Earlier this week, I promised a drag-and-drop version of my utility for tagging and checking for file integrity, Dintch. Here it is: Fintch version 1.0.

If you want to tag or check large folders, I recommend that you continue to use Dintch. Fintch is more suitable for doing this with single files, bundles, and small folders as you go along. Simply drag and drop onto the app, and it will open that file, bundle or folder in a new document window.

Then choose which you want to do, and click on the appropriate button, each of which works much as it does in Dintch. There are some significant differences:

• Fintch works using a fixed buffer size of 512 KB; Dintch lets you set your own buffer size, which may offer improved performance with larger files;
• Fintch has no option to add timestamps when tagging; Dintch does;
• Because it’s intended for smaller tasks, Fintch always works in ‘verbose’ mode and reports full results, whereas Dintch gives you the choice, so it can be used with hundreds of thousands of files without overwhelming you with details;
• Fintch will tag and check individual files on demand, but Dintch only handles folders.

Digests written by Fintch are completely interchangeable with Dintch’s, of course.

There’s currently one slight quirk, which I intend fixing in the next release. Although Fintch does have an Open menu command, I don’t recommend its use, as it behaves slightly differently to drag and drop. For example, using the Open command won’t allow you to select whole folders, and won’t look inside RTFD and similar folder-based documents. The latter means that their contents won’t be individually tagged or checked unless you open them using drag and drop, or they’re already inside a folder which you tag or check.

Fintch version 1.0 is available from here: fintch1
from Downloads above, and from its Product Page.

My next task is to create an app to deliberately damage files for testing ECC such as Par2, then I’ll create cintch, the command tool implementation of Dintch’s feature-set.