NewIcons is a revolutionary system patch which enhances your Workbench
and gives the user much more power and configurability over the
appearance of the GUI (Graphical User Interface). The NewIcons
system works transparently, and provides for a standard icon system
that will look the same on any system, no matter what the palette is
set to.
DefIcons complements the Newicons system. It works by
recognizing a file's type, and instantly displaying the appropriate
icon image for files without icons attached to them.
The system's features include:
· Allows up to 256 color icons on an AGA machine. (!)
· Icon colors are color correct on an AGA system, no matter what your
palette is set to. They automatically appear in perfect color.
· Default icons for dozens of file types automatically appear for
files without icons (FAST!). Recognizes file types in a very
efficient manner. If you click on a "fake" icon, your appropriate
user-defined default tool will appear in the "Execute command" text
field automatically!
· Make a brush, convert it to an icon. It will appear on your workbench
in the _exact_ proper colors you created it in, no matter what your
palette is set to. Imagine making gorgeous icons from your digitized
pics, in _more_ than 32 colors!
· Icon images are compressed to maximize disk space. They are
uncompressed faster than you can say "NewIcons"!
· Also KS 2.04 compatible (16 color icon limitation).
· Fix that ugly Cross-DOS icon to look like a standard NewIcon.
· Unique icons for RAM-Disks and CD-ROM's that don't have icons.
· A complete set of beautiful, standardized Workbench icons, drawn by
Phil Vedovatti. Hundreds of icons are also available separately on
Aminet, some with a totally different style.
· Comprehensive set of utilities to allow you to manipulate your
NewIcons.
· Totaly FREE! Why would anyone want to pay cash for icons?
· Dithering of icon images is selectable for users with fewer available
Workbench colors. This is turned off by default.
· Icons can be given a single tooltype, which will tell NewIcons to display
a NewIcon image from elsewhere on the system. This feature
has some caveats, but introduces a huge number of neat possibilities
for configuring your Workbench, and saves on disk space and chip RAM.
Imagine having your Workbench icons appear randomly different on EACH
reboot!
· The source for deficons.prefs has been included, so any enterprising
programmer can add their own file identification types to the system!
· User configurable, GUI enhanced Preferences program to configure all
attributes of the NewIcons system (dither, pen precision, etc.)
· The NewIcons patch is a commodity, which can be enabled and disabled
on the fly, using Commodities Exchange.
· RTG (ReTargetable Graphics) mode, which allows graphics card users
to store icon data in fast RAM instead of chip RAM. This has the
advantage of saving your valuable chip RAM for other uses, and speeds
up rendering of icons on the Workbench.
· Border removal option! Remember the Kickstart 1.3 days when there
were no gray border boxes around the icons? This new option removes
those silly looking boxes once again, and is user configurable.
· The system library is available in different versions, to ensure the
best speed possible on every system configuration.
· NEW IN V4: Dragged icons can also be optionally made transparent.
· NEW IN V4: The text shown under the icons can be optionally rendered
with a 3D or an outlined look.
· NEW IN V4: New utilities to make updating whole
drawers or partitions with a specified drawer image, and a popup
menu utility that displays icon images in a menu format -- could even
be used as a program dock launcher with the appropriate scripts.
· NEW IN V4: New 32 color icon set. NewIcons is now sufficiently faster
to allow fast rendering of higher bitplane icons.
Version History:
V1.0:
=====
Original public release.
V2.0:
=====
In the previous version of the docs I forgot to mention that the chunky to
planar routine was based on a routine by Chris Green (who based his routine on
one by Richard Addison).
fixed bug in DefIcons, was causing "please insert volume dir c" after doing
execute command - dir c:
fixed bug in DefIcons, would hang if it couldn't find deficons.prefs
fixed bug in DefIcons, was causing a disk icon to appear for files called
"disk".
fixed bug in DefIcons, would show a drawer as disk icon for disks containing a
directory called "disk" (which is a bad idea anyway).
The GetDiskObjectNew() patch now returns NULL if the given name doesn't exist
(like the standard function)
now does dithering (optional)
some file types added to deficons.prefs.
bug fix: createdefaulticon now preserves the tooltypes of tool icons and of
project icons whose default icon have no default tool.
bug fix: newicons would check the argarray after FreeArgs(). Thanks to Nicola
Soggia for discovering it and not reporting it. Thanks to Moreno Magnani who
did report it.
bugfix, arj files were not recognized
bug fix: DefIcons now uses Stricmp() to avoid problems with international
sorting
DEFAULTIMAGE special ToolType added
Fixed installer: no longer copies over the original def_#? icons in
Envarc:sys. It now just copies them to a safe place.
Localized installer and documentation files added
Replaced "ReplaceImage" utility with "KillOldIcon", since ReplaceImage
required NewIcons not to be running to use.
Changed a few of the icons from the original distribution archive
CHANGES since last version from Nicola (Release 2, V38.3)
=========================================================
3.0:
====
- Development is now done by Phil Vedovatti and Eric Sauvageau.
- A much requested feature: you can now have borderless icons on your
Workbench, just like under Kickstart 1.x :) Note that it is really a
hack, so it _might_ break under future versions of Workbench, and it
has some minor drawbacks. Make sure you read the NewIconsPrefs section
about it before enabling it.
- New RTG Mode which uses Fast RAM instead of Chip on systems with graphics
cards.
- Library (V39.1) now comes in two versions:
o 68020 and up, OS 3.x (Required for RTG Mode)
o 68000, OS 2.x
The library base has also changed, so application programmers
should check the updated libraries/newicon.h include file. Note
that things are still fully backward compatible).
Various speed optimisations have been done, and the tooltype
decoding routine has been rewritten by Børge Nøst. We're hoping to
also have the C2P routine rewritten in a future version :)
- NewIcons has been rewritten in E, and is now a commodity which can be
enabled/disabled. The hotkey will let you see some information about
the current settings, and allow you to directly launch the external
preferences editor.
- NewIcons will no longer auto-detach from the CLI so it must be
Run <>NIL:. It also has a totaly new template:
'CX_PRIORITY/N/K,CX_POPKEY/K,PE=PREFSEDITOR/K'
Hopefully NewIcons will auto-detach again in a future version.
- The former Newicons settings have been moved to a separate prefs editor.
Makes it easier for the user to install/configure, and gives you more
freedom to experiment with the various settings without needing to
reboot.
This editor uses the ClassAct BOOPSI package for its GUI (all the
required classes are included in this archive.)
- Added a "kludge" so that icons used by ToolManager docks get properly
remapped on screenmode changes.
3.1:
====
- Fixed a bug in the PutIcon() patch that caused various problems with
some programs such as SwazInfo or DOpus.
- Added Autodocs for newicon.library, allowing third party developers to
directly support NewIcons through the library.
4.1:
====
- New official WWW support site: http://www.amiganet.org/NewIcons/
- Improved installation procedure.
- Extended the standard 14-colors palette to 32-colors.
- Complete new 32-colors iconset included. People who prefer the older
ones for speed or resources issues can still use them.
- Library (V40.1) now comes in three flavours:
° Low-End, for 68000 and OS 2.04 users and up.
° Middle-End, for 68020 and 3.0 users and up.
° High-End, for 68020 and 3.0 users and up, without the dither
option and with RTG Mode support.
- New library call: GetDefNewDiskObject(objtype).
- Preferences are now loaded in the library init code instead of in the
NewIcons executable, allowing easier use of the library without the
main executable.
- Made Transparent and NoBorder options separate.
- Added Transparent Dragging option.
- Added Outlined/Shadowed icontext option.
- Rewrote the NoBorder/Transparent patches, made them cleaner.
- Changed the preferences file format. The new format is now documented
in the Includes.
- The preferences editor is now able to detect what features are
available in the installed library, and will display the library
version in the About requester.
- Added ShowNI, a CLI-based NewIcons viewer/selector.
- Added UpdateDrawers, a new tool that will allow you to recursively
replace all drawer icons within a given path.
- All Workbench-based tools will allow you to select the arguments
through filerequesters if launched from Workbench without any argument.
- CopyNewIcon will report if it can't write the destination icon.
- Updated InjectBrush to support the new 32-colors palette.
- Updated the DefIcons brainfile, added various new filetypes.
- DefIcons now uses utility.library's Stricmp() instead of SAS/C's own
routine. Should fix the problems experimented by some persons using a
localized Workbench.
- A lot of code optimization, resulting in general speed improvements.
- Recompiled the libraries and the utilities with SAS/C 6.57, and
optimized the 020+ libraries for 68060 users.
4.5:
====
NewIcons:
---------
- This version prevents crashes occuring if the user would
change screenmode while an icon with DEFAULTIMAGE was displayed.
Sadly I can't solve the problem itself, as it's a side-effect of the
very idea of DEFAULTIMAGE (it's been there since Nicola's days). I did
the best I could do, which was to at least prevent it from crasing
(I simply no longer remap those icons).
- Eliminated the crawling ants artifacts
- Now requires Kickstart 3.0. 2.04 users: this is your wake-up call.
- Various changes to the No Border and Text Outline patches, speeding
them up a bit.
- An Enforcer would happen if an icon was loaded while no screen was
open (i.e. before WB and any bootpic screen would open). This one
should be fixed now.
NewIconsPrefs:
--------------
- Bumped from 40.3 to 40.5
- Updated About to reflect V4.5
CreateDefaultIcon:
------------------
- removed a debugging KPrintf() I had forgotten.
4.6:
====
NewIcons:
---------
- eliminated Cyberguard/Enforcer hits.
NewIconsPrefs:
--------------
- fixed a small recoverable alert which could occur if certain
Class Act gadgets were missing.
InjectBrush:
------------
- The wrong version was supplied with NewIcons 4.5, which contained
some beta code. Use the version supplied here instead.
See the enclosed documentation for more information, and visit the
official NewIcons Web Page at:
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http://www.amiganet.org/NewIcons/
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