First, they were Magic... Then, they were New... Now, They're REAL! Intro... ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ Hi everybody! Ever had pink/blue/purple/green magicwb icons and wondered what should you do with your palette settings? Ever wondered why the NewIcons have to contain another image data (text encoded!) even if there's already space for an image inside the icon? Are you one of those people whose wb palette that will never match a `normal' icon coloring scheme? Well if you answered 'YES' to atleast one of these questions, RealIcons is for you!! Well dude, what the hell does `RealIcons'? ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ RealIcons is a little patch that will remap on the fly the icons to a user defined pen set: for example the infamous magicwb icons have the following palette: color 0 959595 color 1 000000 color 2 FFFFFF color 3 3B67A2 color 4 7B7B7B color 5 AFAFAF color 6 AA907C color 7 FFA997 Well, RealIcons will allocate these colors form the available color pool and remap the icons in real time while the workbench loads them; In this way the icons, even maintaining their original image data, will have the `right' color. And that's not all: RealIcons can use a special tooltype to remap the icons to another (non-default) palette, so a lowly 1 bitplane icon can look red on green on everybody's workbench! Ok, you convinced me. How I install this wonderfull thing? ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ If you want a quick test just run the RealIcons executeable. If you want to run it every time put it in your WBStartup¹ drawer or add it to your user-startup, it does not need RUN, will auto-detach. If you own a graphics card you can use the parameter 'RTG' (only from CLI/Shell) this will load the Icons' bitmap in fast memory, note that some graphics card do not seem to like this, if using this options gives you garbled icons, then don't use it! :) ¹RealIcons will start from workbench, but it is far better placed into the user-startup, because all the icons opended before RealIcons *WILL NOT* be remapped. Avanced topics: Custom icon palettes! ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ "You told me I could have all the color I wanted in my Icons!" Yes it is true, and it is very easy! draw your icon with your favorite icon editor, save it and the add a tooltype with the following format: $ICONPALETTE=,,... Every RRGGBB is the hexadecimal color value for the corresponding color in the icon. What? It's not easy? Well, the programmers are used to think in hexadecimal and think that red is FF0000, `normal' people may not. So, if you like the idea of the RealIcons, write to the author of your favourite icon editor and ask him to add this option to his program! Problems: ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ These are the very first versions of this program, and nobody is perfect, so there may be some bugs, but if you experience ANY problem, contact me, trying to provide the offending icon or program, and I'll try to fix it. BlaH! bLAh! blAH! ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ In these times everybody tries to sell everything, and somebody claims that `cannot affort to program for free'. well, I have a job and I it consist in writting programs, but not for the amiga, so I will not try to have my Amiga and my assembler to pay themselves up. The point of having a HOME computer is to have fun with it, exactly like with your TV, CAR, Skateboard, ect... and I don't believe that somebody tries to earn something from his TV :) "So, you're ranting about the fact that THIS software is FREE?" Yes, it's free -- but not Public Domain! If you want to make me know that you like it, write me an EMail, or send me a postcard from your city, and if you're a shareware programmer and want to support me, you can always send me a registered version of your program (It costs you nothing, no? :) Even if you don't like this idea, write me anyway, tell me what's wrong or what feature you'd like to be added, I will try to make as much as possible people happy! FUTURE ¬¬¬¬¬¬ Current plans for the next releases: 1) User selectable default palette. (general user prefs) 2) Aspect correction of icons (that is, no more extra long icons on non laced/high res wb's) 3) Having image of the icons that use complement look good (is this important?) 4) Adding support for external programs (suggested by Ruediger Sopp) 5) A2024 support (suggested by Flemming Steffensen) THANKS ¬¬¬¬¬¬ Robert Atkins, for being the first one to try the RealIcons, instantly finding that they didn't work on his machine, and reporting that back to me! Roland de Herder, for being the first one that mailed me informing that RealIcons *do work* on his machine. Andrea Tosino, for being the first who reported the icon-save bug. Ruediger Sopp for the useful suggestions. Georgia Pristo, for having an enormous amount of troubles :). Iwan Heskamp for noticing the missing DONOTWAIT tooltype. Rik. (rratboy@pobox.com)