herbw@midas.UUCP (Herb Weiner) (01/13/87)
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I am writing an application which can create MacPaint format files.
Since I would like the user to be able to launch MacPaint by double
clicking on the created document, I set the appropriate finder type
and creator fields for the file.
Now the problem: since MacPaint is no longer bundled with the Mac,
some users of the program may not have MacPaint. This, in itself,
is not a problem, since many other programs can read MacPaint format
files. The problem is that if the user does not have MacPaint, or
if MacPaint has never been on the same disk as the document, the
document will have the generic document icon rather than the MacPaint
icon. This seems rather unfriendly to me.
Here is what I would like to do: I would like to include the Icon for
MacPaint documents in the icon resources for my application, so that
when the icons for my application are copied to the desktop, the
icon for MacPaint documents is copied as well. I would like this
to occur in spite of the fact that my application has a different
creater field (icon owner) from MacPaint. Obviously, it is possible
for the desktop file to maintain the document icons even if the
application is not present on the disk, since this situation exists
if an application has been copied to a disk, and then immediately
trashed.
Now for the questions:
1. Is it possible to set up ICON, FREF, and BNDL resources in the
application such that both the application's icons and the MacPaint
icon will be installed in the desktop file?
2. Would I be infringing on the MacPaint copyright by including a
copy of the MacPaint document icon in my application? If the
answer to the preceeding question is "yes", would I also be
infringing on the copyright if I distribute a "real" MacPaint
document (created with a licensed copy of MacPaint) together
with my application, thereby distributing a copy of the MacPaint
document icon already installed in the desktop file?
--- Herb Weiner (...tektronix!midas!herbw)