MacWorld Secrets (4th Edition)/Mac Secrets CD 4th Ed.toast.sit/Mac Secrets CD 4th Ed.toast/Shareware & Freeware/Mac SECRETS Outtakes/Outtakes from 3d Ed./System 7.1, sound suitcases

Text File | 1996-11-23 | 1KB | 16 lines

Turn sounds and Fkeys into fonts

Under System 7.1 and later, fonts live in the Fonts folder within the System Folder. The surprising news is that in System 7.1 — not 7.0.1 and not 7.5 — you can install Fkeys and sounds the same way. Turning a sound or an FKey into a pseudo-font has several advantages. First, you can merrily reinstall your System at any time, without worrying that you’ll lose your custom sounds and Fkeys. Second, you can use the Finder’s Find command to search for these items (which you couldn’t do if they were buried in the System file). Finally, you can install them by dropping their icons onto the System Folder, exactly as though they were fonts.

To do this, open the FKey or sound file using ResEdit. Choose the Get Info for… command from the File menu. In the four-letter Type field, replace FKEY, snd, or sfil with the letters FFIL.

Then choose Save from the File menu and quit. Your sound or FKey now looks and acts, for most practical purposes, exactly like a font (it has a suitcase icon now). When you drop it into the System Folder icon, you’ll be asked if you want it to be stored in the Fonts folder; you do.

Yet now, if you open your Sound control panel, that sound shows up among your other sounds and works perfectly well as a sound. Similarly, you can now trigger whichever FKey you just installed, even though it’s stored in an unusual place.