About NewIcons
==============

   This extended icon format introduced in OS 3.5 duplicates and
obsoletes the features previously provided by the third party NewIcons
patch. Unlike NewIcons, the V44 color mapped icons do not encode the
image data in the icon tooltypes, so the new icon format is both faster
and more compact.  The newicon.library V40 can still load V44 icons and
decode the NewIcon images encoded in the tooltypes, but it can't access
the new V44 palette mapped images.

   The V44 Workbench has compatibility code to decode NewIcons using
the newicon.library, therefore it is no longer necessary to start the
C:NewIcon program from the Startup-Sequence (1). This feature is active
by default, but it can be switched off using the Workbench preferences
editor.

   Once the migration to the new color mapped icon format will be
complete, future versions of the Workbench will drop NewIcon
compatibility.  A future version of newicon.library could be enhanced
to read the V44 image data as well as the original NewIcons format to
support old applications that have not been updated to the new V44 API.
As of this writing, such version of the newicon.library is not yet
available.

   The choice of using a different scheme for palette mapped images
instead of conforming to the de-facto standard set by NewIcons was
necessary because the newicon.library API had a number of limitations
and inconsistencies which couldn't be worked around straightforwardly.
Programmers are therefore urged to adapt their applications to the new
icon.library API as soon as possible.

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) In fact, it is strongly discouraged because it installs patches
on the icon.library with no support for the new extensions.