Introduction
During application development, you use a resource compiler (RMaker or Rez) to
convert a resource definition file into an executable application. You rarely
change anything but your CODE resources during development, and the resource
compiler spends a lot of time compiling other resources which have not changed
since they were originally created.
To save time, some developers have adopted the technique of storing all of
these "static" resources in a separate resource file. This file should be
placed on the same volume as your application; when your application starts up,
use OpenResFile to open the separate file. This will cause the
resource map for the separate file to be searched before the normal application
resource file's map (which now contains mostly CODE resources, along with any
brand-new resources still being tested).
This will have little or no effect on the rest of your program. Any time that a
resource is needed, both resource files will be searched automatically so you
don't need to change each GetResource call. (Actually, having
the extra resource file open has a minor impact on memory management, and uses
one more file-control block; unless you're using a lot of open files at once,
or are running at the limits of available memory without segmentation, this
shouldn't affect you.)
Once your application is close to being finished, you can use ResEdit to move
all the resources back into the main application file, and remove the extra
OpenResFile at the beginning of your application. You should do this
for any major release (alpha, beta, and any other 'heavy-testing' releases).
Other minor modifications (such as fine-tuning dialog box item positions) may
also be done with ResEdit at this time.
The only catch is that you must be careful if your application adds resources
to its own resource file. Most applications do not do this (it's not really a
great idea, and causes problems with file servers).
Back to top References
The Resource Manager
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