Miscellaneous Obsolete Stuff

Here are things that I haven't updated or even used for a year or more, but may be useful to some.

Alias Dragon

When you rebuild your desktop, an alias to an application on a different volume loses its ability to support drag-and-drop. Alias Dragon fixes this by copying desktop information from the target volume to the volume containing the alias.

You can drop a volume or folder on the AD icon, or select a volume or folder with the menu. Scriptable.

Update: It looks as though Apple has finally fixed the alias bug in Mac OS 8, so Alias Dragon may be soon put out to pasture.

Recent changes:

If you are using System 7.5.3 or later, you can drop individual application aliases on the Alias Dragon icon.
Fixed a bug that caused crashes when you tried to scan a remote volume.
Refined the method of forcing the Finder to notice changes.

Alias_Dragon_1.3.sit.bin, 12K

MenuCapture

Once in a while, I need to take a picture of the screen with a menu pulled down, in order to document one of my shareware programs. If I did this every day, I suppose I wouldn't mind paying for a screen capture program with all the bells and whistles, but as it is, I resist. Years ago, there was a tiny freeware extension called StillDown, by Gregory M. Robbins, that enabled command-shift-3 screen shots with menus pulled down. But StillDown doesn't work with Mac OS 8. Therefore, I decided to write a new free bare-bones menu snapshot program: MenuCapture.

In Mac OS 8.1 and later, if you pull down a menu with a click rather than a click-and-hold, you can snap its picture without the aid of MenuCapture. That's why MenuCapture is on the Obsolete page.

To install MenuCapture, drop it in your Control Panels folder and reboot.

To use MenuCapture, open the MenuCapture control panel and click the "Enable" checkbox. Then pull down a menu, and press the keys command, shift, and control simultaneously. What happens next depends on what version of the system you are running. With System 7.6 or later, the cursor turns into a cross-hair; let up the mouse button, then click and drag to select a rectangle to be copied to the clipboard. With earlier systems, a snapshot of the whole screen is saved as a picture file on your disk.

The actual picture-taking is done by the built-in screen capture FKEYs: FKEY 4 in the case of System 7.6 and later, FKEY 3 in the case of older software that did not have FKEY 4.

Version 1.0.2 makes it more obvious how to capture a contextual menu, by ensuring that the cursor changes to a cross-hair. I also attempted to clarify the text in the control panel.

MenuCapture-1.0.2.sit.bin, 5K

Keyboard Switcher

The Keyboard Switcher control panel extension was invented to allow you to use customized keyboard layouts more effectively. The Keyboard Switcher control panel provides detailed online help, including an explanation of why you don't really need Keyboard Switcher with System 7.

KySw-1.9.5.sit.bin, 41K

PrintAid

I wrote PrintAid so that I could print to my aging ImageWriter while working in other applications. It does not provide true background printing, because the application that is doing the printing remains tied up.

I stopped using PrintAid when I was able to install System 7.5 and QuickDraw GX. The ImageWriter GX driver supports background printing. More recently, I bought a Color StyleWriter 2400, which allows background printing without the need to install QuickDraw GX.

PrintAid-1.5b2.sit.bin, 25K

Reference Link

Reference Link is a System 7-only INIT that makes THINK Reference 2.0 easier to use. With R.L. installed, a modified double-click on a word in a text editor or word processor causes the word to be looked up in THINK Reference 2.0. A keystroke jumps back to the editor. Freeware.

Since CodeWarrior now has its own communication with THINK Reference, this extension is not as vital as it once was. Frankly, I haven't looked at it for a couple of years, I hope it's still reasonably compatible!

Reference_Link_1.4.sit, 8K