Michtron U.K. £24.95
It came as a bit of a surprise to me to find that
Super Directory from Michtron U.K. (formerly Microdeal) is actually
quite good. As regular readers will know, I have become rather
disenchanted with their utility products (especially Sprite
Construction Kit), but this is an exception. Super Directory is a
disk organisation program, allowing the quick location of a file in
a collection of disks.
Don't think that I am totally won over though! The
same old manual writer has had a go at this manual which starts off
by explaining a few terms, like records and fields, but explains it
all backwards. Also included is an awfully off-putting mathematical
explanation of 'sets' which adds to the confusion. Once it has
passed the silly stage however it does have useful information,
covering the main features.
Super Directory is a GEM based application. The main
operation revolves around dialog boxes. The main dialog has a list
of files in a large box, with buttons on the right hand side to
select options. To add a disk to the directory the ADD button is
used. This produces another dialog with a 'disk number' field in
which you can enter a three letter code to identify the disk with, a
'disk to read' field, and the number of records free (dependent on
memory – 3415 records (files) on my 512k machine). When you click on
OK, it reads each directory on the disk, and reads all the disk file
information. You are then left in the ADD dialog ready to add
another disk. When you have added your disks, you are given a sorted
display of the files. The sort can be done according to various
categories, including disk, filename, extension, and time. You can
scroll up and down the display, and select individual files. Each
file can have a remark and a category added (to facilitate sorting
by user type). You can FIND a particular file, or type of files, and
then move to the next in the list found.
The most useful is the PRINT button which allows you
to get a printout of your information in various formats (full
pathnames, full remarks, filenames 3 across, pathnames 2 across,
remarks 2 across), and according to the current search pattern. The
printout allows you to refer to the information outside of Super
Directory.
The information read from the disks can be stored on disk for later
retrieval. If the file gets too big, subsections can be filtered off
into other files.
Super Directory is not brilliant, but does do its
job, and is not hindered too much by the manual. If you need a
program to keep track of your disk directories, this program
certainly merits examination.
top
