Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

If you’re a single-person development house, you’ll probably find it marginally useful if you
can remember it’s there. If, however, you ever find yourself in the kind of conflicted four-way
pileup that can occur with multiuser version control, FileMerge might just save your life, your
job, and your sanity.
IconComposer
Yeah, you could just set a TIFF file as your project’s icon, assuming you’re the kind of person
who eats peanut butter sandwiches because jelly’s too much hassle. Those of us in the know,
however, want real Mac OS X icons in the ICNS format. Producing these professional-grade,
resolution-independent, multiple-representation icons requires a special tool, as shown in Figure
25-27.
Figure 25-27. Panic’s amazing Coda icon in IconComposer
CHAPTER 25 MAC OS X DEVELOPMENT: THE TOOLS 477
For those who’ve never used IconComposer, it’s a pretty simple process. Usually you create
an icon in the largest size in Photoshop or what have you, and then drag it into IconComposer,
which will generate smaller versions and alpha masks for you. For situations where your icon is
illegible at smaller sizes, you can then create a simplified representation for those sizes, ensuring
your icon looks great at any size.
For those who have used IconComposer before, the Leopard version is slightly different.
Aside from a generally improved look and feel, the new IconComposer adds support for highresolution,
512 pixel icons, as part of Leopard’s move toward resolution independence.