CatView (MS-DOS)

CatView for DOS is a catalog viewer, written from 1996–1999 by Peter van der Woude.

You can run the original program today via DOSBox-X — using any OS. No need to have DOS or even Windows - see below for instructions.

What it does

CatView basically searches text files that consist of line-delimited information.

The user selects a file and enters up to three keywords in a user interface. The result is a list of lines that contain those keywords. Since CatView was designed for searching catalog files - the name became Catalog Viewer.

Once a search is complete, the user can save, append, print and do various things with the results. It is also possible to search multiple files.

1 — Choose a catalog	2 — Search by keyword	3 — Browse results

Background

Why?

CatView specially catered for in-store use - ie by customer service people. I personally used it when working at a sheet-music store in 1996... we had 3 computers running CatView. Customer phone enquiries would normally start by selecting a publisher catalog (eg Alfred), then searching what the customer asked for (eg Piano Lesson Book 2) and then finding the price or other details in the results.

The olden days

All this was required, because publishers didn't have electronic catalogs or searchable web sites at the time but many of them were able to send their catalog in a text file. The internet was just getting started in 1996...

Install & run

Download the release — catview.zip under Assets — and unzip it. Then follow the steps for your system.

Windows

1. Install DOSBox-X — download the installer from dosbox-x.com or github latest release and run it
2. Open the unzipped folder
3. Double-click run-catview.bat

macOS

1. Install DOSBox-X: brew install dosbox-x
2. Open Terminal and cd into the unzipped folder
3. Run: ./run-catview.sh

Linux

1. Install DOSBox-X: sudo apt install dosbox-x
2. Open a terminal and cd into the unzipped folder
3. Run: ./run-catview.sh

Configuration

CatView reads catview.cfg and catview.frd from its working directory. config/ holds a ready-to-run example:

• CATVIEW.CFG — catalogue dir, save dir, user name, toggles
• CATVIEW.FRD — find-&-replace synonym dictionary (expands shorthand catalog words; enabled via FINDREPLACE in the config file)
• CATALOGS/ — sample catalog the config file points at (CATALOG_DIR = "C:\CATALOGS")

Build

Building is only needed if you want to modify the C/C++ code in src/.

You'll need Borland C++ 5.0x. It's 1990s commercial software, long discontinued; the Internet Archive preserves the original CD image: archive.org/details/bcd50r1 (bcd50r1.iso).

Point the setup script at the CD image (.iso) or an already-extracted folder — and this will install the 16-bit toolchain for you:

./build/setup-borland.sh /path/to/bcd50r1.iso

This script locates the 16-bit compiler in the path (BCC.EXE) and copies that tree's BIN, INCLUDE and LIB directories into build/drive_c/BC5/ (needs 7z for .iso/.zip).

We need DosBox-X to run the Borland tools - so make sure it's installed, as per Install and Run section above. The build script is currently Linux/macOS only (ie a bash script):

./build/build.sh      # src/ + lib/  ->  bin/CATVIEW.EXE

This script regenerates the throwaway DOS build tree (build/drive_c/SRC) from src/ + lib/ on every run, so src/ stays the single source of truth and build/drive_c/ is disposable.

The compiler runs inside DOSBox, so a Windows build is possible in principle — there just isn't a Windows build script yet.

How the DOS build works

• The 16-bit DOS compiler has no long-filename support, so sources are copied under 8.3 names (eg search_catalog.c → SRCHCAT.C)
• Includes reference only .h files, so renaming the .c/.cpp is safe
• Linking goes through a response file (OBJS.RSP) to stay under the DOS 127-char command-line limit