MakeIcons Version 1.0 INTRODUCTION MakeIcons creates new icons and revises existing ones. You control the operations MakeIcons will perform and the files on which it will perform them. With existing icons you can have it replace icon images, replace tooltypes, or make their positions automatic. You choose the types of files it will operate on: drawers, projects, or tools. You control whether MakeIcons will look inside drawers within the drawers you selected. You can change the icons that MakeIcons will use as patterns. SHAREWARE MakeIcons is shareware. It's just $10. If you wouldn't buy it in a store for that price send me what you would pay for it. If you wouldn't pay anything for it I'd like to know why. Comments, criticisms, or suggestions for improvements are welcome too. Fabbian G. Dufoe, III 350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South St. Petersburg, Florida 33705 GEnie: F.DUFOE3 INSTRUCTIONS You start MakeIcons from the Workbench. Select MakeIcons and the drawers containing the items you want to process using extended selection. Click once on MakeIcons. Hold down the shift key and click on the other icons. Double click on the last one. Release the shift key. MakeIcons behaves differently depending on whether you select an icon that can contain files (a disk or drawer icon) or an icon for a single file (a project or tool icon). If you select a single file MakeIcons will work on that file and no others. If you select a disk or drawer MakeIcons will work on the files within that disk or drawer, but not on the disk or drawer icon itself. MakeIcons will open a small window that displays the name of the first icon you selected and lets you select the options you want. The window looks something like this. ************************************************** *MakeIcons ©1991 by F. G. Dufoe, III * * * *File: * * Create -------Replace Icon--------* * Icons Images Tooltypes Position* *Drawers: o o o o * *Projects: o o o o * *Tools: o o o o * * o Include subdirectories * *Files checked: * *Icons created: * * OK Cancel * ************************************************** Options that are selected are identified by a check mark. You can switch options on or off by checking their box. Move the mouse pointer to the box and click the left button. Check boxes will toggle between selected (a check mark appears) and unselected (the check mark disappears) states. If you like you can pre-select which boxes will be checked when the window opens by supplying "TOOL TYPES". The section below headed "Customizing" tells you how to do it. The vertical columns identify the four operations you can select. Operations affect only those types of files which correspond to the row in which the check box is selected. If a box in a column is checked here is what the program does. Create Icons Create icons for any files that don't already have them. The icons will be arranged so they don't overlap. Replace Icon Images Replace the image for any existing icons with a new image. Tooltypes For any existing icons, replace the stack size and tooltypes information. (For project icons, replace the default tool as well.) Position Frees the icon from a fixed position so that it will be arranged automatically. You control the types of files you want MakeIcons to act on by checking the boxes in the corresponding rows. For example, if you want to create icons for directories but not for projects or tools and you don't want to alter any existing icons you would select the check box in the "Create Icons" column on the "Directories" row. You can select any combination of rows and columns. The option labelled "Include subdirectories" controls whether MakeIcons will look inside drawers (also called directories) within the drawers you selected. If you checked "Include subdirectories" MakeIcons will open subdirectories and process the files inside them according to the options you selected. If not MakeIcons will do what you asked to any drawers it finds but it won't do anything to the files inside them. Select the "OK" gadget to start processing or select the "Cancel" gadget to end the program without doing anything. CHANGING ICON PATTERNS You may change the icons that MakeIcons uses as patterns. MakeIcons uses the icons in the "Icons" drawer as patterns for new icons. By changing or replacing those icons you can change the icons that MakeIcons will create. You can use the Workbench "Info" menu item to change the stack size, tool types, and default tool for any icons. You can use the icon editor (IconEd) on your Extras disk to change the icon images. Or you can simply replace the icons with others you like better. If you want to use lots of different patterns MakeIcons has an easy way to do it. Add "DEFAULT=SELECT" to the MakeIcons tooltypes (see the CUSTOMIZING section below for more information about changing tooltypes). Now MakeIcons will use the first icon you select (after the MakeIcons program icon) as the pattern. It will apply that pattern to any additional icons you select. The "DEFAULT=SELECT" tooltype will pre-select all the check boxes (except "Position") on the row corresponding to the icon type you selected. You can, of course, change any of the check box selections if you want. For example, if you select MakeIcons, a tool called "Grep", another tool called "Ls", and a drawer called "Junk" MakeIcons will pre-select the check boxes on the "Tool" line. When you click the "OK" box MakeIcons will replace the imagery and tooltypes for Ls and all the tool icons in Junk with Grep's tooltypes and imagery. And it will create new tool icons for any tools it finds in Junk which don't already have them. TROUBLE-SHOOTING If you started MakeIcons without selecting any icons there won't be an "OK" or "Cancel" gadget. Instead, you'll see a message saying "No directories were selected. Select close gadget to exit." Move the mouse pointer to the close gadget in the upper left corner of the window and click the left mouse button once. If MakeIcons cannot find the drawer which holds the default icons it will stop with an error message. MakeIcons looks in three drawers for the default icons it uses. First it looks in the "Icons" drawer in the same drawer with MakeIcons. Next it looks in "ENV:sys". Finally, it looks in "SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/sys". MakeIcons copies everything from the default icon except its name and position when it creates a new icon. When MakeIcons modifies existing icons it copies the information you selected from the default icons except for the position. MakeIcons creates all its icons without a fixed position. Workbench will arrange them so they don't overlap. There must be three default icons in the default icons drawer: a drawer icon named "def_drawer", a tool icon named "def_tool", and a project icon named "def_project". To save disk space, the files these icons represent may be deleted. Otherwise, there's nothing special about these icons. If you don't like the ones in the icons drawer you can replace them with some you like better. If the icons drawer is missing or if any of the icons are missing MakeIcons will display a message to indicate what is missing. Here are the messages you might see along with the corrective action you should take. Couldn't find default icons drawer. Create an "Icons" drawer in the same drawer as "MakeIcons". One way to do that is to copy the "Empty" drawer from your Workbench disk, then rename it to "Icons". Use the "Info" item from the Workbench menu to determine the icon type if you have any doubt. If you are using Workbench 2.0 you can use "IconEdit" from the "Tools" drawer on your "Extras2.0" disk to copy (or draw) an icon, then save it as a default icon. Workbench will create "ENV:sys" to save it. Couldn't find "def_tool" icon. Create a tool icon named "def_tool" in the "Icons" drawer. If you don't have an "Icons" drawer create the tool icon in "ENV:sys" or "SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/sys". You can find some tool icons in the Utilities drawer of your Workbench disk. Copy one of those to the default icons drawer, then rename it "def_tool". If you are using Workbench 2.0 you can use "IconEdit" to copy (or draw) a tool icon, then save it as a default icon. Workbench will create "ENV:sys" to save it. Couldn't find "def_project" icon. Create a project icon named "def_project" in the "Icons" drawer. If you don't have an "Icons" drawer create the tool icon in "ENV:sys" or "SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/sys". You can find project icons on your application disks or you can create on by running Notepad and saving a file. Copy the project icon and rename it "def_project". If you are using Workbench 2.0 you can use "IconEdit" to copy (or draw) a project icon, then save it as a default icon. Workbench will create "ENV:sys" to save it. Couldn't find "def_drawer" icon. Create a drawer icon named "def_drawer" in the "Icons" drawer. you can copy the "Empty" drawer from your Workbench disk, then rename it to "def_drawer". If you are using Workbench 2.0 you can use "IconEdit" to copy (or draw) a drawer icon, then save it as a default icon. Workbench will create "ENV:sys" to save it. "def_drawer" is not a drawer icon. "def_project" is not a project icon. "def_tool" is not a tool icon. Replace the icon with one of the proper type. Use the "Info" item from the Workbench menu to see an icon's type. MakeIcons will not work unless it can find a drawer icon named "def_drawer", a project icon named "def_project", and a tool icon named "def_tool". CUSTOMIZING You can change the icon generation options that will be selected by default. Select MakeIcons, then choose "Info" from the Workbench menu. Set the options by adding or deleting "TOOL TYPES". These are the entries and the options they affect: CREATE=DIRS|PROJECTS|TOOLS Selects boxes in the "Create Icons" column. If "DIRS" is present the "Drawers" box will be checked. If "PROJECTS" is present the "Projects" box will be selected. If "TOOLS" is present the "Tools" box will selected. IMAGES=DIRS|PROJECTS|TOOLS Selects boxes in the "Replace Images" column. If "DIRS" is present the "Drawers" box will be checked. If "PROJECTS" is present the "Projects" box will be selected. If "TOOLS" is present the "Tools" box will selected. TTYPES=DIRS|PROJECTS|TOOLS Selects boxes in the "Replace Tooltypes" column. If "DIRS" is present the "Drawers" box will be checked. If "PROJECTS" is present the "Projects" box will be selected. If "TOOLS" is present the "Tools" box will selected. POSITION=DIRS|PROJECTS|TOOLS Selects boxes in the "Replace Position" column. If "DIRS" is present the "Drawers" box will be checked. If "PROJECTS" is present the "Projects" box will be selected. If "TOOLS" is present the "Tools" box will selected. RECURSIVE=YES Selects "Include subdirectories". DEFAULT=SELECT MakeIcons will use the first icon (excluding the icon for the MakeIcons program) as the template for that type of icon and all operations for that type of icon will be selected (overriding the other Tooltypes settings). All the operations for other types of icons will be cleared. TRASHCANS In closing, a brief word about trashcans. AmigaDOS normally creates a directory (drawer) called "Trashcan" when it formats a disk. At the same time it creates a "Garbage" icon for it. A "Garbage" icon has some special properties. It can't be discarded and it can't be moved out of its window. When it is selected its contents can be deleted by choosing the "Empty Trash" item from the Workbench "Disk" menu. You can rename "Trashcan". There is nothing about the "Garbage" icon type that prevents renaming. And you can use the command line interface (CLI) or shell to delete the directory, the icon, or both. What's tricky about "Garbage" icons is that all the special qualities are in the icon, not the directory the icon represents. MakeIcons leaves "Garbage" icons alone. As long as a directory has a "Garbage" icon associated with it MakeIcons will recognize it as a trashcan and ignore it. But without an icon MakeIcons can't distinguish it from any other directory and will create a drawer icon for it.