(Change and Restore Monitor Settings - Application Pseudo Alias)
The Problem:
In an elementary school computer lab, the children were setting the monitors to 16 colors to play their favorite game, and then forgetting to set it back, adding to the aggrivation level of the lab administrator.
My Solution:
CaRMSAPA.
Setting it up:
Set the main monitor to the settings the game (or whatever) needs. Then drag-and-drop the game onto CaRMSAPA. CaRMSAPA will remember the monitor settings and the game you dropped on it. You might want to rename CaRMSAPA to reflect the game it's set to.
Using it:
Double-click on CaRMSAPA in the Finder. It will change the settings of the main monitor, and then launch the game. It then hangs around in the background until the game quits, when it restores the monitor to it's original settings.
Note: CaRMSAPA has no windows or menus. The only way to quit it is to quit the game it launched. (Well, you could send it a "Quit" event, or shutdown the computer.) It is very small and shouldn't get in your way.
Requirements:
Apple events. (The ChildDiedEvent in particular.) I believe that any kind of System 7 will do. Will not work off of a locked or read-only disk.
Finding out what it is set to:
Turn on Balloon Help and point the mouse at it in the Finder.
Source Code:
The (unpolished) source code for CodeWarrior is included. It was intended to be a "faceless, background-only application" and the source reflects this. (Alas, calls to SetDepth() don't seem to like being background-only.)
Warnings:
I don't recommend using two copies of CaRMSAPA at the same time. The screen can only be set to one thing at a time after all.
Warrantees:
None whatsoever. Use at your own risk.
Copyright:
I release all rights I might have to this program and its source code to the public domain.
Bugs:
Bug reports are welcome, although I don't claim to offer support.
