Resorcerer 2.4.1 review

Resorcerer is the premiere general-purpose commercial resource editor for Macintosh computers running System 8, 9, or Mac OS X.

License: Trial OS: Mac OS X File size: 1395K Developer: Mathemaesthetics, Inc. Buy Now Price: $256.00 Updated: 11 Aug 2006

0

Resorcerer is the premiere general-purpose commercial resource editor for Macintosh computers running System 8, 9, or Mac OS X.
Resorcerer features a wealth of powerful yet easy-to-use tools for easier, faster, and safer editing of Macintosh data files and resources.

Whether you have to parse a picture, change one bit in a 500MB data fork, write an AppleScript to patch or build a file, transfer resource-fork-based resources to data-fork-based resource files under Mac OS X, create a scripting dictionary, build icon suites with all 144 variant icons, change the structure of existing custom resources, debug an AppleEvent from another application, design and edit a custom resource with 40, fields in it, find every reference to a control, try out a dialog interface under Aqua, see a Unicode glyph, magnify the screen, disassemble some PowerPC instructions to English, or any of dozens of other resource- or data-related viewing and editing tasks, Resorcerer's magic will make you more productive and quickly save you time and money.

Here are some key features of "Resorcerer":
transparent support for Mac OS X data-fork-only resource files
automatic file backup during saves via the resource manager
a single window file interface that lets you browse resources easily on even the smallest Mac screen
visible, optionally accumulating, clipboard file for safe cutting and pasting of groups of related resources
dragging resources and groups of related resources between file windows
resource hex/text searching, so you can find resources by content
visible resource marking, so you can keep track of whatever you need to
visible editing attributes (including which ones are open, which changed) for easier navigation in the browser
ability to change IDs, attributes, and even types of any group of resources all at once, with undo
general-purpose hierarchical file system browser lets you take a snapshot of all the files on all your disks, display them all as an instantly scrollable (giant) tree, and open any file generically with Resorcerer to get at the contents.
very powerful general purpose raw data Hex Editor shows data in hex, binary, ASCII, Unicode, and PowerPC disassembly (with instruction translation to English)
integral data fork editing, with file name suffix mapping to data types
resource file comparison, so you can get your bearings between two different versions of the same file
AppleScript object model support for files, forks, resources, bytes, and bits. Every bit a file is a scriptable object
an older internal scripting language, so you can build complex resource files from other files
screen-copying for pictures, icons, color lookup tables makes it easy to get started using your favorite paint program or other background application
powerful, consistent, and well-designed interface features that solve many common problems
a rich set of user preferences
individual Editors for the most common Mac application resources
very powerful, 32-bit generic data structure parsing template system, for designing new custom resources, maintaining old custom resources, or even changing the structure of existing custom resources.
over 200 templates for standard MacOS technology resources.

Limitations:
Removed all functions that write to disk.

What's New:
Primarily a bug fix release, but there are several new features to sweeten the pot and give you an incentive to update now.
There is a new Color Cursor ('crsr') Editor, for both Classic and Carbon versions.
In addition to Hex, Binary, ASCII, and Unicode, the Hex Editor now supports a new column view of the data, displayed as Macintosh two-byte text.
The Hex Editor now maintains its view settings (which columns you like, which type style you want) persistently.
The PowerPC Disassembler now disassembles all Velocity Engine (Altivec) instructions to English as you point at them. (The Hex Editor includes an Instruction column when opening resources of type 'pwpc'.) Here is a sample of the output.
Pasting text (such as C or Rez source code) into the Hex Editor is now much easier. Extraneous non-hex characters are now optionally ignored instead of keeping the entire paste from occuring.
Plus, a variety of smaller features and enhancements to the File, Dialog, Icon Suite, and Menu Editors. (The application now has a much nicer OS X application icon to ponder in the dock, too.)
Unfortunately, the process of porting Resorcerer to Carbon introduced a bunch of bugs. Since then, over three dozen reported bugs have been fixed.