Re: System 601 question to anyone that knows

["Jeff Blakeney" <jeff.blakeney@a2central.com.remove-jmc-this>]

  To: dempson
On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:43:19 +1300, dempson wrote:

> On the IIgs under System 6, a custom icon for an application can come
> from a resource within the application itself, or it can use the old
> method of reading it from a file in the Icons folder, matching the
> application by name (?) from a file containing multiple icons.

If the icon is in the resource fork of the application then the first
time you launch that application from the Finder, the icon is copied
into an invisible file called "Desktop" in the boot partition's "Icons"
folder.  This way Finder doesn't need to look in every file resource
fork every time you open a folder to see if there are any icons in them.
This is also why the first time you see one of these programs it usually
has the generic application icon and after the first launch is when you
see the custom icon.

> If you are getting the custom icon only appearing in certain
> combinations, then the icon might not have been installed, or it might
> have been installed in the wrong place.

That's my thinking.  Apple Bowl is an old 8 bit game that was tossed
onto System 6.0.1 I think just because they had the disk space for it.
:-)

> The Icons folder and icons it contains must be located on the startup
> disk. If you boot from floppy (or from another alternative volume),
> AppleBowl won't have a custom icon. If you install System 6.0.1 and
> AppleBowl on a partition other than your startup volume, the installer
> might put the icon on the wrong volume - it needs to be on your startup
> volume, not in an Icons folder on the same volume as the application.

Well, this is a rare day that I get to make a correction to one of David
Empson's posts.  The first part of my reply above was basically just a
clarification of how resource icons work but what follows is a full
fledged correction.  :-)

The icon file can be located in any "Icons" folder located in the root
directory of any volume that is mounted.  This is how floppies and CDs
can have custom icons for the files that are on them without you having
previously copied the icon files onto your boot drive.

My current emulator and real IIgs setup has "Icons" folders in the root
directory of my Boot, Apps, Data, Games, Prog and Temp hard drive
partitions.  I could probably put some on my Archives, Graphics and
Music partitions too but I guess I haven't needed to.
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