SmartSelect Document Icons in OSX

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by smaug, Jul 22, 2007.

  1. smaug

    smaug Bit poster

    Messages:
    8
    Does anyone know of a way to have something other than blank icons for documents associated with Windows programs in the Finder? I have many document types associated with Windows programs, but the blank icons are really bugging me. :confused: :confused:
     
  2. TAHARVEY

    TAHARVEY Junior Member

    Messages:
    18
    I have the same question. You'd think that smart select would be able to apply file icon to the icon database in each OS
     
  3. josephabennett

    josephabennett Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    I have managed to make this work. It involves editing the info.plist for the application wrapper. The application wrapper is under the name of your virtual machine under the parallels directory, under "Windows Applications" (say, for example, ~/Documents/Parallels/Windows XP/Windows Applications/<name of app>.app

    Under "Contents", there is a file called Info.plist (which is just a specially formatted XML file that you could also open in the Terminal), which when double-clicked, opens the PLIST editor. When you expand the list, you will see an array of document types, and what icon it should use. For some reason, (and I think this is a bug), Parallels lists the icon as "my_documents.icns" (or something), which doesn't exist, and hence the blank icon you see. If you put a real MacOSX icon under the "Resources" directory, and edit the info.plist to use that icon, you will get a nice icon. (You usually have to kill and restart Finder, or log out and log back in to make this happen as OSX caches icons).

    BTW, you can also edit this file so that you can have much nicer looking Mac style icons appear in your dock (which happens when running in coherence mode).

    I have done this with Microsoft Office apps, and have both nice looking icons for my documents, and nice looking icons in the dock. I have Office 2004 style icons for the app, and Office 2004 style icons for the document types.

    This may sound a bit overwhelming. If there is interest, I could post a more detailed explanation with examples. I've even thought about writing an app or applescript to do this. In reality, though, Parallels should just (1) fix the bug so that something resembling a non-blank icon appears, and (2) provide a utility that allows you to customize the icons you have for your apps. The Windows icons are crap (16x16 I think with like 256 colors?) so the porting they do to make it a OSX icon, while admirable, still gives a crappy looking icon.
     
  4. darkfader

    darkfader Bit poster

    Messages:
    8
    I got blank icons too.
    It does have a Resources/AppSmallIcon.png but when viewing WinAppHelper.icns with IconComposer, it shows blank icons except one Parallels logo.
     

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