[comp.sys.apple] Finder Mysteries

TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.ARPA (01/04/88)

Could someone help answer two questions about the Finder on system disk
3.1?

1) Where does the finder go looking for ICON file(s)?  There appears to
be some order, not obvious.  WordPerfect 2.0e comes with a set of
WordPerfect icons that cause it to be launched if you click on a
WordPerfect document file -- but only if an ICON directory containing
them is on the "right" volume, where "right" seems to have something to
do with sequence of operations.  I have a set on my boot volume (RAM5)
that always works THE FIRST TIME, but after exiting form WordPrfect the
Finder seems to have lost knowledge of those icons.  ON the other hand,
if I also have a copy of them on the 3.5 drives, it doesn't forget them,
i.e., they are always good -- but there too order seems to matter, if
its on my top drive, it works for files on both, but if on the bottom

only for it.  (the top one is the one that gets polled first and booted
from if boot slot is scan.)  Can't remember where the 5.25 drive (slot
6) fit into the sequence, but it was somewhere too.

2) second question, does anyone know the internal structure of an icon?
I note that my binary.icon has the application file (*/basic.launcher)
name only in one place, but that the WordPerfect one has it in two
places:  once in the form WP.SYS16 and once as /WORDPERFECT/WP.SYS16 (in
all cases the byte preceeding the applicating name seems to be the
length of the name) -- to get the icons to work I changed both names to
*/WP.SYS16 (I can understand why the name is there once, but twice?  and
in different form?)

TMPLee@Dockmaster.arpa