Some software developers think, I suppose, that the software delivery form is important. They create a nice customized disc volume, laying a picture inside the disc image. You may have seen a disc image, which will open a software license agreement, when you double-click on the disc image. So how do you create a disc image with a software license agreement attached?

Little Disc+ is our No. 1 selling software title. And one of its features allows the user to attach a software license agreement, provided that you have your own SLAResources file. Right, Apple gives access to a default SLAResources file. But you don’t want to use it as it is. Rather, you really want to customize it to your needs. But how? And that’s what this article is about.  

First of all, download a disc image titled SLAs_for_UDIFs_1.0.dmg from Apple’s FTP server through a web browser. (Click here to download it). Double-click on it, and you will find two files inside the disc volume. (See Screenshot 1.) Let’s open SLA Instructions.rtf. It explains to you how to create a disc image with a software license agreement by customizing the default SLAResources file. It mentions ResEdit (See Screenshot 2.), which is pretty much obsolete because not many Mac users have access to the Classic OS any more. If you go ahead and use the default SLAResources file… You are likely to end up with an unhappy result. The agreement text is very short, incomplete or inadequate. (See Screenshot 3.) And the worst part to some people is that the language is French.

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So we have to customize the SLAResources file without ResEdit. How? Fortunately, there is a free, open-source software title called ResKnife. (Click here to go to ResKnife’s website). And that’s what we are going to use. So let’s get started.

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First of all, let’s make a copy of the default SLAResources file by dragging it onto the desktop (or anywhere). (See Screenshot 4.) Launching ResKnife, choose Open under File and select the SLAResources file you’ve duplicated. (See Screenshot 5.) Then find a resource named Untitled Resource. (See Screenshot 6.) It should be located on the second row. Double-click on it. Now select the row that says local res. You should see ‘4’ to the right. (See Screenshot 7.) This number presumably represents French as a language. Click and select the second column and change it to 0 if you want to display a software license agreement in English. (See Screenshot 8.) Finally, close this little window by clicking on the red button (at the top left). You will be asked if you want to make changes. Yes, you do want to keep changes. So click on the button that says Keep. (See Screenshot 9.)

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We are not done editing the SLAResources file with ResKnife yet. You should still have one open window. If you have chosen English as the default license agreement language, select a name that says English SLA. Make sure that the type is Text. Then double-click on the selected row. (See Screenshot 10.)

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The window that has just popped up should have 2 separate columns. (See Screenshot 11.) All you have to do is write whatever you want on the second column. So I’m going to just copy what I’ve prepared with TextEdit to the clipboard. (See Screenshot 12.) And I’ll just paste it on the second column. (See Screenshot 13.) If you finish editing the software license, close the window. (See Screenshot 14.) Finally, close the last window by clicking on the red button. (See Screenshot 15.) If you are asked to save changes, click on the button that says Save.

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The first part is done. We’ve simply customized the default SLAResources file distributed by Apple, using ResKnife. In the second part, we will use Little Disc+ to attach the customized software license agreement to a disc image.






References:

Attaching Customized Software License Agreement to Disc Image – Part 2