The internally packaged image files used by the $Badge attribute for icon badges may be supplemented by adding icon files to the folder:
~/Library/Application Support/Tinderbox/badges
From v5.5.1 this folder is automatically created. In older versions, if the /badges/ directory is not automatically created by Tinderbox on installation, so simply create it manually (note that all the folder names in the path are case-sensitive). Tinderbox polls the '/badges/' folder whenever the Badges menu is called so newly added files will be seen immediately.
From v5.5.0 badges are 32 x 32 pixel PNG format files.
The name of a custom badge shown in the Badges menu is name of the custom badge icon file minus the extension, and is case-sensitive. So, the custom badge file 'car.png' (or previously 'car.icns') will have the badge name 'car'. The naming convention of the built-in badge names is single lowercase words. It appears that if setting $Badge via action code the name string is case-insensitive.
If a custom and built-in badge name clash, the first listed (the custom one) will be used.
ONLY for v5.5.0 and older
Creating a custom icon
- An icon file is a Mac ICNS format file, with the extension '.icns', e.g. 'flag.icns'.
- Supplied badge icon files include both 16 and 32 pixel square images, so users creating their own should provide these sizes, at least, in their custom icon files. A badge is packaged as a Mac OS X icon file (extension ICNS). An icon file can include multiple images with different resolutions. These images are used by the operating system to render the icon at different sizes depending on the application context.
- Tinderbox supports badge images with resolutions of 48x48 pixels, 32x32 pixels or 16x16 pixels. There is nothing to stop you including larger sizes in your icon files but Tinderbox, as yet, won't use such sizes (but noting also that everything tends to get bigger over time!). The source of an image can be a vector graphic exported in a bitmap format such as JPEG or TIFF, or any bitmap with an image mask.
- To package the icon file on Mac OS X, use an icon composer application such as FastIcns (free) or IconBuilder (pay). There are other commercial and free icon composer applications but note that the application Icon Composer included in the Apple Xcode Developer Tools does not seem to create an icon file compatible with Tinderbox.
