2293 One of the challenges as our accretion of pack-ratted data on hard drives with multi tens of gigabytes storage capacity is keeping track of everything. I've tried different strategies of approach, the simplest being storage of my archives of thousands of articles, columns, and manuscripts from years of professional writing in Word processor and text editor files. This meets the standard of accessibility, but is less satisfactory from the standpoint of search and retrieval, although the tag-team of OS X's Find utility and a wonderful little text search application called SpeedSearch do a reasonably decent job.

The alternative is to employ database software to organize, search, and retrieve your data. There are some pretty good ones available, some notable examples being DEVONthink and DEVONnote, and Boswell.

KIT - Keep It Together - is a new application for Mac OS X that is intended to help you keep your stuff organized and accessible from a central interface and find it again easily.

No matter what you do with computers, getting it done can involve tying a lot of stuff together and using it in different ways: documents, web research, diagrams, logos, letters, forms, photos and graphics, and random thoughts and notes all need to be kept somewhere. It can take a tremendous amount of time and mental energy to painstakingly organize these things, yet you need to be able to find them all again efficiently and quickly.

KIT is designed to help solve these problems so you can keep your stuff in one place, view it without opening other applications, organize it in lots of different ways and find it again in an instant.

KIT Features:

Getting stuff in and out of KIT can be accomplished several ways. Files, text and images can all be dragged to and from KIT and opened in their applications for editing. KIT can also link to files using aliases, so you can move or rename the originals without KIT losing track of them.

KIT also lets you add items from other applications through the Services menu or using KIT's Dock menu without having to return to KIT.

While you're away in another application KIT keeps track of everything you've added in a special "Last Import" group for when you return.

KIT can show previews for a variety of file types including Word, RTF, PDF and HTML documents, many image formats, sound files and QuickTime movies.

You can also create notes for bits of information you need to jot down and keep somewhere, and KIT also delivers text editing features including rich formatting of fonts and ruler styles, custom background colors, embeddable graphics, editable links, find and replace and spellchecking as you type. Notes can also be exported as Word, RTF, RTFD or plain text files.

To help improve organization, you can arrange your files into groups. Groups are similar to Finder folders, but with the essential difference that a file can be kept in more than one group at a time so you can reuse your stuff without making copies. Just drag and drop items from KIT's Library to add them to a group.

You can also create "smart groups," which do the hard work for you and use categories to color-code items for quick visual recognition.

However, you've still got to be able to find this stuff when you need it.

KIT uses OS X's built-in search technology to index the contents of everything you add as you add or change it, and starts searching as you type, pinpointing results immediately. KIT can search inside Word, RTF, PDF, HTML and plain text files. With files that aren't textual, KIT lets you add comments to images, sounds or QuickTime movies or indeed, any kind of file, so you'll always be able to find what you're looking for.

Along the top of KIT's main window is a toolbar, which can be customized to display your most frequently used features, show larger or smaller icons with or without a descriptive label or it can optionally be hidden from view to save space. See �Customizing the toolbar� for more information.

In the window's left pane is a list of groups, including the Library, last import group, deleted items and any other groups or smart groups you may have created.

The upper right pane of the window shows a list of items in the currently selected group, along with detail about them. You can specifiy what information categories will be included in the window, using the View Options dialog.

The lower right pane of the window shows a preview of the selected item. KIT can show previews for a variety of file types.

On the far right-hand side of the window is the Info Cocoa drawer which can be used to change an item�s name and whether its file extension is shown, assign the item to a category or add comments to items.

The Library is where KIT keeps all its files, listing all the items (files, clippings, notes, etc.) that you�ve added to KIT, and always displays at the top of the list of groups. You can use the library to quickly search for things you�re looking for, to open items for editing in the applications that created them, to drag items to other groups in KIT and to remove items from the library.

I would deem the Library concept in KIT as being something that could use more development. Having everything KIT contains in one scrolling list is going to have to get pretty unwieldy as the numbers of items build, and if you remove an item from the Library, it is deleted from any groups it happens to be in as well (and without any warning).

You can see previews for most types of files in KIT including text documents in Word, RTF or plain text format, images in many formats, PDF documents, QuickTime movies and sound files.

To add files to KIT:
� Drag the files from the Finder to KIT�s window.
� Using the Add Files sheet. To show the Add Files sheet, click Add Files in the toolbar or choose Add Files to Library from the File menu.
� Using the clipboard. In the Finder, select the files you want to add and choose Copy from the Edit menu. Then choose New from Clipboard from KIT�s Dock menu, or make KIT the active application and choose New from Clipboard from KIT�s File menu.
� Using the Services menu. Select the files you want to add, and choose Finder > Services > KIT > Add To Library from the menu.

The Services support multiplies the usefulness of an application like this by several magnitudes. You can add items to KIT using the Services menu from any application that supports services. However, KIT's Services support is less powerful and versatile than, say, the abilities of DEVONthink and DEVONnote, which allow you to not only import selections to their databases vis Services, but specify whether they will be saved as plain or rich text, and also append additional data selections to an existing file.

If a particular group is selected when you add files, or you drag the files to a particular group, then these will be added to the group as well as to the library. KIT will make a copy of the files that you add, but you can also link to files.

In addition to making copies of files, KIT can also hold links to files. These are aliases, similar to ones you make in the Finder. This means that the file itself doesn�t need to be stored in KIT�s library, but KIT can keep a reference to that file which will always keep track of the original.

You can link to a file in KIT by:
� Using the Add Files sheet, check the Link to Files checkbox when the sheet is shown.
� Holding on the Control key as you drag the item to KIT�s window. The cursor will show that a link, instead of a copy, will be made.
� Using the Services menu. Select the files you want to add and choose Finder > Services > KIT > Link to Library from the menu bar.

You can also create notes in KIT to keep bits of information conveniently at hand. To create a new note either click the New Note button in the toolbar or choose New Note from the File menu. To edit a note, double-click it in the item list and it will open in a new window, or with the note selected, press the Enter key.

The following text editing functions are supported in KIT notes:

� You can change the color and formatting of text and the background color of the note using the Font and Color panels and the items in the Format menu.

� Use the ruler to change the width, and alignment of paragraphs or to apply saved styles from the Styles menu.

� Use the Find menu under the Edit menu to find and replace text, or click the Find item in the toolbar to show the Find panel.

� Use the Spelling menu under the Edit menu to check and correct spelling errors, or use the Spelling item in the toolbar to show the Spelling panel.

� Use the Edit Link item in the Edit menu or the Link item in the toolbar to create and edit web links. Notes can contain links to web pages or email addresses. When you type an email address or the URL or a webpage, KIT automatically converts them into links. KIT also preserves links from some web browsers (such as Safari) when you add text to KIT directly from a web page. To edit links and add links of your own, select the text of the link to edit or the text you want to change into a link and click the Link button on the toolbar or choose Edit Link from the Edit menu.

Notes can be exported in several formats for use in other applications:
� Microsoft Word
� RTF (Rich Text Format)
� RTFD (RTF with attachments)
� Plain Text

When you drag a Note to the Finder, KIT will export the note as an RTFD file.
Notes are also created when you drag text to KIT from other applications.

Groups

KIT Groups are similar to folders in the Finder, but unlike folders an item can be any number of groups at the same time. You can also create smart groups, which automatically maintain their items based on rules. Once a smart group is created items will automatically be added and removed from the smart group as there are added and removed from the library according the smart group�s rules. You can't remove items from smart groups like you can with normal groups, but you can drag them to Deleted Items to remove them from the smart group and the library.

Categories

Categories can be used to categorize certain items. Categories have colors and items belonging to categories are highlighted in these colors in the items list unless you�ve chosen not to show category colors,


Searching

KIT makes an index of all the items added to it, so you can quickly search not only for item names but also the contents of many file formats too. KIT can search the contents of most RTF, RTFD, plain text, HTML, Microsoft Word and PDF files.

You can choose whether KIT should search just the names, comments or the entire contents of items when performing a search using the drop-down menu on the search field. Click on the magnifying glass and a menu listing the different search options will be shown.

You can add comments to any item in KIT using the Info drawer. The comments can contain any text and include links such as email addresses or links to web pages, which KIT will automatically format as you type.
Comments can also be useful for adding searchable text to items such as images and QuickTime movies.

KIT keeps an index that it uses to quickly search through files. Normally, this index should be up to date with any changes you�ve made to a file.

I like KIT. It has a pleasant, uncluttered and attractive interface, is reasonably intuitive to use, and seems to be stable and solid in performance. I encountered no noticeable bugginess.

On the downside, there is that criticism of the comprehensive Library concept that I noted above. In the DEVON applications for example, when you move document or note from the equivalent of KIT's Library into a group, it disappears from the main [ie: Library] list, although it is still possible to keep an alias there if you wish.

If you are thinking about personal database software, I would suggest trying out several demo versions before settling on one, and I would definitely recommend that you put KIT on your shortlist.

System Requirements
� Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
� Approx. 2MB Disk Space to install

Supported File Formats

Notes
Exportable as:
� Microsoft Word
� RTFD
� RTF
� Plain Text

Documents
� Microsoft Word
� PDF
� RTFD
� RTF
� SimpleText
� Plain Text

Video
� QuickTime
� AVI
� DV Stream
� MPEG-4

Images
� TIFF
� JPEG
� JPEG 2000
� PNG
� PICT
� Photoshop
� GIF
� QuickTime Image
� Targa
� Windows BMP
� MPEG

Sounds
� AIFF
� WAV
� MP3
� AAC
� SND

Kit is $24.95 demoware

For more information, visit:
http://www.reinventedsoftware.com/kit/

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