NOTE: As I rarely ever use Wilma myself anymore and then only on Mac OS/X, I have not looked at the code in a very long time and am no longer able to effectively support it beyond answering basic questions. I will continue to make it available for anyone who wishes to use it, but please be aware that new versions with additional features or even bug fixes are very unlikely to be forthcoming.

Wilma is a program for quickly finding text lurking in the files on your computer. It does this by creating an index of what words are in which files and this allows it to later find files containing a given word or set of words almost instantaneously.

Since the mid 1990's, Wilbur nicely fulfilled this function for me, but Wilbur is very much a Windows program and thus not much help to me on my current Linux boxes. Wilma was created not only to be more portable, but to live more comfortably in my much more networked environment. I originally implemented Wilma as a python based server accessed through a web browser, but ultimately found this lacked the snap I wanted. The current version makes use of the multiplatform capabilities of RealBasic to provide native desktop interfaces for Linux, Mac and Windows machines, while C++ is used for the core functionality

Wilma consists of the following elements:

  • WilmaDesktop - the main user program..
  • Command Line Interpretor - implements a simple textual interface. This can be used as a stand alone program, but more often will be used for running scripts or automated builds or updating of indexes.
  • WilmaServer - This program can be run to allow WilmaDesktop programs on other machines to access the indexes on the server machine. User names and passwords as well as IP range restrictions can be used to limit access..
  • WilmaIndexer - a utility program invoked by WilmaDesktop to do indexing and updating chores in the background without interferring in the use of the main program..

You are free to use and distribute this software subject to the condition that any distribution include, without modification, the entire package including all documentation. All copyrights are retained by Craig Morris.

Wilbur and the python version of Wilma were both distributed as open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License and it is quite possible that this version of Wilma will be at some point too. However based on my previous experience, maintaining a public source repository does not seem worth the effort at this stage, particularly given that building the program now requires a commercial compiler (RealBasic).

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.