CatView was created when a book store came to me with the problem of searching plain-text catalog files. This store would receive a new catalog file from a publisher every few months, but was not able to search it effectively.

This book store considered importing catalog files to a database in order to search them, but the catalogs were not formatted consistently, so this was impractical.

None of the Word Processing and text-based applications that we examined could provide the search facilities that were required. Catalog files given to us were large, line-delimited lists but most text-based applications that we found were based on finding the first occurrence of a word.

I programmed a simple version of CatView for MS-DOS, using the C language. CatView searched each line of a file for each search word. That is, CatView didn't interpret any particular format and had the additional flexibility of searching for multiple un-ordered words. The most important functionality, though, was to return a list of the matching lines. This list could be examined by the store and read out or printed for the customer.

CatView gradually improved as I tailored it to the book-store's users and it became an important software tool, in combination with their existing software. CatView never replaced the internal database that the store maintained for their own system, but it allowed them to regularly search the latest publisher catalogs.

CatView became so useful that I decided to market it to a small number of other book stores and distributors. Although, the use of CatView is not limited to any particular industry. I use CatView to search Computer Store catalogs, as well as DVD catalogs that I download from web sites.

I then wrote a Windows version of CatView (CatView2000) which was necessarily slower due to technical limitations but more accessible to the casual user. CatView is now free of charge for personal use.

CatView can be found on various software download sites including Tiny Apps and Tucows