This topic reminded me of a versatile little program that Corel had in an office suite a while back. it was called InfoCentral. They later released it as freeware, but I don't know if they ever released the source code. Here is an article written by an InfoCentral fan.
http://www.macros.koenecke.us/InfoCentral/whyic.html

I'll have to checkout QuickDex to see how it compares.

I see that this is an old thread, but I am desperately searching for a newer version or an alternative to Quickdex. My office has used it since our Mac days back in the late 1980's. I have a Windows version but sadly it does not work with Windows 7. I have tried many alternatives but they are not as simple as Quckdex is. Help!