Rdex—A Simple Personal Information Manager
Rdex is a freeform database. Use it to store addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, online ids, recipes, or a million other pieces of miscellaneous information. It is based on the idea of a cardfile—like a Rolodex. Just click "New Card," copy and paste (or type in) some info and click save. Simple! Later, you can search for any text contained in the card and the card will be displayed. Just type the word you are searching for into the search box at the top.
Programs similar to Rdex were readily available a while back but seem to have gone out of fashion recently. I have found this to be a very useful way of keeping info over the years. So when my old 16-bit cardfile finally bit the dust, and I couldn't find a replacement, I wrote one—Rdex. Rdex has the same look and feel as my old cardfile app—Quickdex for Windows, by Stellar Software.
Brief Instructions
To create a new card, click on the "New" button, press <Ctrl+N>, or select "Card/New Card" from the menu. Just copy <Ctrl+C> and paste <Ctrl+V> text into the card. If you want to make the "List View" function meaningful, use the first line of the card as a title.
To find a card, type a string in the Search box and press <Enter>. Search strings are not case sensitive. Press <Enter> again to find the next occurrence or <Shift-Enter> to find the previous one. If the search string is blank, you simply jump to the next (or previous) card.
You can get a "list" of the first lines of cards that contain the text in the Search box by pressing <Alt-Enter> or selecting <Card/List View> from the menu. Double-clicking on an item in the list, or selecting an item (with the mouse or arrow keys) and pressing <Enter> displays the card.
You can delete a card by pressing the "Delete" button, pressing <Ctrl+D>, or selecting "Card/Delete Card" from the menu.
To open a new file, press the "Open" button or select "File/Open..." from the menu. If you make any changes don't forget to save your file by pressing the "Save" button or selecting "File/Save" from the menu. To print a card choose "File/Print..." from the menu. The print function is limited to a single card and a single page.
Download
Rdex is a tiny little program that runs on MS Windows XP or any more recent version of MS Windows. The insaller will by default install the program file into "...\Program Files\Rdex\rdex.exe". The data file can be stored anywhere using the File/Save As function.
The data is stored as a simple ASCII file with cards separated by the ASCII character "7F". You can edit the data file with notepad or any other editor if you wish—just be careful of the card separator characters, they will probably display as an empty square.
New in Rdex 1.4
- Persistent state—remember current file and settings from last session
- Open recent files—list of recently opened files in file menu
- Select font
- Import/Export to .csv format and export to .txt format
If you are interested in programming, here is the source code. I used theForger's Win32 API Tutorial to learn how to write a Windows application. It is an excellent tutorial. For compiler and Windows header files I used MinGW.
Upgrading from a previous version of Rdex
Before you run the installer, open your existing Rdex and note where the data file is stored. You can find the location of the data file from the Rdex window's title bar or from the menu "Help/About." Once you have installed Rdex 1.4 run it and use the menu "File/Open" to locate and open your data file.
Rdex 2.3 for Windows
Rdex 2.3 was written using the Qt GUI library so that a single source could be compiled for Windows, Mac and Linux. Rdex 2.3 runs on Windows but Rdex 1.4 is preferred because it has more functionality and a much smaller execuatble.
Rdex for Android
Rdex is now available for Android devices. If you use Rdex in conjunction with Dropbox you can maintain synchronization between Rdex for Windows and Android.
Download Rdex 2.4.4 for Android
Opening Files
First you need to transfer an Rdex database file (.rdx) to the Android's memory card. You can do this via a USB cable by plugging your Android device into your PC. Alternatively, you might want to consider using the Dropbox app. Just open an Rdex database file using Dropbox, the file will be downloaded to your Android and any changes you make will automatically be synchronized. An Rdex file can also be opened using a file browser such as Astro.
To open a file from within Rdex, press the menu button and select "Open File." Navigate the folders in the memory card until you find the Rdex file you transferred. Select a file by touching it on the touchscreen. There is also a menu option for recently used files. Rdex will attempt to load the most recently used file when it starts up.
Brief Instructions
To create a new card or edit an existing card, access the edit menu with a long touch on the main screen and select "New" or "Edit." Type in the text you want or use copy and paste. When you are done press the "Save" button. You can delete a card from the edit menu using "Delete." A new database file can be created from the edit menu using "Create New Database." The database file is always saved after any changes.
To prevent any accidental changes to the database you can select "Read Only Mode" in Menu/Preferences. The edit menu is disabled in Read Only Mode.
To find a card, type a string in the Search Box and tap the search icon or press the search button. Search strings are not case sensitive. Tap the search icon again to find the next occurrence. If the Search Box is blank, you simply jump to the next card. If you type a string into the Search Box and tap "Enter" or "Done" on the keyboard, Rdex will list the first line of every card that contains the search string. If the Search Box is blank the first line of every card will be listed. Select the desired card by tapping it.
To copy an email address or web link to the clipboard simply tap it. It will be highlighted showing exactly what was copied to the clipboard. You can then switch to another app and paste in the text from the clipboard (with a long press). To copy an entire section to the clipboard, tap the first word then tap the last word. The whole section will be highlighted and copied to the clipboard. Additionally, you can enable active links for telephone numbers, email addreses and web links in Menu/Preferences. Any text recognized as a phone number, email address or web link will be colored and underlined. If you tap such text Android will attempt to bring up the appropriate app to handle it, phone dialler, email app or web browser.
Source Code
Rdex 2.4.2 for Android source code.
License
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details: www.gnu.org/licenses.