What
Operating Systems are supported by MJ's CD Archiver (MCA)?
Any
OS supported by Eclipse Foundation's SWT and Sun Microsystem's
JRE 1.4 or higher. This means Windows 98/ME/2000/XP,
Linux, Unix flavors including AIX, Solaris etc. and Mac OS X.
However, MCA is developed on Windows 2000/XP and Linux, therefore
MCA is extensively tested on these OSs.
We
already have Windows file search (or find on *NIX), why make this
archiver?
For two major reasons: 1. With Windows
files search or find, you can only search what is on hard drive
or the CD/DVD currently loaded in the CD/DVD drives. You cannot
search your whole CD/DVD collection for a file you want to find.
2. MCA is also orders of magnitude faster than Windows file
search or find, delivering results instantly on hundred of
thousands of files (no more waiting minutes for results to come
back). Other important reasons to use MCA over other OS-default
search or other softwares include that MCA has more powerful
search options than Windows search, allows searching previous
search results to further narrow down the search, allows
one-click re-performing previous search, stores search
history/results, provides convenient highlighting and more
sorting options, among others. MCA also allows for automatic
update of archive so that you could search for changed/added
files/folders as recently as you set the auto-update to be.
What
does each color in the search result highlight function mean?
A
dark blue folder icon means there is a file/folder directly under
the highlighted folder that is a search hit meeting your search
criteria;
A light blue folder icon means there is a
file/folder somewhere down the directory tree (but not directly
under the highlighted folder) that is a search hit;
A yellow
background on the file/folder name indicates that this
file/folder name matches the keyword given.
I
found that after I updated a folder, the search highlight on that
folder does not work any more?
This is by design,
because once you updated the content of a folder, chances are the
search results involving this folder would become obsolete, so
the highlight is also turned off. This serves as a reminder that
once you updated a folder, you should perform the search again to
reflect the new update;
A light blue folder icon means there
is a file/folder somewhere down the directory tree (but not
directly under the highlighted folder) that is a search hit;
A
yellow background on the file/folder name indicates that this
file/folder name matches the keyword given.
When
I sort files and folders by clicking on the column head in the
right pane, what do those icons indicate?
Arrow
pointing upward means it's sorting in ascending order, with
folders always displayed before files;
Arrow pointing
downward means it's sorting in descending order, with folders
always displayed after files;
Arrow pointing upward with a
letter “D” crossed by a red line means it's sorting
everything in ascending order (folders and files are sorted
together instead of being sorted separately);
Arrow pointing
downward with a letter “D” crossed by a red line
means it's sorting everything in descending order (folders and
files are sorted together instead of being sorted
separately);
Note that the size of a folder is the sum of the
sizes of all of the files and subfolders it contains.
Why
does my search using Chinese character not return results as
expected?
If you enabled “regular expression”
for search keyword in “advanced options”, then the
Chinese unicode characters
are treated as regular expressions and perform unpredictably. As
a result searching using DOS-styled wildcards like "*"
and "?" most likely will fail for your unicode search
too because they are implemented using regular expressions. Right
now we did not build in unicode support for regular expressions,
therefore I suggest you turn off “regular expression”
when you are searching with a language using and do not use
wildcards (wildcards can be avoided by using partial word search
and further filtering of previous search results). We will note
in documentation if in the future we provide unicode support for
regular expression search too (note that regardless, even in
current MCA version you will be able to search correctly using
unicode characters if you turn off “regular expression”
option).
Why
sometimes my search was performed on all of the archived
CD/DVD/HDs while other times it was performed on only the ones I
selected?
Please see here
for the reason.
I
had archived a folder twice under two different root folders, I
noticed that when I used Windows shell integration command
“Update to last archive file”, only the folder under
the top root folder got updated?
Yes. This is because
while technically it is trivial to find and update the same
folder under all different root folders, this is not necessarily
the desired behavior. For example, if one keeps a list of all
files a month ago under one root folder while another list of all
files now under another root folder to be able to compare the
two, updating only the current archive (by default the top one)
is desired while updating both is not.
Why
can I not see some of the icons in the tree view on my Linux
machine?
It seems that some versions of Linux with
some of the libaries MCA depends on have some bugs such that some
of the folder icons of MCA does not display. However, other
(newer) versions do not have this problem. We will try to make
MCA backward compatible on these versions in the future.
Why
make a donateware not a freeware?
The
reason's simple – if there is only one license type better
than free, that's the donateware model that we are using, where
users donate to charity instead of paying or donating to software
authors. This is the only way where everybody wins –
Poor chinese kids who eventually receives your donation can
finally have a chance to get education, MCA users like you can
have the tax benefit (consult your tax advisor to confirm) of
cash donation in addition to the satisfaction of doing something
good and using a nice software legally, while we as the software
authors get the greatest satisfaction in that we helped the kids
as we always wanted and are finally able to make this happen.
In
fact, it is our hope that more and more software comes out and
uses our special donateware model. Freeware is good, but
donateware like ours is even better.
Why
the Project Hope of P.R.China?
Because we believe
that the only way to get China, the authors' native country,
richer is through eduction. Also because we are fathers and we
understand how painful it is for parents to not be able to afford
to let kids get even the basic education, all the while knowing
that this might be the biggest chance that their kids cease to be
so poor. We hope to contribute as much as we can to help
Project Hope, the Chinese project that helps poor kids get the
education they need.
Can
I donate to another charity?
Right now, not yet.
Because we provide license key only to fresh donations, we would
need to set up donation notification arrangements with any given
charity. Depending on the success of MCA, we could consider
setting up arrangement with another charity. If that happens, I
want to note that we strongly favor charities that help needy
kids because they are our future and that they need our help the
most. Every day I look into my son's eyes and I feel so lucky
that I am able to provide what he needs for his well being,
education and entertainment. I can easily imagine how painful it
is for parents to not be able to provide the basic education,
medicine, or even food that their kids need. For charity
suggestions, please email to mingyiliu@yahoo.com.
Can
I deduct my donation when I file tax?
I believe so,
because you are making cash donation to a USA-registered charity
(NACEF). The
charity will notify us of the payment and we will provide the
registration key for you for free. However, to confirm that the
donation is eligible for tax deduction, please consult your tax
advisor.
Do you accept credit
card payments?
Yes. Please follow the link in our
Registration section.
Where can I download
the latest version of MCA?
Read Download
section.
If I want more features
for MCA, can I send my request to you and will it be
answered?
Yes, you can always send a request to me at
mingyiliu@yahoo.com.
Do you support full
text search?
Currently no. We do not have plans to
support full text search in the near future as there are
excellent full text search tools available already.
Do you support CDDB to
search music CDs?
Currently no. It is not in our
plan to support it either because music CDs are easy to search,
no software assistance is needed.
Do you support mp3 and
other media file search?
MCA searches the file names
only. So if the mp3 or media files have informative file names
then MCA would be a perfect tool to search them. But if the mp3
files have generic names like 1.mp3, etc. then MCA won't yield
good search results because MCA currently does not extract
artist/album etc. information from mp3 files. However, futurer
versions of MCA may support media file information extraction,
depending on demand.
I paid for one personal
license, can I put MCA on all of my computers?
Yes –
as long as you own these computers, they are for personal usage
not for work, and that they are all located in just one of your
residence. There is no restriction on Operating System used on
the computers, and we deliberately make it such that our software
accepts the same key on all Operating Systems.
I paid for one business
license, can I put MCA on all of my computers?
No,
unless you have business site license, in which case you can put
MCA on all computers on one corporate site.
What
Operating Systems are supported by MJ's CD Archiver (MCA)?
Any
OS supported by Eclipse Foundation's SWT and Sun Microsystem's
JRE 1.4 or higher. This means Windows 98/ME/2000/XP,
Linux, Unix flavors including AIX, Solaris etc. and Mac OS X.
Can I use the icon files in
MCA package for my projects?
The icon files are
copyrighted and can only be used with permission from author
Mingyi Liu (mingyiliu@yahoo.com).