Hacking LW with Resedit?

[little5points]

It's been awhile since I've messed with ResEdit, and I don't know if there's an OSX version, but I was just wondering if anyone has played around with editing resources such as button styles, wireframe colors, etc.

[mswanson]

I have not tried, but I doubt you can change much. Most of LW's user interface is custom drawn, so you won't find editable dialog boxes and stuff. The parts that are standard (file and color pickers, etc.) are not in LW resources, but in the system resources.

And messing with resources can be really bad. It is very easy to screw things up. And I for one, don't like installing and configuring LW and my plugins any more than I have to. So beware!

[supermacguy]

I don't think that you can even use resedit on any OSX applications any more. I haven't tried it, but I think Apple has abandoned the data fork/resource fork approach. Thus, no new software has any RESources for RESedit to work on. Generally things are just tiff files and such buried deep in package folders.
My thoughts on LW on the Mac are, that I figured it was all in the data fork since they build it cross platform.

[ned]

The LightWave license prohibits reverse engineering or modifying the code.

[eblu]

ahem...

for those of you who missed it, Resedit was in the coffin w/ os 9. Resedit does NOT work with X, at all. Resedit - like functionality can, for the most part, be effected with a text editor (NOT Textedit) and photoshop (or whatever image editor you like). Lightwave is a substantially different story.

You cannot Tamper with LW's UI, excepting of course the customization that you can manage with the tools from Newtek.

this customization includes:
colors,
button/menu placement,
brand new functionality in a button (via Lscript),
button menu names,
visibility/placement of buttons
tab editing,
quick keys/shortcuts,
view config (number of views, etc...)


other than that you can't change a thing

[dsol]

ResEdit is pretty irrelevent these days as Apple has made it pretty clear they want to dump the use of resource forks for future OS revisions.

This doesn't mean that the days of App editing are done and dusted though! New apps are encouraged to use a "package" design, where the App icon is actually a special kind of folder, holding all the Apps resources. To access it, just Cntrl+click an App icon.

Doesn't work with LW on OSX yet AFAIK, but maybe LW8 will be a more mac-like product. Well, I can dream, can't I?

For examples, try viewing the package contents for Safari, Final Cut or Aftereffects 6 (if you have them). Graphics resources used are stored as PNGs which you can of course edit to your heart's content. Complex (hidden) app preferences are usually stored in there too as XML docs.

[Beamtracer]

It's funny to get into the package and see all the application icons!

[little5points]

my reason for asking is to see if the buttons could be customized since Newtek won't allow the option.

And I probably wouldn't be the one to do it (especially since I'm out of touch, if my ResEdit reference was any indication )

just longing for the Kaleidoscope days