Topic       : The ATARI Compendium
Author      : Scott Sanders / JAY Software
Version     : 1.25 (20/6/2003)
Subject     : Documentation
Nodes       : 1117
Index Size  : 32614
HCP-Version : 6
Compiled on : Atari
@charset    : UTF-8
@lang       : en
@default    : 
@help       : %About
@options    : +g -i -t4 +y +z
@width      : 100
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                                Desktop Files


DESKTOP.INF

The desktop in TOS versions less than 2.00 place configuration defaults
such as window size and position, drive icons, etc. in the DESKTOP.INF
file. In addition, some control panel settings (from CONTROL.ACC, not
XCONTROL.ACC) are stored in the file as well.

The DESKTOP.INF file is in standard ASCII text format. This file was not
designed to be edited by the user or programmer, but, rather from the
desktop itself and will not be discussed in detail.

NEWDESK.INF

As of TOS 2.00, the desktop now looks for a file called NEWDESK.INF
rather than DESKTOP.INF. This file contains the same information as its
predecessor with some additions. Icons which appear on the desktop or in
windows may now be linked to icons in the DESKICON.RSC file (as described
below). Other entries are still reserved and should be left unmodified.

A creative install program wishing to install custom icons may do so by
adding the icons to the DESKICON.RSC file and adding information to
NEWDESK.INF which points to the new icons. The install application must be
careful to avoid disturbing the original information and icons and must
not reorder the icons in the DESKICON.RSC file. The following two lines
show example entries in NEWDESK.INF that identify an icon for a file and
folder respectively.

                     #I 2C 2C 000 @ *.TXT@ @
                     #D 1A 1A 000 @ FOLDER@ @

The '#I' identifies a file icon and the '#D' identifies a folder icon.
The next two numbers should be identical hexadecimal indexes to the icon
in the DESKICON.RSC file. The entry '000' is unused and should be included
only as a placeholder.

The filename specified on the line can contain wildcard characters and
identify the file or folder name(s) which are to be linked. All spaces and
'@' characters must appear exactly as above or the system may behave
strangely.

DESKICON.RSC

The DESKICON.RSC file is a standard GEM resource file (see Appendix C:
Native File Formats) with one object tree containing a BOX object at the
ROOT (object #0) with the icons as children. The position of the icons in
the object tree determine their index as referenced by the NEWDESK.INF
file.

DESKCICN.RSC

This file is supported as of TOS 4.0 and is looked for before
DESKICON.RSC. It has an identical format except that it supports the new
resource file format and contains color icons rather than monochrome
ones.