[net.micro.mac] How do I change an application's icon?

equitz@SU-ISL.STANFORD.EDU (William Equitz) (08/30/86)

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My question is how I can change the icon that is displayed for an application
on the screen.  For example, I have some applications which just have
the generic pen-in-hand-on-diamond icon, but I can find the icon I WANT
to represent the application inside the application as some ICN# when
I dig around with resedit.  How do I indicate that
that's the one I want associated with my application on the screen?


-Will Equitz (equitz@SU_ISL.ARPA a.k.a. equitz@ISL.STANFORD.EDU)

briand@tekig4.UUCP (Brian Diehm) (09/02/86)

>My question is how I can change the icon that is displayed for an application
>on the screen.  For example, I have some applications which just have
>the generic pen-in-hand-on-diamond icon, but I can find the icon I WANT
>to represent the application inside the application as some ICN# when
>I dig around with resedit.  How do I indicate that
>that's the one I want associated with my application on the screen?

I am going to assume you have an application that is designed to have an icon
of its own, but it doesn't appear (any more).  If you're asking about how to
put an icon into an application that uses the generic icon, that's more complex
and requires FREF and BNDL resources.

As a guess, the most likely explanation is that the bundle bit is not set, and
the desktop was rebuilt at some time, which lost the icon.  In theory, the
bundle bit is supposed to be set once and then when the finder recognizes the
icon, it is reset.  After that, the icon gets copied from the desktop when the
application is copied.  However, desktop rebuilding is a hole that you can
fall into.  It is interesting to note that Apple doesn't follow its own scheme
on their applications, and they simply ship them with the bundle bit set.  A
few applications (for example, VersaTerm 1.52, I don't know about 2.00) took
Apple at their word, and once in a while their icon would revert to the generic
one.

Look for the bundle bit using ResEdit "getinfo" on the entire application. Or
use Fedit or SetFile.

-Brian Diehm
Tektronix, Inc.