Descript.ion and files.bbs

[Vladimir]

Hello!

I am also interested in supporting these two files in any file commander. Right now I use FAR - it supports descript.ion and files.bbs ones. The old discussion is marked closed, so I created a new one to add my 2 cents - to describe some more about the feature.

As a simple description file I used to:
1. I download photos from my camera and set a name for a new folder to date when I take photos to keep my collection sorted by date. Then I add a full description for the folder to descript.ion. Frm one hand, I can name a folder in a way '<date> - description' but it has some drawbacks(at least character set is limited, e.g I cannot use ':', '\' etc). Sometimes I add an extra into to certain photos but I do it rarely. Doing this way, I do not need any photo application to read what the photos about

2. I play 'Heroes of might and magic III and IV'. After playing a new map I want to add a short description for the map for the future. I do not know any other way to do it besides using descript.ion/files.bbs

And as an extra usage of decript.ion that I saw in one FAR plugin that I see interesting:
The plugin allows to add tags for files. And then after calling the plugin you get a virtual file system structure that show each tag as separate folder. So, you can browse files separated by your rules. I am not sure it is very useful but I used it for a while.
The descipt.ion/files.bss format for the plugin (it does not break the files.bss usage without plugin):
"file name" file description | tag1, tag2,tag3
Only file name uses quotes because file name can include a space character. From the other hand, the description can be quoted as well since it can contain a pipe character

[Mathias (Author)]

I had some plans for supporting this before.
But almost nobody is using this description files anymore. (and it is a hassel. if you copy files you need to make sure you copy the description files too. and so on) So spending lots of time developing something that almost nobody will use have not been worth it, At least while there been other things to add.

However I still do plan to add some minimal support for it. Like showing the description in a column.

[Vladimir]

Thank you a lot Mathias!

I agree it is not worth adding all the features until somebody asks for them. Basic support: set/change description for a file/directory, and show/hide a column to display it. It is sufficient for 99% of time. Even FAR (I do not remember how it was done in its predecessor Dos Navigator) does not copy description always when a file is copied - it copies description only if the description column is shown - and nobody complains. So, automatic copying/deleting descriptions is not a must-have.

Best regards,
        Vladimir.