aaron does not change your system file, so your icons will revert to normal if you disable Aaron.
• Windows and scroll bars are now drawn using the Copland 3D style as seen in the various Copland screen shots. These windows have a WindowShade widget at the top right of the title bar. Clicking on it collapses the window to just its title bar.
• Transforms the Finder progress boxes to look like the Copland screen shots. This also partially affects some progress bars in other applications. It looks so cool that you will be copying and trashing files just to see the progress box!
• Provides a new Copland-style pop-up menu button. This affects only those programs that take advantage of the System 7 pop-up menu routines, so please do not complain if the pop-ups in your favorite application or control panel remain unchanged.
• Those little disclosure triangles in Finder list views take on a slight 3D effect.
The Espy Sans font family
Espy is a new font designed by Apple's Human Interface people for easy readability on computer screens. Aaron installs Espi Sans Bold 10 as you system font in place of the usual Chicago 12 font, and the font Espi Sans 10 is included with the Aaron package. You should try selecting Espi Sans 10 as your Finder font using the Views control panel. Some people prefer the Espy Sans 9 size for Finder views, but all the Copland screen shots use the 10 point size.
You can get the entire Espy font family as part of the eWorld software. Alternatively, these fonts live inside the Apple Guide extension, so you can make a copy of your Apple Guide extension, change its file type to FFIL and its creator to DMOV, and then open it like a suitcase to extract all the Espy fonts. I am told that this font is also used by the Newton and comes with the Newton Toolkit as well as the Newton Toolkit Demo (part of “Programming for the Newton“ by McKeehan and Rhodes). Please note that since Espy was designed to be a screen font, there are not TrueType or PostScript versions for use with printers.
Here are some quotes about Aaron
“I don't think everyone realizes the power of a ‘change of scenery’ to alter your mood or outlook on life...it makes you literally feel different.” — Kevin Lesniewicz
“I never thought I'd get that excited about a button.” — Ed Voas
“What can I say? — it works.” — Leo Breebaart
Known problems
• On some Macs you may occasionally get gibberish in the menu bar or even crashes when launching applications. This is a bug in the system software, and to get around it you must chop out the “mctb” resource from Aaron using ResEdit. Do not try to edit the currently active Aaron file; edit a copy instead and then replace the original with the edited copy.
• The blue menu highlighting does not work correctly in ClarisWorks and ClarisDraw.
• Some menu bar additions, such as the Now Contact and Reminder icons and various menu bar clocks, erase the 3D gray tinges on the menu bar. Fixing this would be more trouble than it is worth.
• When Aaron is running, menus in Canvas become unreadable. This is a long standing bug in Canvas that conflicts with substitute system fonts.
• If your monitor is set for 256 Colors, then the indicators for DiskLight, In Use, or AppleShare in your menu bar are drawn in yellow and do not show up well against the light gray background. This is a problem with the system's color inverse routines, and there is nothing I can do.
• If you are using or have ever used another program to change your menu colors (such as Aurora or Kolor), then your menu color settings may override Aaron's. This can happen even if you have set your menus back to black and white since those utilities may have left a rogue color resource (specifying black and white as the colors) in your System file. Aurora 3.3 will remove this color resource if you tell it to de-install. Otherwise, to get rid of this, you can either remove all “mctb” resources from your System file with ResEdit or perform a fresh install.
• Aaron must load after the CE Toolbox extension. That is why it is named ~Aaron.
• FrameMaker may complain about a font error when startup up. This is due to FrameMaker's overzealous font checking. There really is no problem, and FrameMaker will continue to work normally.
• If you use Greg's Buttons with Aaron, the menu colorization behavior depends on which version of Greg's Buttons you are running. With Greg's Buttons 3.7.1 and earlier, the menu colors in Greg's Buttons override those in Aaron, and you may need to restart for menu color changes to fully take effect. With Greg's Buttons 3.7.2 and later, Aaron's menu colors normally override those in Greg's Buttons. However, if you want to use Greg's Buttons 3.7.2 or later to set your menu colors, you need to make Aaron load after Greg's Buttons at startup. You can do this by putting Aaron in your Control Panels folder.
Finder Window Title Bar Icon Caveats
• If you change the icon while the window is open, it will not get the changes until the window is closed and reopened.
• Since I only get icons when I need them, if you do change the icon, and then say, drag the window to another monitor with a different depth, which requires a different version of the icon from the icon suite, you may end up with a weird looking icon because you may have the mask from the old icon with the new icon on top of it. Yuck.
• The trash does not show full in the title bar, for now it's always the empty icon. Deal with it, pink boy!
Needless to say, there's room for improvement. Please do NOT e-mail these problems to me (Ed).
Changes in version 1.0
• Added Copland-style 3D default button frames in dialog boxes.
• Fixed a conflict with QuickDraw GX that would cause crashes in the Print and Page Setup dialog boxes.
• Fixed the conflict with MicroPhone.
• Fixed a bug that would cause Eudora to hang/crash when opening a help window.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the system font to occasionally revert back to Chicago 12.
• Aaron now works correctly non-Roman scripts, such as Kanji, Hebrew, or Greek (but not Icelandic, I'm afraid). It specifically checks for Chicago 12 instead of blindly replacing the system font with Espi Sans Bold 10.
• The new 3D progress bar now appears in the Copy dialog box on German systems.
• Fixed a bug that could cause “Find File” to crash when you click in a pop-up menu.
• Expanded modal dialog boxes a few pixels. This gives Now SuperBoomerang (and Norton Directory Assistance?) enough room to display its menus in the Open and Save boxes without overlapping the window border.
• Command clicking in the title bar of inactive windows to move them now works again.
• Fixed a problem with the grow box in the Launcher window.
• Slightly modified the check boxes, radio buttons, window widgets, and scroll bar arrows.
• The pop-up menus now support icons.
• Aaron now supports color titles for radio buttons, check boxes, and push buttons.
• The buttons now correctly handle “254-highlighting” (an obscure technical thing).
• The windows now draw better in 16 colors.
• Aaron now uses the Greg's Buttons dialog box color for Finder progress boxes.
Changes in version 1.0b5
New Features/Improvements
• Hacked the Finder progress boxes to look like the Copland screen shots.
• Added Copland-style disclosure triangles in Finder list views.
• Added Copland-style pop-up menu controls.
• Added ‘ghosting’ effect to the scroll bar thumb when dragged. This feature conflicts with the Scrolling control panel, and it does not work correctly on some Macs. In order to use the ghost thumb, you must switch it on by editing the “SPrf” resource in ResEdit.
• Finder window title bars should now be getting the correct icon. It now pays attention to custom icons and labels.
• The windows are now pixel for pixel identical to the Copland screen shots, except as noted below.
• Added the window drop shadow. I don't know if I like it, but it is faithful to the actual. The lower left portion of the shadow does not go all the way to the edge of the window like in the screen shots. Sorry.
• Added another option in the “WPrf” resource for turning icons in Finder window title bars on or off. The icons can slow you down a little. If you have a fast machine, I would not worry about it.
• Made the radio buttons smoother, lightened the blue menu highlight color, and improved the 3D menu bar.
Bug Fixes
• Eliminated the rogue black lines that would appear when using ClarisWorks.
• The New Folder button now draws correctly when highlighted on black and white monitors.
• Fixed conflict with Folder Icon Maker where Aaron's folder icons would override custom folder icon files.
• Desktop printers windows no longer have a gray header.
• Fixed a bug that could corrupt the trash can icon.
• Fixed problem with buttons in Quark.
• Fixed problem with BBEdit that would turn the text gray after a paste operation.
• The “WPrf” resource now has a template that ResEdit can understand.
• Fixed problem where moving the scroll bar thumb to the top/left of the scroll bar would cause it to jump to the end.
• Fixed compatibility problem with the Scrolling cdev and ZTerm.
• Fixed problem where closing a windowshaded window would cause a weird desktop update.
• Changed grow box drawing behavior to only draw when called upon. This fixes the problem where the Chooser and Get Info boxes had grow boxes, but introduces another: occasionally Finder windows will not have a grow box when initially drawn. This is because the Finder has not told the WDEF to draw any grow boxes yet. Once the window becomes active, everything is normal from that point on.
• Clicking the windowshade button no longer causes ProTERM to quit.
• Wünderbar now works wünderbar. You *may* notice a slight irregularity when the window is rolled up, though.
• You can no longer move the window by clicking in the lower right edge of the window. That land has been taken over by the evil yet ever-flexible Grow Box Empire! So no more dragging when you meant to resize.
• Window titles now draw properly when in Stuffit Lite (and probably Deluxe as well).
• Window title embossing now uses a slightly darker gray, so it is not so blatant.
Changes in version 1.0b4
• Added the WindowShade widget to the top right of the title bar.
• Windows now roll up properly when using WindowShade (no pixels left hanging off the bottom).
• Added a 'WPrf' resource to allow disabling of window title embossing, for you purists.
• Fixed problem where clicking in the grow portion of an inactive window would grow it when in fact it should have merely activated it.
• You can no longer resize a rolled up window. That was not good.
• Changed the trash can icon yet again.
• Changed the Aaron extension icon slightly.
• Aaron now draws the button frame correctly for selected push buttons on black and white monitors.
Changes in version 1.0b3 (MacHack)
• Fixed a bug that would occasionally substitute other controls (such as sliders) for buttons.
• Fixed a bug at startup that EvenBetterBusError (EBBE) caught.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent Aaron from changing the System font to Espi Sans Bold 10.
• Aaron now lets application-specific WDEFs override its window routines.
Changes in version 1.0b2
• Added Copland-style windows and scroll bars, courtesy of Ed Voas.
• The empty and full trash can icons now use a gray shadow instead of a black one.
• Aaron no longer draws the white highlight at the top of the screen if the menu bar is hidden.
• Aaron now has an extension icon which it draws at startup.
• Changed the name to ~Aaron so that it loads after CE Toolbox.
• Aaron can now coexist with Greg's Buttons. The settings in Greg's Buttons override Aaron.
Disclaimer
The authors, Gregory D. Landweber and Edward Voas, make no warranties, either express or implied, regarding the fitness of “Aaron” for any particular purpose. Use “Aaron” at your own risk. The authors claim no liability for data loss or any other problems caused directly or indirectly by “Aaron”.
