by Mike Swope, Posted 2/9/04

A Good Day to Transition to Mac OS X.

We started our quest at VersionTracker and compiled a short list of shareware alternatives, and tried them one at a time. Though the applications performed the same task, there were great differences between them. Some were clumsy. Some were ugly. Some were slow. One which at first seemed to be an attractive solution inexplicably didn't perform at all (even the developer couldn't explain the problems). After several hours of testing and trial, we finally settled on the simple and unassuming Disk Catalog 1.3 by Haxial™ Software of Australia.

It Is True. The Best Things Do Come in Small Packages.

You would think that disk cataloging is simple enough. Just compile catalogs of files on disks (DVD, CD, Zip, floppy, hard disk, any storage device, including USB flash pen drives) and make these catalogs available for browsing and searching by an array of attributes, including but not limited to file name, creation date, modification date, and file size, or any combination of these. A number of shareware applications do this. Iomega® (maker of the revolutionary Zip drive) even offered a freebie application called FindIt® at one time, but its development was discontinued some time ago. Apparently few users adopted FindIt.

We are pleased to have stumbled upon Disk Catalog. Disk Catalog weighs in at a trim 321K download from Haxial's web site, and expands to a lean 632K. Heck, if you are still using floppy disks, it will fit easily on a floppy! But don't let this teeny, tiny footprint fool you. Cloaked in this lightweight frame is a disk cataloging behemoth, arguably the best shareware disk cataloging utility available for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9, and probably Windows too. It is simple, stable, and fast. No other application that we considered could compete. No matter how large or small, how beautiful or ugly. Not one.

All About Simplicity.

Apple Computer® has made its fortune and will make its future fortune on a simple but hard-to-define quality called elegance. The same can be said of Haxial (though Haxial develops for multiple operating systems). Among disk cataloging utilities, Disk Catalog is, in this reviewer's opinion, the créme de la créme because its pure unadulterated minimalist user-centric simplicity (aka elegance) makes it useful.

Disk Catalog is a simple application. Download it from Haxial, expand the .sit file. Start using immediately. No installation required. Drag the Disk Catalog folder. wherever you like. It doesn't matter. It doesn't need any outside resources to do its thing. It installs nothing else in the system.

Like all disk cataloging utilities, Disk Catalog does not catalog file contents or thumbnails, only file names, file types, file sizes, creation dates and modification dates. When Disk Catalog is first run, it creates a folder called Catalogs in the same folder as the application. As one might guess, Disk Catalog stores the catalogs it creates in this Catalogs folder. If this Catalogs folder is moved, Disk Catalog creates a new one when launched. So it is advised not to move this Catalogs folder. It is part of Disk Catalog's simplicity to use one folder to store every catalog. This way, users can search all their offline disks without opening this catalog, or that catalog, or another catalog. They're all under one roof.

Haxial also takes the user's habits into consideration, attempting to identify and understand their needs and match the software product with those needs. Other disk cataloging applications require a key combo or menu selection to search their catalogs, but Haxial gets right down to business with Disk Catalog. When Disk Catalog is launched, the list of catalogs are loaded into the Browse window, and the Search window is available immediately. Searching is, after all, what most users will be doing with just such a utility.

Much Ado About Reliability.

One of the most frustrating things about Catalogue 3.0b, our previous disk cataloging utility, was its unreliability. This utility was not fully tested before we adopted it. I believe now that Iomega's FindIt cataloging utility might have performed better. But our Art Director had selected Catalogue 3.0b and the rest of the group (myself included) followed his lead. We didn't look any further. That's our fault. Soon, we had dozens of CDs in our archive in Catalogue 3.0b, so we just continued to use it, like lemmings (a la Apple's late 1980s television commercial).

There were several problems with Catalogue 3.0b. First, the b is for BETA, or software not fully bug-tested and fixed. Second, this application crashes nearly every time its window was resized. Third, it is slow, especially when searching 300+ catalogs: Catalogue 3.0b takes 18 seconds to perform a search for one of our common project terms. Similar delays occur with every search as Catalogue reads data. Fourth, Catalogue has a limit of 3000 results for any search (while it is true that likely no one would look through more than a couple hundred results, this is a limit nonetheless).

Despite our unconventional use of aliases for the Catalogs folder in Disk Catalog, and the size of our archive (469 items to date), Disk Catalog has never crashed or faltered either searching or cataloging disks, enlarging windows, browsing the catalogs, or performing any other operation. It has been rock solid from day one. It's also fast: a search of the same disks with the same common project term as performed with Catalogue 3.0b returns results in one second in Disk Catalog! That's right. One second. Disk Catalog also displays all 4000+ results of this search since it doesn't have the same limitation as Catalogue 3.0b. Haxial reports that Disk Catalog doesn't have any such limitations, except for the RAM required by Haxial to perform its tasks.

There are only two bumps in Disk Catalog's autobahn. The first is the load time for catalogs. Disk Catalog, of course, reads all the catalogs in the Catalogs folder at launch. This takes some time. For our archive of 469 catalogs, Disk Catalog takes approximately 30 seconds to finish the launch cycle. Thereafter all searches in that launch session of Disk Catalog takes a second or less.

The second delay with Disk Catalog occurs only if users don't pony up the U.S. $20/license shareware fee. The longer Disk Catalog is installed on machine without shareware registration, the longer Disk Catalog takes to grant access to its catalogs. For purposes of this demo, I've also used Disk Catalog on my PowerBook 1 GHz at home for several months, but I do not have a license for that machine. At home, I have to wait nearly 6 minutes to access my meager dozen or so catalogs. Other shareware applications make users wait a specified amount of time (usually 20 or 30 seconds) if they haven't paid the shareware fees, but Disk Catalog is the only application I know that INCREASES this delay as time passes, to a maximum of 300 seconds (or 5 minutes). This is an effective, not-so-subtle method to encourage users to pay their shareware fees. Five minutes doesn't seem like a long time, until you're watching Disk Catalog count down to access the catalogs of your disk archive to find a file that you need ASAP. Personally, I wonder why Haxial doesn't remove the 300-second restriction and let the delay continue to lengthen. After a while, the user would either find it thoroughly inconvenient to use Disk Catalog, having to wait longer and longer to access their catalogs, or the user would decide to purchase it as the wait increased to 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and longer.

Just Browsing.

When Disk Catalog is first launched, Disk Catalog displays the Search window and the Browse window. All of Disk Catalogs windows are free floating and can be placed anywhere on the screen. But Disk Catalog also offers a dock feature (separate from the Mac OS X dock or the Windows application bar) to reduce screen clutter from intense searching. To dock any Disk Catalog window, the user need only click on the icon in the upper right hand corner of the window (the target will change with the selected theme or Appearance, see below) to dock that window. Like its windows, the Disk Catalog dock is free floating and displays a vertical of the windows available in Disk Catalog. Clicking one of these list buttons opens the corresponding window to its previous size and location.

The Browse window is exactly as its name implies. This window lists all the catalogs in the user's Disk Catalog archive. The user may browse these catalogs by single-clicking on any disk listed. That disk's file hierarchy is then displayed in a separate window split into two side-by-side panes. This window is reminiscent of both Mac OS X and Windows. The left pane displays the disk's folders in an expandable list. Here, folders which contain other folders are marked with a + icon. Single-clicking the + icon expands that folder to display its contents. The user may expand any such tree until there are no further folders to expand. The right pane displays all contents of the folder selected in the left pane. Clicking a folder in the right pane then displays that folders contents. The user may also navigate back through the disk's hierarchy using the dropdown menu at the top of the window.

It is here that one weakness in Disk Catalog becomes apparent. The user can browse the hierarchy of as many disks as desired without closing any windows. Of course, this can quickly result in a multitude of open windows filling the screen. Even though these windows can be docked, I only recently discovered the dock feature while writing this review, after I had performed thousands of actual searches. The user's natural propensity is to avoid lots of open windows. So the user will adapt by closing windows when they are not likely to be referenced again shortly. Just as I have been doing. The dock isn't a common feature in most applications, so it's easy to overlook here in Disk Catalog.

To Search or Not to Search. That is the Question.

At launch, the Search window offers just a simple text field for search terms to be entered. Users may enter more than one word separated by a space. Disk Catalog processes such multiple word entries using the 'and' operand to return a list of filenames. For example, a search for "cmyk brochure" returns results whose filenames contain both "cmyk" and "brochure." But as with most search features, Disk Catalog's Search window also offers additional options to help narrow a user's search. Clicking the More Options button displays the additional Search options, including the ability to search for exact phrase, file type (i.e. tiff, image, eps, etc.), range of size in kilobytes (KB), range of creation date, and range of modification date. As noted previously, Disk Catalog is not able to catalog file contents or thumbnail images.

Searching is Disk Catalog's higher purpose, so it is important that the feature is as elegant as possible. Disk Catalog does not disappoint. All search results are displayed in the same window. This is handy to keep window clutter to a minimum. Perform one search, results are displayed. Perform another search, those results are displayed in the same window.

The only weakness in the Search scheme is that the process is interrupted after the Results stage. To view a found file in the Catalog, in the hierarchy on the disk where the file resides, the user cannot single or double-click the file in the Search Results window. Nothing happens. To view the file in its disk hierarchy, the user must use a contextual menu (control+click on the Mac and right+click on the PC) to perform this action. This process is not at all intuitive. This change in the process stops the user in his or her tracks. For those not accustomed to using contextual menus, this step is even more confusing. But if they can get past this roadblock, they will be back at the two-pane Catalog window to browse the disk hierarchy.

What's Your Preference?

Disk Catalog doesn't use conventional menu placement. So at first, it's difficult to find Disk Catalog's preferences. Preferences in the application menu is grayed out in OS X. The only commands conventionally placed are Disk Catalog: Hide Disk Catalog; File: Close Window, File: Quit and a Window menu. This, of course, is likely to confuse new users. It will likely take new users, if they explore, a few minutes to locate the commands for Disk Catalog.

The commands for Disk Catalog are found at the top of each individual window, hidden behind a cross-hatched rectangle next to the X to close the window. Clicking the rectangle displays Disk Catalog's commands: Add, Batch Add, Find, and Settings (About and Exit Disk Catalog are conventional commands with conventional results).

The Add and Batch Add commands initiate the catalog process. Selecting Add allows disks to be chosen one at a time. Batch Add allows disks to be inserted and cataloged as rapidly as possible. Batch Add is very useful for cataloging an existing disk archive. If the user happens to have 2 or 3 drives, Batch Add will utilize all 3 drives in sequence to process disks. Using just two drives, and one copy of Disk Catalog, our group was able to catalog nearly 400 disks in less than 3 hours! Of course, now we generally just Add a disk to the Catalog when we're adding that disk to our archive.

The Find command opens the Search window previously discussed.

The Settings command opens Disk Catalog's preferences. Like most other features in Disk Catalog, its preferences are simple. There are only 3 settings: Font, Use Small Icon in File List, and Appearance. Users are able to select one of only 5 fonts to be used in the Catalog file list: Myoklonika, Tonik-klonik, Grand Mal, Petit Mal, or Panitaka. None are conventional fonts but each is legible. The user's installed fonts are not listed and no means to access them is available. By default, large icons are used in the Catalog file list. Checking "Use Small Icon in File List" changes the icon size by about half, for those who value screen real estate. Users may also select from 16 default Appearances, aka skins or themes in other applications, that alter in general the colors used in Disk Catalog's interface.

As Close to a Custom Rod as Software Gets!

It's clear that Haxial has created Disk Catalog with the user in mind, but Haxial takes this a step farther than the competition by borrowing the idea of themes and skins and calling them Appearances. By default, Disk Catalog comes with 16 Appearances: Evil Chiaroscuro, Alternate Romp, Amber CRT, Blue Jeans, Blue Tram Café, Bubblegum Crisis, Chocolate Raspberry, Mach Lavender, Oxygen, Sunset Chiaroscuro, Techno Electric, The Dream Scheme (in blue, green and purple), Tropical Water, and Turquose Hilites. Some, of course, are more pleasing and easier on the eye than others. Some, I might add, are also rather dark and unsavory on the Mac OS, so these same dark themes will be considerably darker on the PC (about 30% darker) and even less pleasant.

But it is this subjective taste that Haxial addresses at every turn. For Appearances, Haxial also offers a means for Disk Catalog (and other Haxial applications) users to roll their own, if they so desire. Appearances created by other Disk Catalog users and the AppearanceEdit application are available from Haxial's web site. Haxial bundles all the current custom Appearances periodically and provides them in a single download in either .sit or .zip format (Appearances are cross-platform, so it does not matter which file you download as long as you can uncompress it). Haxial had updated the Appearances download at least once while I researched and wrote this review. There are 82 custom Appearances in the August 9, 2003 bundle: Some of the more interestingly-named Appearances include Ace-02, Arizona, BadMoon, BeOS, Bloo Dreeme, BoilerPlate, Cybernet, Dang, Demo Royal Gold, Devil's Ground, Electric Blue (also Green, Pink, Purple, Red and Yellow), Emerald Forest, Gamespot, Halloween, iceIKle, Jazz and Blues, MacOS Classic, MacOS9 Icons, Matrix Ice, Merry Christmas, Midnight Whispers, MS Windows 020202, Night-Vision, Nothing Rhymes With, Ocean Floor, Rodent Infusion, Royalty, Silver Angel, Swordfish, TechPants, Tron, Turkish Alizarin, UNx, Vicky Vale, Win2K by Lech, and WinXP.

The average user is likely to find a pleasing theme in the hundred-or-so existing Appearances. If not, the user can create their own Appearance(s) with AppearanceEdit. AppearanceEdit, however, is beyond the scope of this review. But, judging from the various themes that users have created, and the extent to which a few Appearances have been professionally detailed (Gamespot and WinXP for example), AppearanceEdit would seem to be user-friendly and powerful. And if Disk Catalog is any indication, also simple to use.

To use the additional custom Appearance files, the user only needs to create a folder named "Appearances" in the same folder as Disk Catalog and put the Appearance (.hap for Haxial Appearance) files into that folder. These Appearances will then be immediately available through the Settings menu.

As a bonus, all Appearance files can be used across all of Haxial's applications, and not just with Disk Catalog. So if a user utilizes more than one Haxial application and wishes to share Appearances between them, the user can just duplicate the Appearances folder for each application. Alternatively, the Appearances can be stored in a single location and aliases can be used for each application to point to that location, so each application loads the same Appearance .hap files.

Some Room for Improvement.

Disk Catalog is the best of breed for reliability and speed and, for the most part, simplicity. But it is not perfect.

In its current version, a minor change could be made to the Search Results window so that single-clicking or double-clicking opens the selected file in the Catalog, instead of relying on an unintuitive contextual menu to perform this task. Another minor but important change to the current release would be to duplicate Disk Catalog's commands to the standard menus where users are accustomed to finding commands. Both of these minor changes would improve usability for new and seasoned users alike.

Another area for improvement regards the number of windows. Disk Catalog is elegant and simple in most every respect, but it generates too many windows. Disk Catalog's dock is helpful, but it does not solve the problem efficiently. The solution should strike at the heart where the problem occurs, the spawning of windows. Improvements can be made to both Searching and Browsing.

There isn't much reason that the Search window can't be a single window which displays its own search results and browses those results in the Catalog, too. A new Search could be initiated in the same window, or alternatively in a separate Search window as needed using a menu command or keystroke. This would reduce window clutter by at least half. Of course, each Search window and its results could be docked.

The same process could be applied to browsing the Catalog. Instead of opening a new window, browsing takes place in one window unless another Catalog window is opened with a menu command or keystroke. The user could continue browsing in the same window, or create another Catalog window as a new starting point, whichever the user prefers.

In Short.

Although Disk Catalog is not perfect, it is our group's application of choice to catalog and search our growing CD archive of projects as we anticipate migrating to Mac OS X (Panther). With more than 400 disks in that catalog, Disk Catalog's simplicity, speed and reliability are a huge benefit to our group to help us serve our customers efficiently. No other disk cataloging utility we considered to bridge the transition from OS 9 to OS X matched Disk Catalog's reliability and speed. Download your copy of Disk Catalog today from Haxial.

It is also of interest to note that Haxial, during my communications with them regarding the issue with OS X and NT AppleTalk shares and aliases*, reports that they are currently developing a networked multi-user version of Disk Catalog, much more suited to the environment that groups such as ours where multiple machines are accessing the same catalogs. We look forward to trying out this network release when it becomes available.

*NOTE: On OS X, our group ran into a small problem that cannot be remedied except at the server level since the problem is not Disk Catalog but the implementation of AppleTalk on our NT server. In our case, we have one OS X machine using Disk Catalog accessing the NT AppleTalk network share by an alias. Browsing the list of catalogs recently on this OS X machine, I noticed that many entries were doubled and some were plain missing. I compared Disk Catalog's list with the list in the finder and discovered that Disk Catalog's display was inaccurate. No catalogs were doubled, and those that were missing in Disk Catalog's display are not missing in the Finder.

Troubleshooting and communication with Haxial has indicated that this problem does not occur in OS 9 but occurs in OS X when accessing catalogs on an NT AppleTalk share (an unusual environment for many Mac users to be sure). Haxial has suggested making sure the server is completely up-to-date with the latest patches and revisions (as it should be anyway to be secure from the latest Windows scourge, the W32.Blaster.Worm), but we cannot confirm this as our IT department controls the NT server. This situation may be true of other companies as well. The solution in our case is to connect OS X to the same NT network share by SMB (available, fortunately, to OS X users) rather than AppleTalk and point Disk Catalog to the same Catalogs folder using the same alias technique. Using Disk Catalog in this configuration eliminates the doubled and dropped entries in OS X. It is interesting to note, also, that we can connect to the same NT share by both AppleTalk and SMB simultaneously with the Catalogs alias pointing to the SMB share, so we are not losing connectivity or productivity.

Review first appeared on AppleLinks.com

Mike was introduced to Apple IIe and Mac Plus computers in the CAI Lab at Missouri Western State College. Mike went on to Wichita State University and earned an MFA in Creative Writing. While at WSU, Mike bought a Mac Classic to replace his aging Plus, and launched a marginally successful but fun freelance business, Swope Design, to pay for his Mac habit. He continues to masquerade as a freelancer under this vague pseudonym, and operates several web sites, along with his wife, including SwopeDesign.com, www.inetreviews.com, SuperPersonalized.com and ColaCollectables.com (launching February 14, 2004). Some web work for his day job has received local awards in Wichita, Kansas, and his web sites for the MacWichita Macintosh User Group and Next Consulting Group have likewise received several awards. Mike and his wife Lynette also enjoy digital photography and offer royalty-free photographs from MorgueFile.com, iStockPhoto.com and ShutterPoint.com.