Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!apple!jsm From: jsm@apple.com (Jeff Miller) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: This is how you get color icons Message-ID: <13536@goofy.Apple.COM> Date: 17 May 91 16:56:11 GMT Article-I.D.: goofy.13536 References: Sender: usenet@Apple.COM Organization: Apple Computer, Inc. Lines: 32 In article , jp48+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jonathan Pace) writes: > > Now the strange thing I can't explain. If you highlight an icon in ResEdit > and do a copy command, you don't get the icon onto the clipboard. You can > paste inside ResEdit, but it won't go into a Get Info window. That's what > most people try (myself included) and it doesn't work. Maybe some of the > technical types out there can explain. Any takers? > > Jon As the guy who did a lot of the work implementing custom icon pasting in the Finder, maybe I can shed some light on this... Basically, the Paste menu item for icons in the Get Info window is enabled only if there is a PICT and/or an ICN# in the scrap. Just copying an icl8 from ResEdit won't do it, we need the ICN# to get the mask information. You can get ResEdit to copy both types to the scrap at once, but it's a little tricky. You have to create one and only one resource of each type you want (again, making sure at least one is an ICN#), then go to the view by type window in ResEdit. You can then shift select icl8, ICN#, etc. and copy them to the scrap. Since ResEdit copies all resources with the selected type, it's important that only one resource for each type exists. Kludgy, I know, but as we at Apple like to say: "What a great third party opportunity." Some other notes: If you have a choice, you'll probably get better results using real icons rather than PICTs, since we try to algorithmically generate the mask for pictures. If both a PICT and ICN# are in the scrap, we'll use the real icons first. This can happen fairly often, since when you copy an icon from the Get Info window we take all the file's icons as well as generating a picture and putting it on the scrap. This lets you paste pictures of your icons into other programs, as well as letting the Finder exactly replicate the icon information from one file to another. Jeff