MICN is a control panel extension that reclaims menu bar space by replacing common menu titles with small icons. It is copyrighted freeware.
Since Mark Valence did not have time to update his documentation since version 1.0, this file was written by James W. Walker (who doesn’t have time either.) Any inaccuracies should be blamed on Walker.
Installing MICN
Put MICN in your Control Panels folder (or, in System 6, your System folder.) After you restart your Mac, you should see icons in place of the titles of common menus such as File and Edit. If not, open the MICN control panel and make sure that the “On” radio control is selected.
The MICN control panel
The MICN control panel displays a scrollable list of the icons that MICN can display. Each icon comes with a greyed-out version. There is also a pop-up menu of menu titles that will be replaced by icons. Note that the correspondence between titles and icons need not be one-to-one, for instance the same icon is used for “Window” and “Windows”. The “+” and “-” buttons are used for adding or removing menu titles, as explained below. The “?” button does nothing in this version of MICN.
Adding or editing an icon pair
To add a new icon pair, scroll the icon list all the way to the right, and click on the blank space at the right end. You can now draw an icon in the left-hand editing square below the icon list, in the usual “fat bits” style. Once the left-hand version satifies you, click on the black triangle to the right of the editing square, which will put a copy of your icon in the right-hand editing square. Then click the grey triangle; this greys out the right-hand version. You may want to touch it up a bit.
To edit an existing icon pair, just select it from the icon list, and edit as before.
Defining the icon for a menu title
Let’s say you have decided to replace the “Size” menu by an icon. The first and hardest step is thinking of an icon that will remind you of “Size”. Having done that, create the icon pair as above. With your new icon still showing in the editing pair, type “Size” in the text rectangle, just to the left of the pop-up menu. Then click the “+” button. It may seem as though nothing has happened, but if you look at the pop-up menu, you will now see the menu title that you added. You may need to restart the Mac before the change takes effect in the menu bar.
Redefining the icon for a menu title
Suppose you have already added a menu title to MICN’s list of menu titles, but you want to assign it to a different icon pair. Select the menu title from the pop-up menu, select the icon pair from the icon list, and click the “+” button.
De-iconizing a menu title
If you decide that you don’t want a certain menu title to be replaced by an icon after all, select the menu title from the pop-up menu, and then click the “-” button. It may seem as though nothing has happened, but if you look at the pop-up menu, you will see that the menu title has moved from the main section to the first line. You may have to restart your Mac for the change to take place in the menu bar.
Removing an icon pair
The “-” button removes a menu title from the MICN list, but does not remove the icon pair. To remove an icon pair, you would have to resort to ResEdit. But there is not much reason to do so, unless a certain icon is so ugly you can’t bear to look at it.
Legalese
MICN is copyrighted freeware. Quoting the author: “If I catch any PD "distributors" charging for it, or any one else charging for it, I’ll be mad and might do something nasty. Oh yeah, and you better not use my code in your version of this tool.”
Author’s address
Bug reports, suggestions, or effusive thanks can be sent to Mark Valence by Internet e-mail to kurash@dartmouth.edu. If you are a CompuServe user, you would use the address:
