The Resource Manager, one of the cornerstones of Macintosh's ROM-based user
Interface Toolbox, was designed and implemented by Bruce Horn, a member
of the Macintosh software team. It provides a way for applications to separate
their code from the data they use--to keep the data, such as prompt strings,
menus or icons, in a separate, structured part of the file. This allows the
data to be edited by a utility program without any specific knowledge of that
application.
Since all of the language-dependent parts of an application are resources, an
application may be translated to another language (French, German, etc.) in a
matter of hours by a nontechnical translator without access to the source
code. Similarly, users with this utility program can customize the prompts
and phrases in an application to suit their particular tastes.
The Resource Manager has proven so useful that now many other parts of the
system use it in one way or another. Desk accessories, code segment, fonts,
icons, windows, menus, controls, and dialogs are all kept as resources.