As the name suggests, Floppy Catalogue keeps track of all the files on floppies, CD's and other media.This is done by creating a "catalog" document that contains the name, kind, size and modification date of all the files found on one or more disks. This information is displayed in a manner (almost) identical to the Finder's list views. This way you can browse removable media without having to mount it. You can also search for files using multiple criteria (like the Find File in system 7.5) and save the search results as text files. In addition, you can open files and launch applications directly from FloppyCatalog.
System Requirements: Floppy Catalogue requires system 7.1 and a 68020 or better.
RAM 500K minimum and more if you archive big disks . If you want a native PPC version I'll be glad to e-mail it to you, although it is not much faster because of the emulated File Manager.
*Include this Read Me file with all copies of FloppyCatalog.
*Do not charge money for it. Distributors of shareware CD's have to notify me first at makhloaa@musc.edu.
FloppyCatalog is delivered as is with no implications of technical support or warranty of any kind due to malfunction or loss of data. Use at your own risk.
Bugs Fixed in 3.0.1:
Finally fixed bug that truncated file icons when a file having only black and white icons is displayed in color.
Eliminated a nasty bug that crashed the machine when archiving a PC formmatted disk (actually it was just a diagnostic DebugStr. Ahhhh!!)
Fixed bug that drew highlighted text in black on black if highlight color was black.
New in version 3.0:
•The catalog is now a regular document (instead of being stored in the preference file).This makes the catalogue(s) more protable and distributable. It also alleviates RAM requirements by using multiple small catalogues instead of a single large one.
•Kind, size and modification date of files and folders are now displayed. The display list can be sorted using any of these criteria. If the names are too long to fit in their columns, they are truncated in the middle (the Copland way!)
•New Find Dialog supports multiple criteria and extracts search results in a separate window. Search results can be exported as text file. Very similar to system 7.5 Find File. You can also search multiple archives at the same time.
•Exporting catalogs as text files with tabs.
•Size, Font and Icon size options for display.
•Double clicking items opens them in the Finder.
•Printing options to set margin sizes.
•Identification of disks using creation date in addition to name.
•Option to avoid archiving invisible files.
•Aliases are correctly displayed in italics
•Copy support for file names. Copy/Paste support for disks.
•Option clicking on arrows opens/closes all subfolders.
•Archiving disks is faster and displays the items remaining to archive.
•Catalog size is now slightly smaller even though more information is stored.
Instructions:
The interface is very intuitive (at least I hope so). However here are some not so intuitive facts:
Cataloging disks can be done in 3 ways: 1)Select archive disk from the Catalog menu. 2)Insert a disk while FloppyCatalog is in the foreground. The disk is archived and then immediately ejected. 3) Drop a disk on FloppyCatalog's icon in the Finder. The disk is archived in a new catalog.
Use method 1 to archive non-removable drives. Method 2 is suitable for quickly archiving a series of removable disks.
Speeding up the display can be achieved by using Generic icons (Catalog menu->Icons->Generic) and not showing creators (Catalog menu->Show->Creators). This is because the icons and the creator's name have to be fetched from the Mac's Desktop Database.
Exporting will export the size, date and creator only if they are currently displayed. Spaces are used to indent the file names to show the hierarchy of the files and folders. Tabs are used to separate the size, date and creator fields. The size is exported as a plain number in kilobytes to facilitate importing the data in a spreadsheet or database. (I tried it successfully with ClarisWorks). Exporting is *much* faster if you do not display creator.
Finding items using multiple criteria is a little bit different from the Finder's Find File (System 7.5) . You can combine the criteria using an and/or pop-up menu. Note that both operators have the same priority and they are processed from top to bottom sequentially. (i.e [A or B and C or D ] is equivalent to [[A or B] and C ]or D] ). The date field format depends on your system configuration . As a hint, the current date is filled in by default. Note that you can also use the long date format in the date field e.g: in the American system January 1,1996 or Jan 1 1996 are both accepted in addition to 1/1/96. If the date is invalid, you will hear a beep when you press find.
Sorting by name can be slow in big catalog documents. Be patient. Sorting by creator actually sorts by the creator code and not the creator's real name; otherwise it will be unacceptably slow.
Searching multiple archives is done by choosing "Select others" from the pop-up menu at the top of the Find Dialog. You will be presented with a modified Open Dialog. Choose the files you want searched then hit done. Note: the names of these files are remembered the next time you launch FloppyCatalog, so it is a good idea to select ALL your catalogs and search them together. This will not affect the RAM requirements or the speed. Known bug: this won't work if you move the files around.
Printing output is exactly what you see on the screen. To print a disk label, select the disk and choose Print Selected Disks from File Menu. Use a small font (e.g Times 9), no icons and do not display creator, size or date. In the preferences, you can set the margins in pixels.
Other uses of FloppyCatalog. I use FloppyCatalog to browse my Hard drive when I want to display folder sizes. It is much easier than using the finder. I also use it occasionally to do searches that need an and/or combination (e.g names containing .sit OR .sea). I also keep a catalog of frequently used AppleShare volumes, so that I can get to nested folders very quickly.
Contacting the author: My e-mail address is makhloaa@musc.edu . I appreciate all feedback (bugs, thank yous, suggestions…). I spent a lot of effort writing version 3.0 and I thought about releasing it as shareware, but decided that a free copy will generate more feedback. So if you like it, just e-mail me. In fact, most of FloppyCatalog 3.0 features' were requests by version 2.0 users!
Limitations: FloppyCatalog's biggest flaw is that it has to load ALL the contents of opened Catalogs in RAM. This limits the number of catalogs that can be opened at one time (As a rough estimate, displaying the contents of a CD with 2000 files on it requires about 80K of RAM). Fortunately, you can still search multiple catalogs on disk (see above). FloppyCatalog also requires extra RAM when printing, sorting and searching. So these operations might fail if you are tight on memory. In most -but not all- cases, an Out of Memory message will be displayed.
Planned features:
I am considering adding the following features if I get requests for them:
*Displaying Stuffit and Compactor contents.
*Disk based I/O to alleviate RAM requirements.
*A separate drop-on applet to automatically archive disks and eject them in one step.
