Why is CatView useful?
CatView is a solution to a fairly specific way of searching text files.
CatView searches text files that consist
of line-delimited information. The user enters up to
three keywords and CatView searches and returns a list of all lines
that contain those keywords. CatView is
therefore suited to searching catalog files (see below) - hence
the name Catalog Viewer
A quick example
The sample file is a catalog of computer-related items.
What software you would choose to search this file for something like:
"the cheapest computer case product with a 250 watt power supply"?
You may decide to search this file with the Find feature in a Word-Processor or Web Browser.
However, this will not cater for (1) finding groups of words or (2) returning a list
of matching lines.
The Problem Using Generic Text Software
Only one line of text can be searched for when using a
Find dialog in a Word-Processor or Browser. So
if the user enters 250 watt, then items
in the catalog which contain an unexpected character
(eg 250#watt) will not be found
If the catalog contains a product with the word
250 after the word watt (eg catalog entry
of watts, 250) then it will also not be
found.
If we want to search with 3 words instead of 2,
(eg 250 watt case), and we don't know what
order those words might be in, then there's
almost nothing the generic text processor can do to
help us. We need software that will find text using
several input boxes.
Even if a Word Processor has succeeded in making a match,
the user must scroll through the entire catalog while
pressing
Find next at each occurrence. If it
is a large file, this could be very tedious.
The Solution Using CatView
With CatView, you can enter up to 3 separate keywords in separate
text-boxes. If all the keywords are found in a line of text,
then CatView shows that matching line in a Grid.
So, if you wanted to find a computer
case with a
250
watt power supply, you might enter the following
keywords into CatView.
It won't matter what order the words are in, or what
occurs after or before them. CatView will search the catalog file
and return any lines that contain all of those keywords
into a grid for display.
That's the most simple case. There are
additional advanced searching facilities such as case
sensitivity, boolean relationships between keywords and
wildcards (Windows version only)
Other Features
Once a search is complete, the user can
save,
append,
print and do varous operations on the results. It is also
possible to search multiple files in one go.
Notes
Advanced users may use other tools such as Grep to search
text and CatView is not meant to be a tool to replace any or all significant others.
CatView's niche is that it is biased toward catalogs and other similar files and their usage,
and that a narrow band of text-searching requirements are perfectly suited to the way CatView presents
it.
