Designing an Extension for the Monitors Control Panel
If you develop a video card, you can provide a file of type 'cdev' that adds
controls to the Options dialog box of the Monitors control panel. An extension to
the Monitors control panel should control features of the video card only; a
Monitors extension should not control system-wide features. For example, a
Monitors control panel extension might allow the user to set the virtual screen
size for a single monitor, but not to set the size of the menu bar, which can
appear on any monitor.
It is not advisable to add a button to the Options dialog box that puts up yet
another dialog box. If the features that you want to implement require an
extensive or complex set of controls, it would be better to write a small
application rather than an extension to the Monitors control panel file.
Warning: Only the manufacturer of the video card should write an
extension to the Monitors control panel file. There can be only one
extension to the Monitors control panel file for each video card. Apple
reserves the right to supply control panel files for its own video cards.
The extension file for the Monitors control panel must be a file of type 'cdev'
containing at least the following resources:
• 'card' (ID can be any number from -4080 through -4065)
• 'mntr' (ID = -4096)
• 'RECT' (ID = -4096)
• 'DITL' (ID = -4096)
Your Monitors extension file can also include any of the following resources:
• 'ICON' (ID = -4096)
• 'cicn' (ID = -4096)
• 'vers' (ID = 1)
• 'vers' (ID = 2)
• 'STR#' (ID = -4096)
• 'gama' (ID can be any number from -4080 through -4065)
• 'FREF'
• 'BNDL'
• icon family resources 'ICN#', 'ics#', 'icl8', 'icl4', 'ics8', and 'ics4'
• 'INIT'
• signature resource
The following sections describe these resources. You can use resource ID
numbers of -4080 through -4065 for any private resources in your
Monitors extension.