chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (07/15/88)
Can anyone make recommendations on good Disk Catalog programs? I'm currently playing with a number of different ones, and I'm relatively unhappy with all of them. The ones I've tried: o Diskfinder by W&M. A commercial DA. o A couple of different HyperCard Stacks o d'Librarian, the early, public version of the commercial program DiskRanger. One of the things I want is the ability to sort all the disks together in various ways -- especially by name, so I can track down duplicates and old versions of things. Others would be by date and by type, but they're not as important. I also want to be able to print both a text and an (optional) formatted version of the reports. Multiple libraries would be nice. I'd like one of all my PD stuff, another for my distribution floppies. It should be reasonably fast, and allow me to update a disk when I change it, easily add/delete disks, etc, etc. None of the stuff I've looked at is close enough for me to want to use. Here's what I don't like about what I've used: o DiskFinder doesn't do reporting. If you want to look up a specific file, fine. But create a listing to carry with you? nah. DiskFinder does one other thing I consider instant death. It writes on all the floppies. It not only keeps a data file in its Diskfinder folder on the hard disk, but it writes out to each floppy as well. I won't let ANYTHING write random files on my distribution disks, thank you. Also, it references all disks by number, rather than by the disk name. That's a lazy-programmer's way of doing it. 0n the other hand, I really like the idea of doing it as a DA, since it's soooo convenient. o the HC stacks I've seen are generally slow, and have all sorts of interesting quirks and very weak reporting. No way to generate full reports, either. o d'Librarian. I don't know how much better DiskRanger is than this version, but I hope it's been fixed to not crash. d'Librarian also has limitations on # of disks and # of files that make it useless to me. It's also quirky. So what do you folks recommend? If I can't find anything I like, what I'll probably do is write a HyperCard stack to do it my way, so other folks can take a look at it and declare it slow, quirky and with wark reporting... chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ I don't work for no 'Toon!
halff@nprdc.arpa (Henry Halff) (07/15/88)
In article <59987@sun.uucp> chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >Can anyone make recommendations on good Disk Catalog programs? Try DiskFit from Ideaform, Inc. It has most of the features that you need. hh
geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks) (07/16/88)
In article <59987@sun.uucp> chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >Can anyone make recommendations on good Disk Catalog programs? > I've tried Disk Librarian 1.82. Slow but massively complete. It isn't completely reliable on later versions of the system (sometimes bombs) which can be annoying, but if you can make the catalog, it is very complete.
sund@hurratio.tde.lth.se (Lars Sundstr|m) (07/28/88)
Anyone heard about DIRectory? This is a disk catalog application which is somewhat different compared with the competitors. Some of the features: * Disks are shown in a window with icons and names listed in alphabetic or chronologic order. * It shows the files just as in Finder with icons and all. Even the correct positions of icons(small or normal sized) and windows are used. * Clean up command replacing the position of files in alphabetic order. * Smart Find File/Disk with whole or partial string either from beginning of catalog or from current selected position. * "Get Info" command similar to the one found in Finder. * Reports on paper with filter functions. * Possible to merge catalog files * Add/Delete/Update disks is simple to do. * Launch/Transfer application either with the usual "getfile" dialog or double-click as in Finder if the corresponding disk is mounted. * On-Line Help (even it isn't needed). ...and much more. DIRectory v2.5 was released as shareware couple of months ago. However, a faster and a much more powerful version (3.0) will be released in the near future as a commercial product and is guaranteed to hold at least 650 disks! Two weeks ago I tested a beta version. I logged 110 disks without quiting and generated a 190 pages report without any problems at all. Lars Sundstrom / DIRectory tester