The fmnu Template
The System 7 Finder has been completely rewritten in C++, so none of the old ways to customize the Finder with ResEdit work anymore. There are, however, a couple of things you can do with ResEdit in the new Finder, too. The menus are stored in resources of type fmnu (they include quite a bit more information than would fit in the regular MENU resource type) and here is how you can create a template to edit them. (ADAM: If you’re busy like me or lazy, you won’t want to do this. Therefore, I’m including a copy of the fmnu template with this issue. Just open it with ResEdit, open the ResEdit Preferences file in the Preferences folder in your System Folder, copy the fmnu resource, and paste it into the ResEdit Preferences file. Close both and enjoy!) Use ResEdit (preferably 2.1.1, but it should work with older versions) to modify the ResEdit Preferences file by adding a new resource of type TMPL. Create 15 new fields in the list and enter the following values for "Label" and "Type":
Label Type Comment Visible DWRD 1=Menu is visible in Menubar; 0=invisible Item Count DWRD the number of items in the menu plus 1 ??? DWRD ??? Menu Number DWRD the resource ID of the fmnu ??? DWRD ??? ??? DWRD ??? Title ESTR title of menu (padded to an even length) ***** LSTB begin of item list AppleEvent TNAM corresponding AppleEvent for this item ??? DBYT ??? ??? DBYT ??? Cmd Key CHAR keyboard equivalent of command ??? DBYT ??? Item Text ESTR text of item ***** LSTE end of item list
Please note, that a "???" indicates that I simply don’t know what these fields contain (maybe they will one day be documented by Apple). Once you’ve entered this list, close the TMPL resource you’ve just created and change its name to fmnu using the Get Resource Info… command. Finally close and save the ResEdit Preferences file. You can now edit the Finder’s menus and do other neat things.
While the above technique actually gives you the same freedom of customization that you already had in the System 6 days, you can do a lot more with the new fmnu resources:
For instance, the fmnu resource type is not position-dependent anymore! This means that you can actually completely rearrange the menus in the Finder. All you need to do is make sure that you copy all the information stored in the various fields of an item to its new destination (copy and paste can be a lot of help here!). You can even create your own menu and move commands from other menus to the new one!