NOTE: The following review is my opinion. Feel free to copy it, share it, reprint it, use it, ignore it, or throw it away as you please. I went through quite a few disk catalog programs to find one that would do what I wanted (or close to it) and I thought I would relate my experiences. Hopefully, someone will find some use out of it! Also, although I haven't followed it closely at all, I believe someone on the MICHTRON bulletin board on GEnie is or has taken a survey on the perfect disk catalog program. You may want to look into this also if you are interested in this area. Disk Directory Catalogers/Librarians Introduction: A disk directory catalog program will help you keep track of the many disks you accumilate. The easiest program to use would be a directory printing program. Using the program, you would just insert each disk and print a directory listing to a printer. While easy, however, it is not very flexible. Deleting files, adding files, adding comments, and obtaining a "pretty" printout are all out of reach. Following is a review of nine public domain (or shareware) disk directory catalog programs which are available on many bulletin boards. I have yet to find the "perfect" cataloger, but some are very good! The programs included in this review are: FDI, HDSCAN, DISKSCAN, DISKTOP2, DISKCAT, DISKLIB, THE MENU, DISCAT20, and THE DIRECTOR. A generic database program could also be used for this purpose, but when the disk collection grows to 30 disks or more with 10 or more programs per disk, a major effort is requried to add all the programs to the database. The advantage of a database, of course, is that you can specialize it. You can have all the fields you need, you can print different reports with only the information you want, and you can sort on any field. Where the specialized disk catalog program has an advantage, however, is in the speed of entry. Instead of seperately typing in every program on a disk, you simply place the disk in the drive and push a button. The program reads the directory and adds it to the library. From here, some catalog programs allow you to edit the library, adding comments, deleting entries, or adding entries. This method is relatively fast and is very convenient. In fact, I have found that I am using both methods, both a disk cataloger and a database program. I have the cataloger to show me the exact content of each of my backup disks so I can easily find a program should it need "replacing", and I use the data base program to organize my "working" programs by catagories of games, utilities, graphics, etc. A word of warning is to be cautious of so called "virus" or "worm" programs, which act like a normal program but do devious actions at the same time, such as erasing a hard drive or something similar. Since every disk you own will probably be read with a catalog program, your disks are vulnerable to this type of maliciousness. I would advise write protecting all disks used and avoiding those programs which must write to a disk to catalog it. A few of the reviewed programs do write a disk name to every disk. This is an advantage in that when a disk is reread later, the program already knows the disk title, and the title can often be more descriptive than the normal eight letter volume name. The two disadvantages are the potential of a virus program, and when you want to catalog a protected disk. These, of course, cannot be written to because you may change a "checksum" which the program verifies in order to run. Common Features: First is drive support. A good disk catalog program should be able to access any drive, A through P. This allows you to catalog any drive, including a hard drive or even a ram disk if needed. A couple of the programs are for drive A only. If you are a 520 owner with a double sided external drive, you would still be limited to cataloging single sided disks. The second feature is the use of volume names. Some of the programs use the disk volume name, some let you create an optional name, and as mentioned above, some even write this optional name to the disk. The third feature is the information read from the disk. The information available includes: disk name, folders, file name, file size, file date, file time, file read and write attributes, and the file path name. A program may read only some or all of the available information, and some give you a choice on what you want included in your catalog. The next feature is how the program allows you to manipulate the data once it is read. Some features are: Add files, delete files, sort files, delete disks, add comments, search for programs, and find duplicates. The next area is output support. Output can be to the screen, the printer, or to disk. Functions to be covered are printer support, specifying which information should appear in report, and output in different formats for storage or use in other programs such as word processors or data bases. The final area I cover is extras such as GEM support, ability to update a catalog, rename files, etc. THE REVIEWS: DISKTOP2: The version I reviewed was Ver 2.0, and is the most limited program of the bunch, but not necessarily the worst. DISKTOP2 was written by Todd Burkey of MindTools and is very nicely done. The screen color is a very pleasing blue and you may use keyboard or mouse input. Help is available online by simply pressing the HELP key. The screen looks like this: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disk Name | File Name | REV 2.0 | Disk Name | File Name | | DISKTOP | | | | By | | | | TODD | | | | BURKEY | | | | M T | | | | I O | | | | N O | | | | D L | | | | S | | | | #Files | | | | 0000 | | | | #Disks | | | | 0000 | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Option: (Press Help) ADD A ADD B KILLIT FIND SCAN PRINT QUIT UP DOWN YES NO --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are eleven commands available. Add A and Add B allows you to read a disk from drive A or B. When read, the program asks you for a disk name (which may be a number or description or whatever you want) and then displays the directory in the two column format on the screen. KILLIT allows you to delete a filename from the list. This is valuable if you don't want .RSC files showing up or something. The next command available is FIND, which searches for a filename. An exact match must be made, with no wildcards. The next command is SCAN, which runs through all the filenames read in. PRINT does not send the info to the printer, but instead prints to a file for use with a word processor or data base. QUIT of course quits the program, with a prompt to save the listings or not. UP scrolls up a page, while DOWN scrolls down for searching through your disk listings. Finally, YES and NO commands are available to answer questions such as whether to save the listings or not. As I mentioned, the program is very nicely done and is easy to use, especially with on-line help. DISKTOP2 makes it possible to load disk directories into your favorite word processor easily. If all you need in your catalog is the file name and disk name, this program will do the job. DISKCAT: DISKCAT is shareware by S. Nies and was written as a companion to the hardrive utility TURTLE. The nice thing about DISKCAT is it is GEM based, making it intuitive to use. There are three menus at the top of DISKCAT with the drop down menus shown. Just below that is a sample of the screen printout: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESK CATALOGUE ENTRY |ACC1| |READ NEW DISK| |FIND DUPLICATE| |ACC2| |SAVE LISTING | |DELETE ENTRY | ------ |PRINT LISTING| ---------------- |QUIT | -------------- DISK DATE TIME FILENAME 1 11/20/85 12:06 AM A:\ARC.TTP Desc: This is an excellent Archiver program with several functions. 1 3/18/88 4:41 PM A:\VOLUME.PRG Desc: Version two of a program to change the volume name on disks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESK has the description of the program as well as any accessories you may have loaded. The selections under CATALOGUE are fairly self explanatory. Note that DISKCAT uses only disk drive A. The ENTRY menu has two commands, Find Duplicate and Delete Entry. Find Duplicate searches for identical filenames in the listings to let you know of repeated entries. Delete Entry seems to delete the file from the disk, so use caution! Below the menu is the dislplay screen. This has one heading line, and the rest is room for the listings. The heading shows DISK (name), DATE, TIME, and FILENAME. A directory filename is displayed on two lines, the first lining up with the above headings and the second line for a description of the file (one full line) as shown above. The disk number is entered when Read New Disk is selected. The "Desc:" field is edited by clicking the mouse over an entry, and entries are scrolled by using the standard GEM window. The FILENAME entry shows the complete path, which is nice. When a listing is printed, the Header is not printed. This program is easy to use, and I found no bugs. I was not crazy about the printout, though it does allow for long descriptions and is largely a matter of taste. The biggest flaw I found in the program is support for only drive A. DISKLIB: I reviewed Ver 0.91. This is a copyrighted program written by Tom Ekdom but available for free. It is not GEM based. A nice help file accompanies the program, in which the author asks for suggestions for improvement and hints at possible GEM application. As is, I found the interface fairly unfriendly, but usable. The command screen appears as below: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISK LIBRARIAN V0.91 (C) 1987 Tom Ekdom. Free distribution ok. LIBRARIES: No Libraries Found ENTER NAME OF LIBRARY TO CREATE: " " NOT FOUND. CREATE IT? (Y/N): Y Files/Disks/Catalog/Remove/reName/Load/Print/Quit (F,D,C,R,N,L,P,Q)? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The commands are each available by typing one character. "Files" is a "find" command which accepts wildcards only at the end of the specifiction. It will find all matches to the entered filename. "Disks" lists the contents of a disk. Enter the name of a disk in the library and the files will be displayed. "Catalog" is the main command, and reads the disk directory. Any drive may be specified, and you are prompted to enter an eight character or less disk name. A disk already in the library will be updated. "Remove" erases a disk from the library. You also have the option of removing the disk name from the original disk. "Rename" allows you to change a disk name in the library. Place the disk to rename in a drive and press the appropriate key. "Load" creates a new library, allowing you to have one for games, one for utilities, etc. Be sure to save the old library before loading the new one. "Print" toggles the printer on and off. Thus, to print the contents of a disk, press P which toggles printer on, then press D for Disks and enter the diskname you wish to print. It will then be printed. Hit P again to stop printing. "Quit" exits the program with prompts to save your data. DISKLIB displays six file parameters. They are Filename, Size, Date, Time, Diskname, and Path (if any). This heading is printed along with the listing when Print is selected. There is no provision for comments to be added. For fast operation, DISKLIB has an accompanying program called FILEFIND to accompish file finding. It loads in only the filenames and is thus much faster than using DISKLIB itself. DISKLIB works quickly. It has the added advantage of being able to use any drive. Unfortunately, DISKLIB writes to every disk it reads, and this feature is not defeatable. This write is to a "hidden" file and is the diskname you enter with a .ID extention added. The only way to remove the name is to format the disk, use a sector editor, or use the Remove function. DISKLIB is not usable for protected disks, or for "full" disks that have no room for any more writing. FDI: The next program is a full featured non-GEM disk catalog program called FDI, or Floppy Disk Indexer. An extensive help file comes with the program that explains all the features. FDI is apparently public domain and is presented by Rod Waehner. The display screen for FDI is extensive and is reproduced below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sunday, 04/10/88 02:27 FDI-A Floppy Disk Indexing Program -------------------------------------------------------------------------------DISK: FILE: DESCRIPTION: FOLDER: DATE: TIME: SIZE: SOURCE: TYPE: DATE ADDED: COMMENTS: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FILESYSTEM IN USE: CONTAINS __ ENTRIES ACTION: Add a new entry Next Entry Beginning of file Output to Printer Delete this record Previous entry End of file Quit the program Find an entry Switch prime index Index a disk Update this entry List to screen View disk directory ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ENTER NAME OF FILESYSTEM TO BE USED: To begin, you enter the name of the library to be retrieved or created. The filesystem consists of three files: a data file and two index files which should always be kept together. After a filesystem is created, read your first disk with the "Index" option. FDI uses only disk drive A so place your disk in this drive. A new screen appears which asks for a disk ID, up to four characters. This ID is written to the disk, but at least with FDI, this option is defeatable by writing "N" in the field "Write ID to disk". Press F10 to continue to the main screen. The "Add" function allows you to manually add a filename/disk to add hidden or nonstandard files. "Begining of file" takes you to the starting file, while "End of file" displays the last file in the library. "Delete this file" deletes the current record. "Find an entry" allows you to search for a filename or diskname. The name need not be complete, for example entering "m" will find all files begining with "m". "Index a disk" was explained above. "List to screen" displays a new screen showing Disk ID, Filename, Description, Date modified, Time, and the Size of the file. Options available are Next Page, Previous Page, Up arrow, Down arrow, and F10 to select. Pressing F10 will display the selected file back on the main screen. "Next Entry" displays the next file in sequence, while "Previous entry" displayes the preceding file. "Output to Printer" prints the information as shown in "List to screen" with the heading lines included. Report is sorted by file name or disk ID, depending on current index. "Quit the program" returns you to desktop. "Switch prime index" changes index from default filename to disk ID or visa-versa. "Update this entry" allows you to edit file entries on the upper half of the screen. Used mainly to enter file descriptions. "View disk directory" prompts you to enter a disk and displays filenames, date last modified, time, and size. As you can see by the description, this program is very extensive and would be highly recommended except for two problems. The first is that, as mentioned above, FDI uses only drive A. Of course, if you only have drive A or if your drive A is double-sided, this may not be a problem. The other problem is it is highly disk intensive, making it very slow. On every editing action of the program, it writes to disk immediately. Thus, for every comment to be added, the program does a write. To list the files to screen, FDI must reread the disk. If FDI had been memory resident instead, I could more highly recommend it. THE MENU: This is one of the best programs of the group. It was written by M. F. Hollenbeck for Future SoftWare Systems and is copyrighted but is in the public domain. The version I tested is 1.0. The Menu is totally GEM based, has online help, and is versatile. The somewhat edited screen looks as follows (it also has the familiar scroll bars on side and bottom): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESK FILE SEARCH/SORT PRINT STYLE HELP |ACC1| |OPEN | |NAME | |ALL | |DEFAULT CLR| |HELP| |ACC2| |SAVE | |TYPE | |BUFFER| |INVERSE CLR| ------ ------ |ADD | |DATE | |ERASE | |STATUS LINE| |DELETE | |DISK # | -------- |LAYOUT LINE| |ADD COMNT | |FOLDER | ------------- |EDIT COMNT| |COMMENTS | |QUIT | |BLOCK SEARCH | ------------ |FIND PATH | |SORT | TOTAL FILES> CURRENT LINE> LAST DISK> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Desk" contains any accessories you have loaded as well as the credits notice for the program. "File" has seven commands. Open File and Save File allow you to retreive or replace a disk library from disk. Add Files is the main command used to read a disk directory. Delete File allows you to remove a file from the listing. Add comments, when selected, will automatically prompt you to insert comments when a disk directory is read. Edit comments will allow you to change or add comments to directory listings already read in. Finally, Quit Program returns you to the desktop. "Search\Sort" has nine selections under it. Six of these allow you to search or sort by name, type, date, disk number, folder, or comments. Thus, by using comments such as Game, Utility, and Graphics, you could sort your programs by catagory regardless of the disk they came from. The next command available is Block Search, which will find all occurances of a type and place it in the buffer. Find Path finds a file and shows the disk number and the complete pathname. Finally, Sort will sort the library according to the field type selected above. "Print" allows you to print all (everything), print the buffer (loaded through successive Block Searches), or erase the buffer. "Style" affects the display screen. You can have the default colors (whatever the program was loaded up with) or the inverse colors. The heading line can show either the screen layout or system status of how many files, current line selected, last disk number, and free space available. Finally, the "Help" menu contains descriptions of all the above functions. The Menu reads in a disk directory, showing disk number, filename, date of last modification, whether it belongs to a folder or not, and finally some spaces for comments. The listing is scrolled through the scroll bars on the side of the window. Printing can be done to the printer or to a file. The Menu can access all disk drives. The Menu does not write to disks. Overall, I give The Menu very high marks, and I feel it is one of the better public domain programs available. DISCAT20: This is a shareware program written by Matt Leber. You have to pay for DISCAT20 and it is not GEM based, but it offers the ability to print labels as well as being an excellent disk cataloguer. There are three menu screens as shown below: Edit Menu: Main Menu: Label Menu: 1. Add Dir to Catalog 1. Edit Menu 1. 2.75x2.75 Labels 2. Edit Cat Entries 2. Get Cat From Disk 2. 2.75x1.875 Labels 3. Sort Catalog 3. Get Old Cat From Disk 3. Spaces to Insert 4. Clear Catalog 4. Save Cat to Disk Left Margin 5. Change Start Disk # 5. Output Catalog 4. Print Test 6. Delete Disk fr Cat 6. Print Labels 5. Print Labels 7. Return to Main Menu 7. Exit Cataloger 6. Return to Main 8. Credits The first screen after the shareware notice is the Main Menu screen with eight selections. Most of these are self explanatory, especially if you've read all of the above! The Old Cat selection is for compatibiltiy with version 1.3 of this program, since V2.0 saves in a more efficient format. When you select Output Catalog, you can write to the screen, the printer, or to disk, which saves the output in a readable ASCII format. When you select Edit Menu, you get a second menu (on the left). Selecting Add directory prompts you for a disk number (automatically incremented, but editable each time) and for a drive letter. DISCAT13 then reads the directory. Selecting Edit entries then takes you to the edit screen: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Up Arrow - up line Down Arrow - down line Control up - up page Control down - down page Control T - Top Control B - Bottom Function 8 - Search Function 10 - Return to Menu Function 1 - Add/Del File from disk label - Delete File -------------------------------------------------------------------------- FILENAME DISK # Description -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ARC.TTP 1 Excellent Archival program. DISCAT20.PRG 1 Disk Catalog program. etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here you may scroll through the listings, delete files, add or edit comments, and add or delete files from the disk label. This is very useful because you may want all the files listed in the library, but the label probably has no need to show .RSC or .DOC files. The dislpay of DISCAT20 is very simple, and shows only File Name, Disk number, and leaves the rest of the line for comments. The final menu is for printing labels and is used in conjunction with the edit screen above, where you select the files to be printed. The print menu allows you to select two different size labels, insert spaces in the left margin to allow easier alignment, print a test label, and of course to print a disk label. The only things missing are the ability to update disks and some of the file parameters such as file size. However, the ease of use of DISCAT13 outwieghs this requirement for me. I can wholeheartedly recommend this program. THE DIRECTOR: One of the recent issues of START magazine included THE DIRECTOR. This is a disk directory reader that is designed to be used with a database. It is very flexible and easy to use. As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, the use of a database for disk directories is probably the most useful format, though not the easiest. THE DIRECTOR makes it much easier! THE DIRECTOR allows you to select extentions to be included or excluded from your listings (such as .RSC files, for example). You may have any combination of the following in your completed directory file: File name, Extension, Disk Name, Alternate Disk Name, File Size, File Date, File Time, and File Path. You may save your output in several formats: ASCII, Delimited for Databases, DIF, SDF or Zoomracks/Cardstak. If you have a decent database progam (or even a word processor), THE DIRECTOR makes an excellent disk directory tool. Two other programs I have recently been made aware of but have not had time to experiment with are DISKSCAN and HDSCAN. They are by the same maker of DISKTOP (Todd Burkey), and are actually complete disk directory managers. By this, I mean that not only do they read and store disk directories, but they also allow you to copy, delete, move, rename, search files, and more. As you may have guessed, HDSCAN is for Hard Drive users. The main difference is in the handling of disk names since for the Hard Drive it is only several large partitions. Here is a list of commands: Create a directory, Rescan disk, Invoke selected program, Add tagged files to existing ARC file, Run external programs, Verbose ARC, select files, Compare files, delete disk from database, erase tagged files, globally run external program on tagged files, page up/down, go to top/bottom, scroll up/down, mass copy tagged files, move to next disk, sort files, change name and/or attributes of file, select match, tag files, retag copied files, untag file, view a file, view a file in Hex, and more. As I said, I haven't had much time to use either of these almost identical programs, but they look to be very extensive. You can also set up macros and bind them to the function keys for ease of use. If you need a complete file management program, these may fit the bill. Well, that about concludes this review. If you are curious, I use DISCAT20 and THE DIRECTOR the most. DISCAT20 is great when you are giving a disk to a friend and you need a quick sorted listing of the contents with comments added to explain the programs. THE DIRECTOR allows the inclusion of file size and other attributes when needed, but is not quite as fast to use. I have also kept THE MENU, and still have to try out DISKSCAN and HDSCAN more extensively. The other programs, for one reason or another, were simply not for me. I hope this review is helpful for you in deciding which program to use, or in deciding which features you need. I am sure there are programs I have missed, and possibly features I have missed in the reviewed programs, so please use this review as a guideline. Oh, finally, where do you get these programs? THE DIRECTOR was in the Special Issue Number 2 of START magazine (on disk). I have found the following on GENIE: #4109 DISKLIB.ARC 24K V0.91 #3576 DC20DEMO.ARC 33K DISCAT20 demo version #3573 THEMENU.ARC 112K The Menu, public domain #3420 DISKCAT.ARC 38K Turtle companion #3415 HD-SCAN.ARC 43K HDSCAN shareware #3235 DISCAT13.ARC 38K Old version DISCAT13 shareware #2444 DISKTOP2.ARC 24K Version 2.0 #348 FDI.TOS ? Docs in #349 Doug Atkinson GEnie: D.ATKINSON2 And yet another final: I just noticed file #'s 8111 and 8110 on GEnie, a disk database using DB Man. One is much longer and includes the required run time program for DB Man if you don't have it. I have not downloaded this, so I can't comment on its application.