NewIcons 4.6 is now available for download. See below for the list of feature changes and fixes.

If you haven't heard already, Eric Sauvageau, our programmer, has ceased further development of NewIcons. While he still has his A1200, he is now spending most of his time on his new PC. Unfortunately, this is the second time I've had to annnounce the loss of our main coder to another platform (Nicola left the project after version 2). Eric has been kind enough to do one last version to optimize things further and fix some minor bugs.

Fortunately, after nearly seven years of updating, the NewIcons System is highly optimized, and as stable as ever, and there are thousands of you out there using it every day. As was the case with Nicola, the NewIcons System has been a labor of love, rather than a commercial enterprise. Neither Eric, nor Nicola asked for one dime for all their hard efforts. I'm glad I've been a part of this project from the start, as it really exemplifies the spirit of the Amiga community. Eric still hangs out as an IRC operator on the Amiganet IRC network, and you can still catch him there often.

You may be worried that this is the end of NewIcons...NOT SO! I will continue to pump out more icon sets and other NewIcons related graphics, and I'm sure many others will also. AmigaOS 3.5 is just around the corner, and the NewIcons concept of dynamically remapped, palette-independent icons will be integrated into the 3.5 operating system. When that happens, you can be assured that the images you're using today will still be usable, NewIcons patches or not.

Team NewIcons, from the very beginning, has had a love/hate relationship with the NewIcons patch. It was developed with the intention of making a feature-rich system enhancement, while making it as transparent to the user as possible. It has always been our hope that one day, the need to 'patch the system' with NewIcons would no longer be necessary. The hooks in the current OS just aren't there to implement these enhancements without applying patches, and encoding the image data into the tooltype data area. Some users over the years have cried "hack!" when describing the NewIcons system. Admittedly, it is a 'hack', but it does what it does quite well, and after seven years of flawless operation on my Amiga, it's staying right where it is, along with SetPatch, and the dozens of other patches that keep me and my Amigas happy.

While I'm still on my soapbox, I'd like to make one little request to you, the Amiga user. The reason we have such cool tools like NewIcons and the thousands of other great things that make an Amiga, is because of the great community that we Amiga users belong to. The machine got the ball rolling, but it's YOU that's kept it going all these years, despite marketing failures, bankruptcy after liquidation, and the monopolistic and predatory practices of those who dominate the computer industry at the expense of creativity and user choice. While we may not be the mainstream choice, we as a community are still a voice and a force be reckoned with. If you (yes, even you the Amiga Forever emulation users too) who use and enjoy the Amiga, give something back to the community. How? It doesn't really matter all that much, as long as you DO something:

• Pay a shareware fee.
• Thank an author for their efforts, even if you can't pay them.
• Write a supportive letter to Amiga Inc. Let them know your opinion.
• Support the dealers and commercial developers who are hanging in there. Every bit counts.
• Join or start a user group.
• Create and upload something to Aminet.
• Release that source code that's been sitting in the closet collecting dust.

Like I said, it doesn't matter what you do, just CONTRIBUTE. We all benefit in some way.

OK....soapbox mode off. Here's the latest NewIcons development history:

Version 4.6 History

NewIcons:

• BUGFIX: Fixed Enforcer/Cyberguard hits.
  

NewIconsPrefs:

• BUGFIX: Fixed a small recoverable alert error which could occur if NIPrefs was unable to open one of the Class Act Gadgets.
  

Injectbrush:

• BUGFIX: Included the wrong version with the archive, containing beta code. Use this version instead.
  

Version 4.5 History

Overview of version 4.5:

• 4.5 is mostly meant to be an housekeeping version. It mostly consists of fixes and minor improvements. It also denotes the departure from 2.04 support. We'll keep the low-end version of the library so that applications can still use it to display/remap icons, but the patch itself will now require V39 (Kickstart 3.0).
  
  
• Most of the patch code was rewritten, speeding them up and making them smaller (some patches are now fully in ASM rather than a mixture of E and ASM).

NewIcons:

• BUGFIX: Changing screenmodes no longer crashes while an icon with DEFAULTIMAGE is displayed on the Workbench. Sadly, I can't solve the problem itself, as it's a side-effect of the very idea of DEFAULTIMAGE (it's been there since Nicola's days). I did the best I could do, which was to at least prevent it from crashing by simply no longer remapping those icons.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Eliminated crawling ants artifacts which occurred on some systems.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Fixed a few Enforcer hits in the new patch code.
  
  
• BUGFIX: An Enforcer hit would occur if an icon was loaded while no screen was open (i.e. before WB and any bootpic screen would open).
  
  
• Now requires Kickstart 3.0. 2.04 users: this is your wake-up call.
  
  
• ENHANCED: Various changes to the No Border and Text Outline patches, speeding them up a bit.

NewIcons Prefs:

• Bumped version to 40.5.
  
  
• Updated About text to reflect new version.

CreateDefaultIcon:

• BUGFIX: Removed a debugging KPrintf() I had forgotten.

Version 4.1 History

Changes to the library:

• Now comes in three flavours:
  1. Low-End, for 68000 and 2.04 users and up
  2. Middle-End, for 68020 and 3.0 users and up
  3. High-End, for 68020 and 3.0 users and up who don't need the Dither option, and might want to use the RTG switch.
  
  
  
• Added a new function: GetDefNewDiskObject(diskobjecttype).
  
  
• Optimized various routines resulting in an important improvement in speed.
  
  
• Will take care of loading the preferences, so programs using the library without the NewIcons executable will be using the preferences set by the user with NewIconsPrefs.
  
  
• Recompiled with SAS/C 6.58, and optimized the 020+ versions for the 060 (providing potential speedups for 060 users without any loss for the 020+ users)
  
  

Changes to the main executable and the preferences program:

• Added transparent dragging patch, and made Transparent and NoBorder separate.
  
  
• Added outline/shadow icontext patch.
  
  
• Optimized various routines.
  
  
• Display the amount of free pens on Workbench in the requester opened by the Commodity hotkey.
  
  
• Rewrote a lot of the NoBorder/Transparent patches.
  
  
• The main executable no longer loads the preferences (now done by the library)
  
  
• Cleaned the preferences editor code.
  
  
• New prefs file format, now documented in the includes.
  
  
• Prefs editor is now able to detect which options are available in the installed library, and will also display the library's version in the About requester.
  
  

Changes to the tools:

• Much improved installation procedure.
  
  
• All Workbench-based tools will allow you to select the arguments through filerequesters if launched from Workbench without any argument.
  
  
• CopyNewIcon will report if it can't write the destination icon.
  
  
• Updated InjectBrush so it won't required the FORCE switch with the new 32-colors palette.
  
  
• Added ShowNI, a CLI-based NewIcons viewer/selector.
  
  
• Added UpdateDrawers, a tool allowing to replace all drawer icons in a given path (including sub-drawers).
  
  
• Recompiled with SAS/C 6.58.
  
  

Changes to DefIcons:

• Updated brainfile, many new filetypes added.
  
  
• Replaced stricmp() calls with utility.library/Stricmp(). Should fix a problem experienced by some persons using a localized Workbench.
  
  
• Recompiled with SAS/C 6.58.
  
  

Changes to the icons:

• Extended the 14-colors palette to 32-colors.
  
  
• Whole new 32-colors iconset included.
  
  

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