Cardfile is a

personal information manager A personal information manager (often referred to as a PIM tool or, more simply, a PIM) is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to personal information manag ...

, based on

index card An index card (or record card in British English and system cards in Australian English) consists of card stock (heavy paper) cut to a standard size, used for recording and storing small amounts of discrete data. A collection of such cards e ...

s, that was distributed with

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

starting from the original version 1.01 until

Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail ...

Server. Cardfile is also included with

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

and

Windows Millennium Edition Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...

, but has to be installed manually from the installation CD-ROM. Beginning with

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

, Cardfile supported

Object Linking and Embedding Object Linking & Embedding (OLE) is a proprietary technology developed by Microsoft that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects. For developers, it brought OLE Control Extension (OCX), a way to develop and use custom user i ...

. The version supplied with Windows NT versions was a

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

application with

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

support. Both later versions could read .crd files created by previous versions. Localized versions of

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

may have contained Cardfile under other names, for example repert.exe (''Répertoire'') for the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...

Windows.

History

Cardfile was first released with

Windows 1.0 Windows 1.0 is the first major release of Microsoft Windows, a family of graphical operating systems for personal computers developed by Microsoft. It was first released to manufacturing in the United States on November 20, 1985, while the Euro ...

as an application that would allow users to create and flip through index cards containing several lines of free-form text. The original developer was Mark Cliggett, represented by his initials ''MGC'' as the first three bytes of the original .crd file format.

Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched in 1990. It features a new graphical user interface (GUI) where applications are represented as clickable icons, as opposed to the list of file names seen in its predecesso ...

introduced some minor changes to the Cardfile

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

, changing the application's background from blue to white and adding an access bar below the menu, which displays the current view mode (card view or list view) and the number of cards in the file, as well as providing buttons to quickly move to the previous or next cards in order. With

, Cardfile received a further update, adding OLE support, which allowed content from other OLE-supporting applications to be included within a Cardfile database. At this time, the file format was updated in order to support the new feature, with the file signature changing to ''RRG'' to disambiguate the new .crd file format from the earlier one. Cardfile was also released as a

accessory for the early versions of

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

, using a modification of the Windows 3.1 file format but changing the signature to ''DKO'' and the character width for text data to 16 bits in order to support

. The Windows 3.1 version of Cardfile was included with Windows 95, 98, and ME, but not installed by default. For the later two versions of Windows, the user would have to manually copy the Cardfile application from the Windows install CD in order to use the application.

Versions

* 16-bit (1.01) – File size 36,588 bytes. * 16-bit (2.00) – File size 39,440 bytes. *16-bit (2.03) – File size 39,264 bytes. * 16-bit (3.0) – File size: 53,952 bytes; Date stamp: 10-31-90; Confirmed in: Windows 3.0a, Windows 3.0 MME * 16-bit (WLO) – File size: 78,432 bytes; Date stamp: 09-23-91; Confirmed in: WLO 1.0 Note: recompiled from the Windows 3.0 sources to demonstrate the

Windows Libraries for OS/2 Windows Libraries for OS/2 Development Kit (WLO) is a collection of dynamic-link libraries for OS/2 that allow Win16 applications to run on OS/2. See also * Microsoft Windows * Cardfile Cardfile is a personal information manager, based on inde ...

. * 16-bit w/ OLE – File size: 93,184 bytes; Date stamp: 12-31-93; Confirmed in: Windows 3.10, 3.11,

Windows for Workgroups Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was Released-to-manufacturing, released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a Shell (computing), shell ...

3.10, 3.11, Win-

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...

3.1, Windows 98 SE * 32-bit – File size: 101,008 bytes; Date stamp: 05-25-95; Confirmed in:

3.10, 3.50, 3.51 (diskette and CD-ROM) *

DEC Alpha Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computers ...

– File size 148,240 bytes; Date stamp; 05-25-95; Confirmed in: Windows NT 3.51 * MIPS – File size 156,432 bytes; Date stamp; 05-25-95; Confirmed in: Windows NT 3.51 *

PPC PPC may refer to: Computing * Personal programmable calculator, programmable calculators for personal use * Pay-per-click, an internet advertising model * PearPC, a PowerPC platform emulator * Peercoin, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency * Periphera ...

– File size 171,280; Date stamp 05-25-95; Confirmed in: Windows NT 3.51

Replacements

Microsoft never released a program to replace Cardfile following the discontinuation of its development. However,

Schedule+ Microsoft Schedule+ is a discontinued time management app developed by Microsoft. It was included by Microsoft in the Microsoft Office productivity suite since the Office 95 version. Since the Office 97 version, most of its functionality was incorpo ...

, which appeared with

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

, and

Outlook Express Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 through to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from ...

, which appeared with

, have built-in

contact manager A contact manager is a software program that enables users to easily store and find contact information, such as names, addresses, and telephone numbers. They are contact-centric databases that provide a fully integrated approach to tracking all in ...

s which can replace Cardfile's use as a contact manager.

also had the ability to import Cardfile .crd files through its Import/Export Add-on pack. Third party applications exist which support opening and/or modification of Cardfile files for Linux.

Running under later Windows versions

The 16-bit Windows 3.1 version of Cardfile (file version 3.10.0.103) can run on all x86-based 32-bit versions of Windows including both Windows 10 Home and Pro 32-bit. Version 3.10.0.103 was included on the Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition installation CD but was not installed by default. In 64-bit versions of Windows, the 32-bit version from Windows NT 3.51 has to be used and will run on both Windows 10 Home and Pro. It supports long file names and has some support for Unicode characters. At the time of NT 3.51 development in the late 80s, Unicode was fixed-format 2 bytes, now known as UCS-2 and considered obsolete as the later 1996 implementation of UTF-16 allowed for variable-length formatting. Therefore NT 3.51 will reveal its shortcomings for those cardfile cards containing variable-length encoded characters, as such characters will not display properly.

References

External links

* * {{Windows Components Discontinued Windows components