PixFolio catalog

Revision as of 13:25, 30 July 2024

PixFolio, including its predecessor ShowGIF (also written Showgif), is an image viewer and image file management application for Windows. It was developed by Allen C. Kempe and (for some versions) Paul R. Hachey.

Versions exist for Windows 3.x, and 32-bit Windows. This article might only cover the Windows 3.x versions.

PixFolio's "catalog" database consists of a .CAT data file, and a companion .CIX index file. The CAT file contains thumbnail images, and other metadata.

Disambiguation

Note that there are several other unrelated programs named ShowGIF.

Identification

CAT format is quirky, and potentially difficult to identify. It consists of a sequence of items, almost all of which contain an image. Each item seems to have a 373-byte fixed header, followed by variable-length segments. Provided the first item contains an image, a CAT file can probably be identified fairly reliably, but more research is needed. The timestamp is the most distinctive field, but it has different formats in different files. Bytes (hex) 28 00 00 00 (a BMP header field) should appear at offset {374 + {the 2-byte integer at offset 369}}.

CIX: (TODO)

Software

There are many versions of PixFolio. Selected versions are listed here.

• ShowGIF v1.08
• ShowGIF v1.09l
• PixFolio v1.00
• PixFolio v1.04.14
• PixFolio v2.0.29 (beta)
• PixFolio v2.0.104
• PixFolio v2.0.155
• Chip Hitware Vol. 3 → CHIPHIT3/MULTMEDI/GRAFIK/PIXFOLIO/PIXF16.ZIP - PixFolio v2.0.170
• PixFolio 32-bit v2.0.176

Sample files

• Aztech's Super Games → FOR_PC/*.{CAT,CIX}
• Masterclips - The Art of Business → CATALOGS/
• dexvert samples — archive/pixfolioCatalog