PixFolio catalog

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File Format
Name PixFolio catalog
Ontology
Extension(s) .cat, .cix
Released ≤1991

PixFolio, including its predecessor ShowGIF (also written Showgif), is an image viewer and image file management application for Windows 3.x. It was developed by Allen C. Kempe and (for some versions) Paul R. Hachey.

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

Contents

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.

Sample files

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