Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!udel!mmdf
From: "kosma@ALAN.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM"@alan.kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Icon sizes, Workbench hand (was Re: My AmigaDOS 1.4 wishlist)
Message-ID: <21654@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 14 Aug 89 14:58:29 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
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Received: from GEORG.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM by ALAN.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 34314; Fri 11-Aug-89 16:32:20 PDT
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 89 16:32 PDT
From: Montgomery Kosma 
Subject: Re: Icon sizes, Workbench hand (was Re: My AmigaDOS 1.4 wishlist)
To: "eagle::amiga-relay%udel.edu"@KAHUNA.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM
In-Reply-To: Your message of 11 Aug 89 16:13 PDT
Message-ID: <19890811233209.3.KOSMA@GEORG.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM>
 
    A few of ugly solutions:
 
    1) Include program to shrink all icons to standard size.  The problem is
    that detail is lost and the result could be horrendous to look at.
 
how about a program that shrinks with maybe two or three different
algorithms so you have a choice of the best-looking squashed icon?
 
    2) Write a program that displays a bunch of icons for the user to choose as
    a replacement for the included icon.  Icons can be found on some of the Fish
    disks.  Problem: requires user input and would require lots of tedious work
    to replace many disk's program's icons.  But after this initial replacement,
    each furthur one would just be part of the installation of new software.
 
or maybe a program that does both 1 and 2 and lets you pick :-)
 
    3) Include two icons for each program.  (Oops, forgot interlace.  4 icons?
    this is getting out of hand.)
      a) put two icons in each .info file, one of standard size.  Include a
    preferences option to choose plain or fancy icons.  Problems: increases size
    of .info files and would have to be backwards compatiable.  Neither of these
    are real biggies.  Of couse, programmers wouldn't have to give two icons, so
    this may be wasted.
      b) include two .info files.  Then, either have the user choose one to use
    as the .info, or have a preferences option that picks which one to display.
    Problem: adds lots of files to already cluttered directories.
 
I don't like this.  I already don't use workbench much, and so I hate
all the .info files sitting around on my hard disk.  Having more of them
or having them eat more disk is not too appealing
 
    4) Change workbench to display standard, built-in icons for every .info file
    found.  Ie, check the .info for file type and then display the appropriate
    icon.  Problems: Dull, repetetive, have to resort to reading file name to
    see what program is rather than look at icon.
 
I *would* like to have icons available, and in fact most of the icons I
have on my hard disk are all the same (mostly lots of folders).
Displaying a standard set of icons would be great, especially if there
was a feature which did something like 
 
(if ICON-IS-SPECIFIED-IN-INFO-FILE
  (draw icon-from-info-file)
  (draw standard-icon))
 
(sorry for the lisp but it's ingrained in me! (:-))
 
that way, info files could be smaller for those things which have no
icons specified, but for some applications could have larger icons
specified.
 
Also, what are the chances of getting rid of info files altogether
(optionally, of course) and, say, specifying an icon based upon reading
an IFF tag off of a file?  This is probably a quite uniformed question
as I have little idea what's actually in an info file.  
 
 
monty kosma