© 1992 Lawrence I. Charters
Washington Apple Pi Journal, Vol. 14, no. 8, August 1992, pp. 44-46.
This year will seethe 15th birthday of the personal computer, dating back to the first shipments of Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 and Apple II computers in 1977. In this short span of time, the personal computer has spawned many legends, horror stories, and myths. One software tool has accounted for an epic share of all three: ResEdit.
ResEdit, a contraction for “resource editor,” has been variously described as the “ultimate” computer tool and “as dangerous as a defective nuclear power plant.” It has been credited with “democratizing” the Mac, giving the average user the power to endlessly customize “their” computer to suit their (often rather bad) tastes. It has also been blamed with wiping out thousands of dollars of programs and data, and bringing entire organizations to their knees as critical computer systems fell victim to ResEdit’s “dark side.”
Usually lost in the legend and myth is ResEdit’s purpose: it was designed and released by Apple to edit Macintosh resources. In the world of Macintosh programming, files are divided into “forks,” with data forks devoted to data, and resource forks devoted to resources. A resource can be a series of instructions (program), an icon, a picture, a font, a sound – almost anything except data. Dividing the digital world between data and resources allows Mac programmers to easily “customize” programs for particular users, or even particular languages, without having to rewrite the entire program.
The power to customize things proved to be a great attraction to”the average Macintosh user.” This average user doesn’t care about programming, but has a fanatical interest in pushing the Macintosh to the limits, showing friends and enemies alike that this machine named after a fruit was, without question, the slickest computer ever made. With ResEdit, one could change a file’s icon, change its menus, and change keyboard shortcuts within a program or could even destroy a file with no hope of recovery.
This mixture of good and bad came about because ResEdit was a) powerful; b) designed for use by programmers, with no attention given to the “average user;” c) riddled with bugs; and d) completely undocumented. If using a powerful, defective, undocumented program with a strange user interface wasn’t enough to deter a sane user, ResEdit was also a “stealth” program: you couldn’t go into a store and buy it. The challenge of finding this utility only added to ResEdit’s legendary status.
One Mouse Clicking
Fortunately, while the legend has continued, ResEdit has changed. The latest version, 2.1.1, is available through the Pi’s Disk Library and through the TCS, the computer bulletin board. Instead of being riddled with bugs, it is a solid, robust utility. The user interface is still a little odd, but this isn’t a flaw because the intended audience is still programmers and developers.
Perhaps the biggest strides have come in the way of documentation. BMUG, Inc. (formerly the Berkeley Macintosh User Group) started lifting the veil of mystery with a slim 85 page book, Zen and the Art of Resource Editing, introduced at MacWorld San Francisco in 1990. This book ignored the intended purpose of ResEdit, and concentrated on what users actually did with it, showing step-by-step how to modify icons, menus, fonts, scroll bars, cursors, and other goodies.
Recently released in a third edition, Zen and the Art of Resource Editing has grown to over 200 pages, and even includes a disk with ResEdit and lots of cool, even radical resources. It begins with a short foreword by Cliff Stoll, the astronomer turned computer detective who detailed his search for villains in The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage. Stoll suggests that you should roll up your sleeves, boot up your Mac and, armed with this book, start playing with ResEdit. Forget mystique; just do it.
True to the original edition, each chapter is devoted to a particular project or concept, from customizing the Finder to playing with pattern resources. As the book is a collection of chapters written by different contributors, there is a danger that the book might be hard to read, but judicious editing has maintained a consistent style and tone. For those who fear the distraction of Zen — mentioned in the
Administration View
Apple has also released its own book, every bit as good as BMUG’s, but very different. ResEdit Reference: For ResEdit Version 2.1 is a handsome 170 page volume done in the same style as the famed Inside Macintosh series, and distributed by the same publisher. Like the Inside Macintosh series (and ResEdit itself), this book is designed for programmers and developers, and contains detailed technical information on the various editors (cursor, icon, pattern, font, window, alert, dialog, bundle, color lookup, etc.) contained within ResEdit.
ResEdit Reference also contains one big surprise: “ResEdit 2.1 does not run on the Macintosh Plus or earlier machines.” Since I have, personally, used ResEdit on a Plus that started out eight years ago as an original 128K Macintosh, this flat declarative statement is a mystery. The only explanation offered is that version 2.1 requires a 128K ROM chip set, found in the Macintosh SE and all more recent machines. A suggestion: if you currently use ResEdit on your Plus, continue to do so. If you don’t, please note Apple says it is impossible.
Brief attention is given to invoking ResEdit through MPW (Macintosh Programmer’s Workbench), and there is extensive discussion, and sample Pascal code, showing how to write programs that properly address a wide variety of resources. Since the book was finished before the release of System 7, there is no mention of System 7 goodies, and some topics (such as details of the LAYO resource) are irrelevant to System 7, but this isn’t a flaw.
Careful readers will discover two entertaining bits of non-technical trivia. First, the rather strange looking “dogcow” icon (visible if you push the Options button when doing a Page Setup), symbol of Apple Developer Technical Support, is named “Clarus,” which is spelled differently than the software company. Second, the odd sound associated with Clarus, “Moof,” is trademarked by Apple. Moof!™
Inside Out
In addition to publishing Apple’s ResEdit book, Addison-Wesley has added one of its own, ResEdit Complete. Part of its Macintosh Inside Out series, this hefty volume is a mixture of user-level tricks and tips and heavy-duty programmer-developer meat and potatoes. [Note to Dan Quayle: you can add an “e” if it is a plural.] At 550 pages, packaged with a disk containing ResEdit and some sample resources, it is a massive, and successful, effort to live up to its title.
Unlike Apple’s volume, ResEdit Complete does mention some new System 7 features, such as Balloon Help and the wonderful color icons. On the down side, the copy of ResEdit included with the book, 2.1, has some problems working with System 7, so you should immediately get a copy of the· revised 2.1.1 from the Pi before playing.
One of the authors, Peter Alley, was the project leader and co-designer of ResEdit 2.1, and this familiarity shows up in a wealth of tips and tricks, all nicely highlighted through good typography and layout. The tips and tricks lack the step-by-step detail of BMUG’s guide, but they also avoid the repetition. The programming examples are, in contrast, fleshed out considerably more than in Apple’s volume.
Decisions, Decisions
All three books are excellent, each in its own way better than the other two. Which should you get? For most people, the answer is CanOpener, a commercial utility produced by Abbott Systems (see sidebar). As this is clearly a bait and switch tactic, designed to avoid the issue at hand, consider these options:
CanOpener 2.0 can open any file. Here it is used to find and list a secret message inside the System file of System 7.0.
If you are not a programmer or developer, by all means, get Zen and the Art of Resource Editing. It is written for the non-technical user, is filled with detailed instructions on how to do wild and crazy things, and comes with a disk filled (actually, overfilled, since everything is compressed) with some wonderful cursors, icons, patterns and other goodies to brighten your day and your desktop.
If you are a programmer or developer, or a systems administrator or technical support specialist, you need Apple’s ResEdit Reference. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, just get it.
If you are a “power user” (and all of us use power for our computers), programmer, developer, systems administrator, etc., you should get ResEdit Complete. This elaborates on many subjects touched on only briefly in ResEdit Reference, and the humor isn’t quite as dry. It is complete, a solid, one volume reference and guide.
Alley, Peter, & Strange, Carolyn. ResEdit Complete. Addison-Wesley, 1991. xx, 546 pp. $29.95. Includes disk. ISBN 0-201-55075-X
Apple Computer Corp. ResEdit Reference: For ResEdit Version 2.1. Addison-Wesley,1991. xiv, 168 pp. $14.95 ISBN 0-201-57767-4
Schneider, Derrick; Hansen, Hans; and Potkin, Noah (eds.) Zen and the Art of Resource Editing: The BMUG Guide to ResEdit, 3rd Ed. Bhagabooks (Peachpit Press), 1992. xviii, 220 pp. $24.95. Includes disk. ISBN 0- 938151-75-4