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Icon Families

Q We've been doing some conversion between CICNs and icon families, and we've identified some areas where we need some help:

1. Since we created mini icons (12x16), any icons we try to plot that are smaller (10x10, for example) appear compressed horizontally unless we specify a size of 10x13. Is there any way to avoid this?

2. Is it possible to create icons of other sizes (such as 10x10 or 24x24) and make them part of the icon family, or is scaling down larger icons our only choice?

3. When we used CICNs, we were able to use non-standard icon colors and still see a visible effect when we tried to show labeling or selection. The icon families don't seem to support this unless we use the standard icon colors. Is there a way around this?

A Your icons must occupy a 32x32-bit rectangle, or if you're using families, a 16x16-bit rectangle. This doesn't mean that you can't have smaller icons, since you can have a 24x24-bit icon that occupies a 32x32-bit rectangle or a 10x10-bit icon that occupies a 16x16-bit rectangle.

The Apple standard icon colors were chosen for fast highlighting. There are icon-dimming code examples on the Developer CDs, but these are slower than the system routines. As you've discovered, the system routines are limited to the standard set of colors. You can use any colors you like, but if you use colors other than the standard colors, the highlighting won't look the way you expect it to.

There is additional information relating to the Icon Utilities in Chapter 5 of Inside Macintosh: More Macintosh Toolbox. In addition to being available in printed form, this publication can be found on the Developer CD Series: Reference Library edition.

[May 01 1995]

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