Version 2.1.1 of ResEdit supersedes the v2.1 release that was first published in December 1990. It contains a few new features and fixes a few important bugs that surfaced in version 2.1.
ResEdit works on any Macintosh system with at least one megabyte of memory, including the Macintosh Plus. It requires System 6.0.2 or later.
If you've obtained the ResEdit software without documentation, the ResEdit Reference is available from the Apple Programmers and Developers Association.
Here are the telephone numbers you can use to contact APDA:
U.S. 800-282-2732
Canada 800-637-0029
International 408-562-3910
ResEdit Reference is also distributed to bookstores worldwide by the Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Ask for it at your favorite bookstore!
Two additional resource editors are available separately. A CODE resource disassembler provides the capability to view 'CODE' and code-like resources. A keyboard icon editor provides color pixel editing of 'kcs#', 'kcs4', and 'kcs8' resources. These two editors can be installed by users into version 2.1 or later of ResEdit by pasting them into the ResEdit preferences file or into ResEdit itself. These two editors are not part of the official 2.1.1 release, and have not been thoroughly tested.
These editors are not available through APDA, but may be licensed for electronic distribution from Apple Software Licensing. The phone number for licensing is 408-974-4667. Users can download these editors from AppleLink or electronic information services that have licensed them from Apple. Developers can get the editors from the E.T.O.: Essentials - Tools - Objects CDs beginning with #4.
If you use the DiskDoubler 3.0 INIT, you may experience problems using ResEdit. The problems occur if you have an application open with ResEdit that contains resources with the same resource IDs as resources in ResEdit itself. This problem will be fixed in DiskDoubler 3.0.2.
Because of the wide variety of changes made for System software version 7.0, it can be dangerous to open the System 7 System file while running System 6. If you need to open the System 7 System file, make any necessary changes and immediately close and save the file. There are known problems in the following cases:
√ Printing and Page Setup bomb because they try to use information from the System 7 System file instead of the active system.
√ Any standard file dialog will bomb if you are using Boomerang or Super Boomerang.
Problems with other INITs may occur, so be careful and keep a backup.
Editing the System 7 System file while System 7 itself is running shouldn’t cause any problems.
Some language date formats can cause problems for the new File Info dialog. The new dialog displays dates using the abbreviated format by default. Some languages, however, contain redundancies in their grammars that prevent ResEdit from parsing dates correctly. Some of these languages have already been identified, and ResEdit will display dates using the short format in these cases. ResEdit determines when to override the date format for a particular language by looking for 'ITL1' resources in the ResEdit preferences file or in ResEdit itself. The 'ITL1' resource should have the same ID as the language being used; for example, to override the "US" date format, a resource ID of zero would be used. The resource contains a single four hex digit value that is interpreted as the first system version supporting abbreviated date formats; for example, $0700 indicates that short date formats should be used on all systems prior to System 7.0, and that abbreviated long dates should be used on System 7.0 or later. The value zero has a special significance; zero means to always use short date format. ResEdit contains a template to help you create or modify an 'ITL1' resource if you need to.
Here’s a brief summary of the new features added to ResEdit since the v2.1 release in December 1990.
When running under System 7.0, the Open, Verify, and Get Info dialogs enable you to specify an alias file itself, rather than the target of the alias.
ResEdit is now stationery-aware. If you edit another application's stationery, ResEdit will open the stationery file itself. If you make ResEdit stationery, ResEdit will copy the stationery first and open the copy.
The File Info window has a new appearance, and a few new features:
• The Finder Flags have been moved to the bottom of the window (except for the Locked flag which is at the top).
• Some of the flags have been renamed: "System" is now "Locked", "Resource map is read only" is now "Resources Locked".
• The "Locked" finder flag is positioned to the left of the file name and when set the file name cannot be edited.
• Finder flags can be selectively shown for system 6.0 and system 7.0.
• The Color popup contains the current label names when running on system 7.0.
• The File Busy and File Protect items are static text items instead of checkboxes, since they cannot be changed.
• The resource fork can be locked and unlocked using the "Resources Locked" checkbox. This setting cannot be altered if resources have changed. The "Resources Locked" attribute of the system file can never be changed.
• Creation and modification dates and times are shown and changed in abbreviated long format using the current international date format. Under system 6.0, some languages (like French) contain ambiguities between days of the week and months in the abbreviated formats. To avoid date parsing problem, ResEdit checks for an 'ITL1' resource with the same ID as the current system script's date resource. If the 'ITL1' resource exists, and the current system version is less than the field in the resource, dates are shown using the short format.
• An alert appears when the information is saved if the Type or Creator fields contain more than four characters.
• The numbers showing the size of the resource and data forks are right-aligned.
• Saving changes always saves all checkbox items, even if a date or time format error is found. Previously, saving with a bad date saved some checkbox items but not all.
• The last modified date of the file or folder's parent directory is changed when changes are saved, so the changes are noticed by the Finder.
The Folder Info dialog has been updated to match file info.
Sounds can be recorded in the 'snd ' picker when the sound manager is supported and the hardware is available.
In the color pixel editors, the lasso now slips over the background color. In all the fatbits editors, holding down the option key when dragging out a rectangular selection causes the selection to collapse into a lasso, and double-clicking on the lasso selection tool is the same as lassoing the entire image.
For those of you interested in details, here’s a list of the known bugs in version 2.1 that have been fixed in 2.1.1.
BNDL editor
• Editor does not crash when changing a locked signature resource.
• Editor does not crash trying to load a FREF resource of size zero.
• Draws Icon Families correctly using only the 'ICN#' resource on machines without Color QuickDraw.
DITL editor
• Fixed bug that crashed the mac when printing under system 7.0.
• Accepts User Items with non-zero lengths.
• When dragging a marquee, the start position is now in the original mouse down location.
• Does not spuriously enable an item when changing the Top or Left coordinate in the Item editor when viewing the bottom & right (no problem when viewing height and width).
• Opening a new ICON or CNTL into the hex editor now creates default resources.
• The window positioning code works for windows mostly left of the screen(s) and windows with portRects that do not intersect the screen(s).
• Undo does not arbitrarily reset the length of help or user items to zero.
• The editor won't allow opening of resources containing help items anywhere but at the end.
• Adding new items, duplicating items, and pasting items puts the new items before all help items.
• A specific error message is displayed on opening a DITL if a static or edit text item contains more than 240 characters.
Color Bit Editors
• Images are not stretched vertically when dragged to the mask.
• If you select the color picker as the source colors, you won't get an erroneous alert saying that there are too many colors in the source palette for the current screen depth.
• Changing the size of a 'cicn' or 'ppat' resource doesn't recolor the image.
• Images are not stretched horizontally when dragged to the mask if the width of the image is not a multiple of 16-pixels.
'crsr' editor
• The cursor exhibits are drawn correctly under 7.0 when the display is a direct device.
• Assume an existing resource with an invalid cursor type field to be a color cursor.
Finder Icon Editor
• The offline unselected exhibit for 4-bit icons changed to match most recent system 7.0.
• Screen depth warnings only appear when an icon deeper than the screen is selected.
• The exhibits are now correctly drawn if an icon with a different mask is selected.
• Dragging an 'icl4' or 'ICN#' image to the mask on an SE/30 running 6.0.x without 32-Bit QuickDraw no longer crashes.
• Fixed crash or unexpected exit when family members are added to or deleted from the file while the family editor is open but inactive.
• Deleting an icon now redraws the sample (in its "empty" form), undoing the deletion or redoing the creation of an icon restores the sample. (This was only a problem if the family contained just one icon).
HEXA editor
• Reverting the resource while a find window is open but not frontmost no longer crashes.
MENU/CMNU/cmnu Editor
• Opening an 'mtbl' resource opens the associated 'MENU' or 'CMNU' resource, if present.
• Deleting an item now correctly updates the enable flags for the menu.
Resource Pickers
• Resource pickers can now see resources placed in the clipboard by other applications.
• Resource pasted from the clipboard into a Types picker window show up in open resource pickers when updated.
SICN editor
• Reverting the resource correctly reverts the number of items in the list.
SICN and PAT# Editor
• Editors do not crash when closed if an incompatible System file is in the resource chain (an incompatible MBDF resource was being loaded).
'snd ' picker
• Playing a sound no longer crashes when you cancel it by pressing the return or enter key to select the defaulted cancel button in the 'playing...' dialog.
• Changed or newly created sound resources are not corrupted when played using the Try Sound command.
Template Editor
• Pxxx and Cxxx fixed length strings no longer crash the editor when instances are deleted from lists.
Templates
• New 'itlb', 'itlc' templates for System 7 resource formats.
• Added a template for MacApp 'errs' resources.
TEXT/styl Editor
• Editor doesn't crash if the 'styl' resource contains just a zero style count.
vers Editor
• The delete key doesn't delete the selection and the preceding character.
• The resource is marked as changed if cut, paste, or clear changes the resource.
KCHR Editor
• The KCHR editor will get keyboard names for the "View As" dialog from 'KBDN' resources within ResEdit if the 'KCAP' resources do not have resource names (as in System 7).
Miscellaneous
• Changing a resource ID from a picker window will not crash ResEdit if running on an Macintosh LC.
• In the dialog listing available resource types, fixed a bug that usually caused a type to not appear in the list if it differed in case only from a type already in the list.
• Corrected Mac image in the black & white splash screen.
• User is alerted when opening a file with a locked resource map. If changes are made, an alert appears when the user saves, closes the file, or quits, to allow the changes to be copied to another file.
• Last modified date of an edited file is now set correctly.
• The user is now asked only once if he wants to open multiple compressed resources.
• ResEdit no longer changes a read-only checked-out projector file's mod date.
• Code segments 6 and 22 are no longer locked in the middle of the heap.
• Under system 7.0, ResEdit now looks in the system folder if the preferences file was not found in the preferences folder.
• Getting File Info on a file open in ResEdit doesn't do strange things to the last modified date and won't cause save to appear to do a revert.
• ResEdit can be launched from an AppleShare volume on a system running 7.0.
• Printing from a 32/16 bit color window should work under system 7.0.
• ResEdit will not allow you to get info on a volume.
• ResEdit's handling of out-of-memory conditions has been improved to lessen the likelihood of segment loader errors by moving a few frequently-used routines into permanently-loaded code segments.
