This easy-to-use and fast application creates catalog files of CD-ROMs, hard disks, floppies, ZIPs and almost everything that spins. Using the powerful search functions you can easily locate and display files or folders.
For more information, please launch CDFinder and select "Help" in the Apple menu. A detailed list explaining the improvements of this new version can be found at the end of this document.
While reading this document please keep in mind that English is not my native language. Nevertheless I hope that the translation is acceptable.
System requirements
CDFinder needs System 7.0 or newer and at least a 68020-CPU or a Power-Mac. Since it also uses Color QuickDraw, it can't run on any of the older Mac Plus, SE, Classic and the PowerBook 100.
I did my tests on many different Power Macs, native and using the 68k emulation.
CDFinder is fully compatible to MacOS 8!
If drag&drop is installed, the application uses it in some parts (see below).
Limitations
The unregistered version of CDFinder will annoy you at every launch with a little dialog reminding you of the benefits of paying your shareware fee. The number of catalogs is also reduced to 25, which is surely enough to evaluate the application and its functions.
Registration
CDFinder has the following pricing:
1- 10 single user licenses, $15 per user
11-24 single user licenses, $12 per user
25-49 single user licenses, $10 per user
50+ single user licenses, $8 per user
A Site License costs $500 (roughly equal to 50 users) and covers all locations for your organization within a 160 kilometer radius of your site (100 miles). One big advantage of a Site License is that you do not need to keep track of how many people at your site are using the software.
A World-Wide License costs $2000 and it covers all locations for your organization on the planet earth.
For additional $5 I will send you a floppy disk containing the most recent version of the program (by airmail, if possible).
Updates are free and can be obtained at the CDFinder-Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/8423/index.html
Payment directly to the author (Cash only!)
You can pay Cash by simply adding the money to your registration form. This works quite well if the envelope is made of thick paper. I do also accept cash in different currencies, please contact me! You can either use the SimpleText document enclosed with CDFinder as a registration form or use the "Registration Form" command found in the "Special" menu in CDFinder.
My postal address is:
Norbert M. Doerner
Tannenstraße 2
63867 Johannesberg
Germany
If you fill in your registration form without using the dialog provided by CDFinder, please print carefully. My brand new biological character recognition system (BRAIN 3.0) still needs some training ;-)
Due to very popular demand, payment is now also possible by using the great Kagi service!
Payment via Kagi (anything else...)
Just open the Register program that accompanies CDFinder. Enter your name, your email address, and the number of single user licenses you desire (or Site or Word-Wide licenses). Save or Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi. Kagi handles my payment processing.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi. Their email address is sales@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an email message or you can Save the data to a file and you can attach that file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via email are processed within a week. You will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 20 days and if you provide a correct internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement. If you require a written receipt, please keep in mind that even by airmail it might take a week for a letter to arrive.
If you are paying with Cash or USD Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi
1442-A Walnut Street #392-1UJ
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi cannot accept checks in other currencies, the conversion rate for non-USD checks is around USD 15 per check and that is just not practical.
If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You might want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include a copy of the form with their payment. Kagi can not invoice your company, you need to act on my behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end.
Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Check or Invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed.
Payments send via postal mail take time to reach Kagi and then up to 10 days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi when the form is processed.
Protection
CDFinder has a protection scheme and when you pay, I tell you how to indicate to CDFinder that you have paid the registration fee. If you do not have an email address, please enter your complete postal address and please remember, I do not know what country you live in so please enter that into the postal address also.
If you pay by sending me cash directly to Germany, I will send you your personal registration keyword by snail mail (airmail!) too.
Legal stuff
CDFinder is shareware.
The application "CDFinder" and all included materials are protected by copyright law. You may not disassemble it or modify it with similar tools.
You may copy the program together with all additional documents as often as you want, as long as you don't modify any part of it! You may not sell it or use it commercially in any other way without my written consent.
If you want to distribute CDFinder on a shareware collection CD-ROM or anything like that, simply inform me with an e-mail or a written letter. I'd also like to have a copy of the CD-ROM, if possible...
For a trial period of 30 days you may freely use the program. After that, you need to register it.
In absolute no way am I responsible for any damage occurring by the use of the software.
Contacting the author
Just send me e-mail to
Doerner@kagi.com
My postal address:
Norbert M. Doerner
Tannenstrasse 2
63867 Johannesberg
Germany
The story
The whole thing started on one of those days that found me frantically searching my zillions of floppies and CD-ROMs for one particular file. Of course, I just found it on the last possible volume.
After this enlightening event I decided to search my huge software collection for a suitable cataloging tool. Most unfortunately, my search turned out empty.
Some of the tools I found required system extensions - which I do not like very much. One even created alias files of the contents of the CD-ROMs, a stupid behavior if you have some million files on several disks (the Mac OS does not like that!). Some programs were simply too slow or did puke at large CD-ROMs. Some expensive commercial applications were not native or would not run in the background. All of the tools didn't even support drag&drop!
So I made up my mind and started my own little project. Since some of my friends were quite positive about my ideas, I decided to put the results into a shareware program called "CDFinder". The application should be easy to use, very fast, support drag&drop, work in the background and include powerful search tools.
And here it is!!
System requirements
CDFinder needs System 7.0 or newer and at least a 68020-CPU or a Power-Mac. Since it also uses Color QuickDraw, it can't run on any of the older Mac Plus, SE, Classic and the PowerBook 100. I did my tests on many different Power Macs, native and using the 68k emulation. If you have drag&drop installed, the application uses it in some parts (see "Help").
Theory of operation
CDFinder displays every known catalog in its main window. You can sort the content by name, size, or label. By changing the name of a catalog, you can influence the sort order for a given catalog (put a space in front of the name to let it appear right on top, if you sort by name).
Using drag&drop (if installed) or "Create Catalog…", you can create a new catalog of a volume. To create lots of catalogs at once, try using "Batch Create…", which will eject any volume afterwards.
To display the content of a catalog, simply double click it or select it and press "return". To obtain more information about any catalog or any object inside a catalog, simply use "Information".
But what is a bunch of catalogs without the ability to search them? Nothing! That's why you should take a very close look at the window "Find…". It will allow you to enter the type and content of information you look for, and also narrow the range by including only catalogs with a selected label to the search. You can even search just the found objects!
Performance
CDFinder is absolutely optimized for the PowerPC processor but runs very fast on the "older" Macs as well. Another positive aspect is the simple fact that you can move the program into the background during time consuming processes to work with other things.
However, CDFinder must handle a real big amount of data, just go and check the size of your catalog folder! A very simple way to improve the performance is to increase the memory partition of CDFinder. Please note that increasing the file system cache using the control panel "Memory" will have no valuable effect at all, on the contrary. CDFinder is using it's own sophisticated caching mechanism that simply knows more about the state and importance of the data than the file system.
Special things...
Since CDFinder is basically designed to handle huge amounts of huge CD-ROMs and other volumes whose contents will not change at all or only very seldom, the program does not check if anything changes on a volume while the catalog is being created. This can lead to some problems if the volume is in fact changed, which is quite likely to occur for file server volumes. In that case, the content of the catalog may not be identical to the content of the volume.
Due to the nature of the current MacOS file system, CDFinder cannot catalog more than 32,000 items inside a single folder. Since you theoretically could create such folders, any items after the first 32,000 will be ignored.
It is possible to change the name of a catalog by using the "Information" window. You can also add a comment, which is displayed (the first line only) in the main window if you have chosen "View With Icons".
History
The most actual version is available at the Info-Mac archives and the CDFinder-Homepage at:
If you use Internet Config, you can also open the "About CDFinder…" dialog and simply click inside the http address!
1.5 (August 29, 1997)
- Catalog files can now be exported into text files with various options.
- The list of found objects can also be exported into a text file with various options.
- It is possible to add the search results to any previous results. Thus you can have much more powerful search requests.
- A new window shows interesting statistics (they used to be inside the "About" dialog, but I think nobody ever actually saw them...).
- CDFinder can now look inside Compact Pro archives. A lot of thanks to Bill Goodman for the information!
- You can delete single files or whole folder structures from a catalog (press the Delete key, bypass the dialog by pressing "Alt" if you're certain...). However it is not possible to undo that!
- It is possible to use AppleScript to create a catalog of a volume.
- The window with the found objects now optionally includes a column with the name of the catalog.
- When pressing the "Cmd" key before starting to create a catalog, CDFinder lets you change the relevant catalog settings in a new dialog.
- CDFinder now remembers the way the found objects were sorted. After a new search process, the found objects will be sorted by the same way again.
- Deleting a catalog is now much faster.
- The dialog that lets you to select a volume to be catalogged is improved. It now allows you use the arrow keys to switch to the next or last volume (try "Tab", too!)
- A lot of bugs regarding StuffIt archives were removed. IMPORTANT: Version 1.3 of CDFinder had a few bugs regarding StuffIt archives that could cause the contents of a catalog file being wrong. If you used this option in 1.3, it would be a good idea to update your catalog files. A lot of CDFinder users did help me to resolve these issues. Thank you very much!
- Some quite serious bugs were found and removed by using Onyx's new debugger "Spotlight". Cool!
- A lot of minor fixes and improvements.
1.3 (May 7, 97)
- A complete new window was necessary to display the following new preferences:
- CDFinder can now ignore invisible objects when creating a catalog.
- StuffIt archives can now be scanned.
- It is possible to turn off the display of some columns.
- While opening an archive during the creation of a catalog, CDFinder displays its name in the progress dialog.
- A new icon is used for archives that are scanned. If a catalog window displays the contents of an archive, a new little symbol close to the column header "Name" is drawn.
- CDFinder now displays its dialogs and windows much better in Japanese versions of the Mac OS!
- It is now possible to search the found objects. This has two big advantages: you now have more than two search options and if you found too many objects, you can simply narrow your search very fast.
- You can remove a found object from the list by throwing it into the trash or pressing the delete key.
- The folder "Desktop Folder", "Trash", and "Network Trash Can" are now handled as being invisible, even though they are not really invisible (the flag is not set by the Mac OS!!).
- Names of objects are now displayed condensed if necessary. If that is not sufficient the name will be truncated as before.
- When you are deleting a catalog, CDFinder now always asks for permission. You can bypass this dialog by holding the "alt" key.
- When trying to catalog a volume of which an older catalog already existed, CDFinder now asks you if you want to update the existing catalog or create a new one. Some people told me that they had CDROMs with different contents but equal names and formatting dates, so I added this feature.
- You can now select an object not only by typing the first key but some more keys in sequence .
- Some minor bugs were corrected.
Note: Due to the most unfortunate structure of StuffIt archives, CDFinder must read most of the archive file to scan it. Thus if you have large archives or a lot of these files cataloging can be quite slow. I will try to speed up things a little in a future version.
If you want to know more about the other older versions of CDFinder, be sure to visit the CDFinder-Homepage.
The undiscovered country
I am planning the following improvements for the next releases of CDFinder:
- CDFinder will finally be able to print window and catalog contents.
- A much improved help system.
- It will be possible to use folder to order catalogs.
- The look and feel will be similar to MacOS 8.
- It will be possible to sort the contents of catalog windows.
- Contextual menus might be included.
But this has yet to be discovered and everything depends on how much time I will be able to spare :-))
Acknowledgements
First of all I would like to thank my wonderful wife Silvia. Without her patience, the development process would not have been possible.
I also want to thank all those who helped my doing the first beta testing and thereby provided invaluable assistance checking the functions and user interface of the software: Wolfgang Warmbold, Martin Girschick, Patrick Röder, Michael Stunz, Manfred Kunkel, Ralf Schlobinski, Heiko and Manfred Richter.
The comments and notes of all registered users also helped a lot.
Please send me ideas, comments, notes and Cocoa Puffs or Star Trek books!
