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Icons in Duality Revealed
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Jun 11, 2004, 06:19 PM
 
In since its probably going to be about another week until we release a new beta I thought I'd give a little teaser of our icon changer.



The new icon changer is quite cool and a step up from Duality 4's. You can change individual icons, or change all the icons using the top menu to match a certain theme. Icons now come bundled with themes. Duality can pull icons from .guikit and .xscheme.

Duality also uses search paths for icon changing. Instead of looking for specific files, it will search commonly used folder for icons and allow you to change them. One example is the SystemIcons.bundle. This means Duality can easily cope with new icons introduced in new OS updates, and you can theme them without waiting for an update to Duality.



Choosing a specific icon is a pretty simple affair. You can choose a custom icon (i.e. one that is in a file and not a theme), or you can choose a theme to pull that icon from. If the theme has an icon available that matches the currently selected one on the list, it is enabled in the list. If the theme is enabled you can select it, instructing Duality to use that icon from that theme.

It will be possible to save icon settings into different sets a la Extensions Manager but that is not yet coded.

Best of all, I have directions to make guiKit's ready for Duality's icon changer! These directions should also work for when ShapeShifter gets icon support, but don't take my word for it, I'm just following the pattern. These directions require guiKitty.

1) Unzip the theme using guiKitty.
2) In the resulting unzipped folder, open the patches folder for the variation you wish to add the icon to.
3) Track down the icon you wish to change. Duality currently only changes icons in SystemIcons.bundle. You must give your custom icon the exact same name. Now create a folder in the variation's patches folder with the exact same name, minus the extension.
4) Move your icon in the folder you just created. The custom icon should now be in a folder sharing its name sans the extension (.icns).
5) Now you must create a Path.txt file. Duality does not require this, but guiKitty does to create the theme. In this file you must put the path to the actual original icon on the hard drive.
6) Drag your theme's unzipped folder back onto guiKitty. If all goes well, and no messages show up in red, guiKitty will create a guiKit containing your custom icon.

As usual, I'll take any comments or suggestions. Currently the changing part is still under construction, but it shouldn't be much issue, as we have already done it for prior versions of Duality. Now we just have to build it for XTender.
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Jun 11, 2004, 07:18 PM
 
Originally posted by goMac:
These directions should also work for when ShapeShifter gets icon support,
Any idea if this is a 'when' or an 'if'?

Looks awesome so far. It's amazing how quickly this has progressed since the first beta was released. The icon feature might win over some ShapeShifter users, including me.

I can't wait to see the finished product. Any further word on whether it might directly support guikits?
     
goMac  (op)
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Jun 11, 2004, 07:34 PM
 
Originally posted by rhythmicmoose:
Any idea if this is a 'when' or an 'if'?
It's both. I'm assuming SS will get icon support, and if they follow the pattern they are already using, icons should work using the above directions in a future version of ShapeShifter. I have no idea if ShapeShifter will get this capacity, but I am assuming it will.

It's possible it could be implemented different on the ShapeShifter side, if thats the case it would probably take me about an hour to write compatibility for what they do, so not a huge issue.
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