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BMUG PD-ROM BV3
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BMUG PD-ROM Version BV3 (CDRM1097900).iso
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Color Macs
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Color Utilities
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CIcon Edit
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1991-12-29
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CIcon Edit
Copyright ©1987 Ben Haller, AppleSauce Designs. You can copy this
and give it away, but you may not sell it or distribute modified
copies. The usual PD arrangement.
CIcon Edit is a Mac II only program to create color icon resources
(cicns). It will deal only with icons with 4-bit depth (up to 16
colors). Other cicns will be treated incorrectly, so beware.
cicns are color icons. One is the color mac logo that appears at
startup (Welcome To Macintosh). You can also make the icons that
appear in dialog boxes cicns, or you can use them in your own
programs if you want. You cannot replace a file’s Finder icon with a
cicn (come on, Apple, get it together!)
Each cicn has three parts — a mask, which tells what area the icon
covers, a BWIcon, which is the icon displayed in a black&white
mode, and the Color Icon itself. These parts each have a separate
grid in CIcon Edit, and each grid is labelled appropriately. The
mask and BWIcon draw in black and white only, as in FatBits. The
Color Icon is in full color. You select the current drawing color in
the palette at the bottom of the window. The currently selected
color has a highlight around it.
Use the Color menu to modify the current palette. Before you save
a cicn, Remove all the colors in the palette you don’t use in the cicn.
This will save a few bytes. Add HSVRange adds any number of
colors between the selected color and the one to the right of it. For
example, if the selected color was red and the color to the right of
red was blue, Add HSVRange would add the intermediate shades of
purple. Add RGBRange does the same thing, but should be used
instead of HSVRange if one of the two colors is a shade of gray.
Experiment with these and you might just figure out the conceptual
difference. Also, double-click on a color in the palette to change it
without having to choose the menu item.
The Transform menu lets you flip, rotate, scroll, etc. Select which
grids to transform with the first three items. Then do what you
want to do.
The Edit menu lets you copy, paste, frame and fill rectangles. Select
a rectangle by holding down Option and dragging. Then do what
you want to do in the menu. To paste, Option-Click in the upper
left of where you want to paste into. The things you copy cannot
be pasted into other applications. Also with the Edit menu, you can
copy the BWIcon into the other maps. The BWIcon->Mask is
especially useful: given any BWIcon, the mask it gives you will
probably be what it should be, filled in and everything. Finally,
Mirror Drawing lets you draw in the Color Icon and it will also draw
in the BWIcon, simultaneously.
With the File menu, you can open old-style ICONs and ICN#s, and
they will be converted to cicns (albeit black-and-white cicns). You
can also save your icons. You should probably save into a separate
file and put the cicn in where you want it with ResEdit, but you can
put it directly into a file.
Finally, in the Apple Menu is About, which has a cicn in it (wow...)
No DAs. Sorry, but I’m lazy.
The Usual Process for making a cicn is as follows: Draw your Color
Icon, turning Mirror Drawing on and off as you go, depending on
whether you want each part you draw to be black or white in the
BWIcon. When you’re done, do BWIcon->Mask, then remove all the
unused colors in the palette, then save it.
For a good start with experimenting, open the System File, cicn ID#
31.
As I see it, CIcon Edit is just about done. Maybe I’ll make it work
with multiple pixel depths. If you want this a lot, write and say so.
Also, look for the other AppleSauce Designs programs, like Flex,
Mandelbrot, PTable, and so on.
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc, write to me
at:
AppleSauce Designs
c/o Ben Haller
32 Deer Haven Drive
Ithaca, N.Y. 14850.
Enjoy.
(Sorry if the format of these docs gets a little repetitive, but it’s
faster to mass-produce. If you don’t know what I mean, just wait
until you read a few more by me.)