Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!goldman
From: goldman@apple.com (Phil Goldman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: New (?) idea for MF menu bar icon
Message-ID: <861@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 6 Mar 89 15:58:25 GMT
References: <41d593be.14e0d@robocop.engin.umich.edu>
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 34

In article <41d593be.14e0d@robocop.engin.umich.edu> 
mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu (Dean Yu) writes:
>   As I'm sitting here staring at the small icon in the upper right hand
> corner of the screen, I'm thinking it looks really scrunched, and a 
better
> job could probably be done.  So here's my suggestion for spiffing it up 
in
> future releases of MultiFinder.
>   As far as I can tell, MultiFinder puts that icon in the menubar by just
> taking the application's ICN#, and plotting it to a reduced rectangle.  
Since
> it has to find this icon through the BNDL resource anyway, it'd be almost
> no effort at all for developers to put an sicn resource into the BNDL.
> MultiFinder can then plot this small icon in the menubar instead of a
> compacted version of the full sized icon.  This way, developers can 
design
> their own icons that show that their application is running under 
MultiFinder,
> and people, or rather, *I* don't have to look at this ugly thing in the 
corner
> of my screen...
>   So whadya think?  Phil?  Erich?

I think this is a wonderful idea.  The one (minor) problem is simply 
agreeing on an id policy that the Finder will also use.  The more 
difficult case is how to handle color icons, if at all.

In any case, I think you will see at least small icon support in the next 
version of MF.  If you can't wait, I believe there is an INIT called 
Aesthete (or something similar) by David Dunham that will accomplish the 
same.

-Phil Goldman
Apple Computer