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Programmers write reams of obscure instructions to tell the computer, in excruciating detail, exactly what it should do.
Sometimes programmers tell the computer to draw a picture, show a menu, display a cursor, or put up a window. These elements used to be buried deep inside the secret and obscure language that only a programmer could known and love -- and only a programmer could change. This was annoying since most programmers (myself included) spell like 3rd grade dyslexics, and programs need to be altered by people other than programmers (like those who can spell). So the great designers at Apple changed the paradigm, they split Applications into two halves. Normally there is the "data fork", where all the programming information (data) resides. But Apple added a "resource fork", where all these common resources (Pictures, Windows, Menu's) would reside, so that we can change these things without being programmers. Then Apple and Mathemaesthetics created special resource editors to make it easy to fix or tweak these resources.
Resource made life much easier for companies developing software. Because of Apple, companies can change things for international markets or fix programmers many spelling mistakes -- as a bonus, it made it much easier for us to go in and "improve" (see "hack") the Mac. So with an iron will, unmitigated gall and complete lack of fear (and reason), we can dive in and tweak perfectly working programs and make them display what WE want them to -- which is not usually what the programmers intended. (1)
(1) While Microsoft ripped off most of their best ideas from the Mac, they missed many of them -- like this one. And, it is still far more painful to fix (and hack) Windows "resources" for just this reason. Repeat after me, "The Mac is Cool!"
The Basics of Resource Types
There are many "types" of resources. Back in 1984, the Mac had 128K or RAM and memory was expensive, so Apple used special abbreviations to differentiate "types" of resources. They decided 4 characters (case sensitive) would give them plenty of choices (something like 16 Million different combinations) -- and a few of those abbreviations are even understandable. Once you understand the basics of what these resource abbreviations mean, you can modify all sorts of things.
Here are some cues to figure out what a resource is, just from the type
- Some Resources are lower case, and some are upper
case. When the Mac was first created (1982-1984) the
resource types tended to be all upper-case. Later, as
Apple added color to the Mac, and started adding new
resources, they tended to do that with lower case
"types". So the lower case types are usually newer.
- Some of the resources have a '#' character. What that
means is that the resource is an "array" or list of
items. So an STR is a single string, but each STR# is
actually a whole list of strings, grouped in some way
that is sensible only to programers I'm sure.
- The suffix "DEF" is for Definition. This is a way that Mac Programmers could write a small code snippet to extend the "definition" of how something worked. This little bit of code could make whatever they modified more powerful and extensible over time. So a WDEF is a new Window Definition. This was all really powerful stuff in 1984, and is the forerunner to Object Oriented Code.
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Types |
Description |
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Conclusion
That is a pretty comprehensive list of the basic types. You probably won't need to hack a few of those, nor most of the types not mentioned. By now you have a pretty good idea about resources -- what they are, and how they are used. Explore, learn and have fun -- this stuff isn't too hard.
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