RSC-XPAND from Dr. Bobware (c) 1994 W.D.Parks All rights reserved ************************************************************************* RSCXPAND Resource Expander v 1.01 ICDRAW will edit the existing icons in your DESKICON.RSC file but what if you want MORE icons... you want to keep all the ones you have and still need another one? RSCXPAND will let you increase the number of icons in that file; from the original 33 to 50... or to 64... or all the way up to 199 which gets to be quite a hefty RSC file (up there at 386k). Such a huge file will take a bit of time during the boot process... a tad more than the original 64k resource file that came with your Falcon. It's not an extremely lengthy period but it also takes up more of your Falcon's memory (note: I do not recommend using such a huge file if your machine has only 1 meg of ram). RSCXPAND is simple. Its dialog also shows all the information in your resource file header as reference. (I like information.) You can ignore it if you want or read it if you like. It does not affect the operation of RSCXPAND- there are no buttons in it or any that will alter the info. Three main buttons exist. LOAD will, of course, load the desired RSC file. CANCEL will, of course, exit the program. EXPAND will do the work. There is also an array of radio buttons on the right from which you can select the number of icons you want room for in your DESKICON.RSC file (sorry, the number is not user editable). Selections are 50, 64, 80, 100, 128, 150 and 199 icons. To keep RSCXPAND simple in operation, it will only EXPAND your resource file. It does not offer to SHRINK it. If your RSC file already has, say, 64 icons in it then the [50] and [64] buttons will be disabled. After all, its name is rscXPAND, isn't it? (there isn't enough room in the filename to fit RSCXPANDORSHRINK.prg :-) ************************************************************** As always, KEEP A BACKUP of your important files. In this case we're talking about DESKICON.RSC. And for convenience sake, backup the NEWDESK.INF along with it. ************************************************************** ************************************************************************** OPERATION ************************************************************************** 1) MAKE A BACKUP of your original DESKICON.RSC file. Save it to floppy for your assurance. BACKUP ALSO your NEWDESK.INF file. 2) Run RSCXPAND.prg 3) Click on the [LOAD] button and select the DESKICON.RSC file you want to expand. It will be read and its header info displayed for your viewing pleasure. ALSO, you'll be told how many icons it already contains in the grey box (with the yellow text, it's easy to see). 4) Here's the tough part.... Decide how many icons you want your file to hold and click on the proper button. (the clicking part is easy. the decision part is what's hard... "Do I want 100 icons or maybe only 80? Gosh." "Maybe I'll try the full 199." "Oh. I dunno. I'm no good at this decision making stuff." "Let's see. I was born on a Thursday so I'll pick 112. What? Why can't I have 112?" ) Let me help. Select 50. This will give you 17 additional icons in your resource file. That's enough to get started. Trust me, I'm a doctor. 5) Click on [EXPAND] and then select the same filename as the one you loaded (you _did_ back it up, right?). The fileselector will still have the same name ready for you so all you need to do is click on its [Ok] and away we go. 6) Click on [Cancel] and you're back at the desktop (or launcher). What RSCXPAND does for you: It increases the size of your DESKICON.RSC file so it can hold more than its original 33 icons. It does this legitimately; there's no tricks or shortcuts. (it completely dissassembles the file and reconstructs it anew with the extra space for additional icons. this is not as simple as it may sound- it's more than simply appending icons to the end of the file. icons have to be added all over the place and pointers and definition blocks and, oh my... in the end, though, it does it! let's not get too techie here. this is supposed to be a simple explanation and I've spent more time explaining this than it does to reconstruct the file) It retains the existing icons in the file. (Well I should hope so!) In the additional spaces (the new icon locations) RSCXPAND places a simple shaded box into each of the 4 icon locations (main, seld, and mono). They are color and mono icons and masks and are put there for cosmetic purposes only. If they weren't put there then all the new icons would be white rectangles with a blank mask. It just looks better this way. In the new icons, text color is set to black, background to white, and the position of the character (for any drive id) is centered. That's it. Now you're ready to use ICDRAW and import new icons into those slots, or draw your own, and have fun. Note: RSCXPAND is NOT required to run ICDRAW. It simply expands the number of available icon slots in your resource file so that both you and ICDRAW can have more room to play with. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Due to some internal buffer dimensions in TOS, it is highly recommended to power-up your system with FOLDRXXX.PRG in your auto-folder. This will increase the "Internal System Memory" and alleviate many problems. Without FOLDRXXX, you'll find that many applications will give you an error message... "Out of Internal Memory. System Halted. Use FolderXXX and reboot." Unfortunately, there is no other solution. TOS in ROM has a fixed buffer size set aside for internal use and will be overpowered by all the extra icons. FOLDRXXX.PRG should be renamed to FOLDR100.PRG (if you've expanded your deskicon.rsc file to have 200 icons then use a higher number such as FOLDR200.PRG). RSC-XPAND from Dr. Bobware (c) 1994 W.D.Parks All rights reserved --------------------------------------------------------------------------- RSCXPAND Addendum --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05/06/94 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- RSC-XPAND, will icrease the icon capacity of your Falcon030 desktop's DESKICON.RSC file. In short, you can have more than the stock 33 icons available to you and your applications. With the release of ICDRAW, custom color icons have become available for your Falcon desktop. You can have zippers for ZIP files, packing boxes for archivers, desk calendars for appointment apps, logo icons for your favorite software... the possibilities abound. Suddenly, you have gobs and gobs of icons... but you can only assign from the 33 in your deskicon.rsc file. What a shame! ICDRAW offers all those spiffy looking widgets, gadgets and thingamajigs but your resource file can only fit 33... AND you don't want to give up that nice looking blue diskette icon, and the folder icons are fine and the toolbox icon is your favorite... Enter RSC-XPAND! Now you can increase the number of icons that your deskicon.rsc file can hold... all the way up to 199 if you want. (200 is the maximum theoretical number of icons in an RSC). "Well, gosh! Why hasn't this been released sooner?", you ask. RSC-XPAND was completed over a month ago and has been giving me pleasure ever since. But there was a problem and it ocurred with two of my favorite applications at that. TOS4 has a fixed limit on its internal memory buffer. I often wonder if anyone anywhere knows what all that buffer is used for anymore. Its size _IS_ important though and when you increase your deskicon.rsc file that buffer soon becomes too small. Applications will fail to run and that most dreaded alert, "Out of internal memory. System halted.", rears its ugly head and we all grit our teeth and shudder. "Oh. That's why RSC-XPAND hasn't been released yet.", you say. "Yep.", says I. This is not a problem with any of the applications nor is it a bug in RSC_XPAND. It is due to the fixed buffer limit in TOS. So, it is not really a bug in TOS either... just a hard-coded buffer size limit. You'll run into this same 'limitation' with the stock deskicon.rsc file too if your newdesk.inf file goes over 4k. (please, no critizism on why one would have a 4k INF file :) I'm told that this limitation was lifted in some version of MultiTos. Perhaps all versions, perhaps not. I don't know from MultiTos. :-) Finally I found that old utility, FOLDRXXX.PRG. You know which one that is: the one named in the Falcon030 owner's manual... that isn't on any of the Falcon diskettes and nowhere on the harddrive. The same one that's mentioned in THE error message, "Folder100"... see page B12 in your owner's manual. Well, the 'folders' that FOLDRXXX creates are part of that 'internal memory'. Either they free up some of a catch-all buffer or the 'folders' are used by other functions of TOS as well. Whatever the technical aspect of it is, your internal memory is increased and you're ready to rock-and-roll... or ready to classic ...or punk ...or rapp ...whatever. FOLDRXXX cures this problem. It's gone! Poof! Pure and simple, if you increase the number of icons then use FOLDRXXX in your AUTO folder. Renaming it to FOLDR200.PRG will do you just fine. Less than that and, well... I haven't tested the minimum to any extent yet but FOLDR200 will do it... and besides, what's 26k among friends? :) I can say that without FOLDRXXX, do NOT increase your resource file beyond 100 icons... the DESKTOP will not be able to boot. ********************************************************************* And... as always, KEEP A BACKUP of your important files. In this case we're talking about DESKICON.RSC and for convenience sake, backup the NEWDESK.INF along with it. ********************************************************************* Expanding your resource is easy with RSCXPAND. There are two main things to consider when doing so: 1) How much longer will the boot process take with a large deskicon.rsc? ans: Practically imperceptable. Certainly not enough to be even close to an 'annoying' comment. In fact, I was surprised. I had expected a visible delay with a 190k deskicon.rsc file but it wasn't there. 2) How much additional memory will be used by this enlarged deskicon.rsc? ans: An icon (group of 3) in the file uses approximately 1940 bytes. Exactly how much of the RSC file is retained by the DESKTOP is not documented anywhere but you can presume that it's retained in its entirety. So expect a 100k rsc file to use up 100k +/-. If this amount worries you then don't expand your deskicon.rsc file. The normal rsc file is 64k already. I feel quite confortable increasing it by another 40k or, heck, even doubling it in size. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- An addendum to the addendum: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05/07/94 BOOTUP Notes --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The stock DESKICON.RSC file contains only mono and 16-color icons. ICDRAW and RSC-XPAND, also, create only these two types (ICDRAW creates all three of a group while RSC-XPAND creates icons only as place-holders but 'creates' them nonetheless). During the boot process, TOS4 determines which icons will most closely match the default resolution and will use either the mono icons (for mono and 4-color modes) or the 16-color icons for modes with 16 or more colors. In 16-color modes, the conversion time is essentially nill. In 256-color modes the conversion process takes a little longer (3-4 sec.), still within an acceptable range. But when booting in 32k-color modes the time icreases quite a bit! With 200 icons (which I'm using for testing at this time... I, myself, will probably go back to 100 or 128 for my own use) the conversion time at bootup becomes annoyingly lengthy... to the point where one starts to wonder if something's gone wrong or not. Expect up to 30 seconds delay while TOS converts all the 16-color icons to true-color format. While this is not terribly deficient, it's nothing I'd want to admit to MS\Windows users... they scoff at me enough as it is :) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- End Addendum 07 May 1994 W.D.Parks --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a message that always bears repeating. For any utility. ************************************************************** As always, KEEP A BACKUP of your important files. In this case we're talking about DESKICON.RSC. And for convenience sake, backup the NEWDESK.INF along with it. ************************************************************** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Real End. (Honest. No, really. This is it. That's all she wrote. There is no more to read. "End of file". Terminated. Listen... don't you hear her singing? It's over now that it's over. Zip. Nada. Case closed. End of the road. Running on empty. Finished. The End. Leads nowhere. Fini. "I feel so breakup I want to go home". All done. All gone. No more. And then there were none. Poof! Sofit. Press any key when done. Stop. Don't call us, we'll call you. Thank you very much. We'll get back to you. If a man answers, hang up. No reply. Disconnected. "Please hang up and try your call again" Goodbye. Take it easy. Take care. Seeya later alligator. After while, crocodile. Hit the road. Seeyas. Don't forget to write. So long. Bon voyage. Later. Exit. Off. No outlet. No loitering. Cast off. Take off. Out of gas. Closed door. Nothing left. Nothing right. Completed. Dissipated. The final curtain. Halted. K.O. Brought to an end. Expiration date: Now. Ceased and desisted. Period. Tail end. ...and in conclusion, Bye: Dr. Bob :)