Washington Apple Pi Journal, July 1986

IMUCHA DA's
by David Morganstein
We all love Oesk Accessories. They expand the power of
the Macintosh by letting us do things we hadn't planned to do
when we decided to run a word processing, spreadsheet or
graphics program. They let us: delete files, telecommunicate,
play a game, sec what time it is and a host of other useful
functions without having to leave the current application, run
a separate program and return later. There is only one
problem with them. They take up space.
If you are running with 400K disk drives you probably
have not taken advantage of many of the dozens of useful
OA's that are available either through the public domain, as
shareware or as a commercial product. After all, the 400K
disk can barely hold the System, Finder, printing resource,
Scrapbook and a few fonts. However, with the advent of 800k
drives and reasonably priced hard disks, space has taken a back
seat. Or so it appeared...
As hard disk users have discovered, it appeared as though
you could have access to only 15 OA's at anyone time. This
turns out to be the limit that the Font/DA mover program
will permit as it attempts to load a new OA into the System
file (This limit varies by ±1 depending on Fonl/DA mover
version number. Version 3.2a3 allow 15.). Several people
already discovered methods that can help you to beat the
"system", ahem. First, you can use the Fonl/DA mover to
install the OA directly into the program rather than in the
System file. Several spell check programs, for instance
MacSpell+, work this way. ClickArt's Special Effects OA is
pasted into MacPaint this way, as well. Since I only use Art
Grabber and Cheap Paint from within Word where I am
doctoring graphics prior to pasting them into text, I installed
them in Word rather than in the System file. Second, there
are utilities, including one Fkey written by Loftus Becker,
that let you try out a OA without having to install it in the
System. The Fkey approach lets you call up tile OA from
within a program.
This article is about another approach which permits you
to store five OA's in the System file which, in addition to
those which you ean add with the Font/DA mover, brings the
total number up to 20. With a few more stored in individual
programs, we're talking two dozen OA's here! Let's start with
credit where credit is due. The method for doing this was
described in a bulletin board note written by Ron Ouritsch.
Thanks, Ronl This article was written because it took me
several hours to figure out just how to do what was needed and
I thought I could save you the learning time...
The whole thing stems from the fact that OA's have ID
numbers (what doesn't in this day and age?). The numbers
must be between 12 and 31. For some reason unknown to
me, the Font/DA mover supplied by Apple will not add more
than about 15 OA's to a file such as the System. What is
more, as the OA is moved into the the receiving file, it is renumbered.
Regardless of what number it had in the source, it
gets the next lowest number that is available. If you use
Fonl/DA mover to copy a single OA to a new file and
examine it with ResEdit, as we shall see, it is given ID
64
number 12. TIle next OA entered into that file will get ID
number 13, etc. Ron Ouritsch's basic idea sounds simple,
just figure a way to put five OA's into a System fIle and give
them numbers 27 through 31! After this, just use the
Font/DA mover to copy the remaining 15 into the System
file. Now for the fun part.
I used Apple's ResEdit (Resource Editor) program, version
1.0011, to move and renumber things. While the idea of
"Editing Resources" may sound scary, fear notl You don't
have to know why it works or what the words mean. All you
will be doing is Cutting and Pasting "things" and
renumbering them by typing in numbers. It is all quite easy,
albeit treading unfamiliar ground.
First, decide on the five OA's you will install as numbers
27 through 31. Use the Font/DA mover to create a single file
for each one. If you have not done this before, you will find
it no great challenge. When clicking on "Open" for tile
destination file, select New and enter a catchy name like
"AlarmClock" for the Alarm Clock OA, etc. Put these five
OA's onto an 800K disk with a System and Finder. (In the
examples below, I show you what you will get if you try
Puzzle, AlarmClock and Chooser). Remove all but one OA
from the System file. You might combine these two steps if
any of the five OA's you want are in the System file you are
going to use for this exercise. Lastly, put ResEdit onto this
disk as well.
Start ResEdit. You will see a window listing the files on
the disk. Presumably these will be System, Finder, ResEdit
and the five OA files. If you arc having second thoughts
about running something as magical as ResEdit, you might
try this with Puzzle, AlarmClock and Chooser first and see
that you get what I did before launching off on your own. I
have chosen these three as they increase somewhat in
complexity since each contains a few more pieces to be moved
and renumbered.
Click on Puzzle. A window labelled Puzzle opens which
says ORVR. Select and then double-click on ORVR. A
window labelled "ORVRs from Puzzle" opens which says
'Desk Acc "Puzzle" ID =12'. Select this line and From the
File menu select Get Info. Another window opens indieating
that this is a Oesk Acc, that it has a size of 932 bytes, that its
name is Puzzle and that its ID is 12. The only thing you will
have to do is change the ID from 12 to something between 27
and 31. Select the ID of 12 and change it to 31. There, that
was easy wasn't it? Close the Info window. Select the line
'Desk Acc "Puzzle" ID =12' and do a Copy. You have now
put a copy of tile Puzzle OA, renumbered as 31 into the
clipboard. Close both the ORVR and the Puzzle windows.
When asked if you want to save the changes, say yes. This
costs a little time, but if we should lose the clipboard and
have to repem this. we will be a step ahead of the game next
time through. What we changed was the copy of the Puzzle
OA we put into a single file.
Now select and Open (either from the File menu or by
double-clicking) the System file. Select and open its ORVR
contd.
July 1986 Washington Apple Pi