“Keeping my color icons organized was a real headache. You've made it extremely easy. Thank you!”
—Dave Batton, Quark, Inc.
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INTRODUCTION
SunDesk Strip is a utility for users of Frédéric Miserey’s SunDesk. Using SunDesk Strip, you can reduce startup time significantly, depending on the number of icons you need in the SunDesk Icons file. This is because SunDesk Strip creates a SunDesk Icons file that contains only the icons that match those in your Desktop files. It saves memory and disk space, too, as only the icons on your desktop are kept around.
Other features of SunDesk Strip:
• Easily and safely add new color icons to your system
• Selectively build a SunDesk Icons file with:
Δ Color desktop icons (applications and documents)
Δ Color system icons (trash can, folders, disks, etc.)
Δ Color cursors
• Adjust the dimming level of icons when they are selected
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INSTALLATION
Copy SunDesk Strip and the Icon Gallery file to wherever you normally keep your utilities.
Icon Gallery, a holding tank for your icons, can be kept on a floppy disk—you don't need to store it on your hard drive. SunDesk Strip will ask you to locate it if it isn't in your System Folder or the folder in which SunDesk Strip resides.
It is a good idea to rebuild the desktop on each volume you'll scan with SunDesk Strip, as the icons you no longer use should be weeded out of them. To do this, hold down Command and Option while starting up until you see the dialog box that asks if you want to rebuild the desktop.
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USING SUNDESK STRIP
Double-click on the SunDesk Strip icon to launch it. All the action occurs in the File menu.
If you have never used SunDesk Strip before AND you have previously copied icons into your SunDesk Icons file, use "Add Icons To Gallery" from the File menu before you do anything else. You are asked to select the file containing the icons that you wish to add to the Icon Gallery, choose your SunDesk Icons file in your System Folder. There will probably be many duplicates, just skip them or replace them as desired.
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MAKING A NEW SUNDESK ICONS FILE
To create a new SunDesk Icons file containing only the icons your color desktop requires, choose "New Icons File" from the File menu. An options dialog box appears allowing you to choose the types of color icons to be copied into your new SunDesk Icons file. You may also adjust the selection dimming value. A lower value makes selections darker. Higher makes them lighter. Finally, the "Scan Volumes" list allows you to choose which volumes should be scanned for matching desktop icons. All mounted volumes are selected as a default, though you can hold down the shift key while clicking to unselect any volumes you do not want scanned.
Clicking OK displays a dialog box asking you to name the new SunDesk Icons file (usually "SunDesk Icons", and it should be stored in your System Folder). You can choose a different name and location for backup purposes if desired. When ready, click the Save button. Finally, SunDesk Strip does its stuff, and lets you know when it is all done. To stop before it is finished, press Command-Period. To put the new SunDesk Icons file into effect, just Quit SunDesk Strip, and restart your Macintosh.
NOTE: A message that says, "Unable to open desktop", may indicate that SunDesk Strip could not read the Desktop file. Typically, this occurs when using an anti-virus utility, such as "Rival", which unnecessarily prevents harmless reading of the Desktop file. If this is the case on your system, write to the authors of your anti-virus utility asking them to allow applications to read the Desktop file. Rivals users can install Apple's Desktop Manager to avoid this problem when scanning non-ejectable volumes.
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ADDING NEW ICONS
To update your Icon Gallery with new color icons, choose "Add Icons To Gallery". Select the file containing the icons that you wish to add. This may be a file you downloaded from an information service, a System 7.0 application that contains icl8 icons, and so on.
After selecting a file, SunDesk Strip will merge the icons into your Icon Gallery as long as there are icl8 icons with matching ICN# icons, and only if they do not already exist in the Icon Gallery. To stop before it is finished, press Command-Period.
If an icon being added matches one in the gallery, yet its icl8 color icon differs from the one in the gallery, you'll be asked to:
Cancel — Cancel adding this and additional icons
Skip — Skip this icon and continue
Replace — Replace this icon and continue
Replace All — Replace this and any other duplicate icons
Adding new icons to the Icon Gallery does not automatically add them to your active SunDesk Icons file (created with the "New Icons File" command in the File menu). You need to perform that step whenever you have updated your gallery with new icons.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
Unless you really know what you're doing, you should never mess with the resources in the Icon Gallery directly (i.e. with ResEdit). However, here is some information for those who enjoy spelunking with ResEdit.
All color icons and cursors are stored in the Icon Gallery file. Icon IDs from 0 to 255 are reserved for SunDesk Strip's usage. Icon IDs for applications and documents are in the range of 256 to 32767. System icons (i.e. disks, the trash can, folders, and so on) have negative ID numbers. All icl8 resources must have matching ICN# ID numbers for everything to work properly.
SunDesk Strip comes with a 512K partition for MultiFinder users. This is usually enough space to allow SunDesk Strip to run at high speed by making the best use of RAM. However, if you have an exceptionally large desktop, or a very large Icon Gallery, you may find that midway through a "New Icons File" procedure, things begin to slow down considerably. This means that SunDesk Strip has begun to tax the Memory Manager. If you have RAM to spare, increase the partition in SunDesk Strip's "Get Info" box (in the Finder). If you don't want to increase the partition, you can perform minor surgery on the application's VARS resource to make SunDesk Strip run at an acceptable speed while occupying very little memory.
The VARS resource (ID = 128) allows you to adjust most of the options presented when you run the program and use the "New Icons File" command. However, new items in this resource are:
o Faster (TRUE or FALSE, normally TRUE)
o Icon Type (normally 'icl8')
The Faster button allows you to configure SunDesk Strip to run faster (given enough memory), or slightly slower (but can run in very little memory). The slower mode simply writes each icon to the file immediately, whereas the faster mode allows them to pile up in memory before they are written to disk in one fell swoop. Without enough memory, the faster mode may actually be slower!
The Icon Type field lets you set the icon resource type that is to be managed by SunDesk Strip. Normally, this would be the icl8 (large 8-bit color) icon. However, you could change it to 'cicn' to build galleries and files with ICN# and cicn icon pairs (e.g. Icon Colorizer perhaps?).
Should you wish to start your own Icon Gallery (devoid of the original set), you can use a utility such as iContraption™ (Immedium Design) to remove ONLY the icon families with positive ID numbers. The icons with negative ID numbers must be present.
NOTE! Due to a limitation of the Resource Manager, your Icon Gallery can hold around 600 color icons (actually, that 1,200 icons, if you count the black and white ones). The Resource Manager tops out (or rather, craps out) if you add too many resources to a single resource file. Spurious anomalous behavior results if you push it beyond its abilities.
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ABOUT US…
The Morgan Davis Group produces powerful and innovative software for the Apple II and Macintosh.
