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Description handling

Jan
4
0
I'm trying to figure out how description handling works with file manipulation in the folder & list views.

When I copy or move a file by dragging it from its appearance in List View into a directory under Folders, I'd expect (and desire) that the description be copied/moved with it. That generally doesn't seem to be the case.

I have "Enable Descriptions" checked under both "Configure Take Command" and "Configure TCC". I'd prefer not to use NTFS descriptions since not all my disks are NTFS, but I've tried with it both enabled and disabled.

Results seem completely inconsistent. Sometimes the description is copied, but most of the time it isn't. Sometimes, besides failing to copy the description it wipes out descriptions in the target directory entirely. The command line works consistently with non-NTFS, but gets almost as flaky as the GUI when I enable NTFS descriptions.

I suspect that the explorer-like file operations are actually farmed out to Windows so that non-NTFS description handling is impossible. True?

I also suspect that NTFS descriptions don't actually work very well, period.

I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade from command line only to full folder/list view, but I have thousands of files with descript.ion descriptions on both NTFS and non-NTFS disks. If the folder/list view can't manipulate descriptions there'd be no benefit to the upgrade - should I stick to the command line?
 
I'm trying to figure out how description handling works with file manipulation in the folder & list views.

When I copy or move a file by dragging it from its appearance in List View into a directory under Folders, I'd expect (and desire) that the description be copied/moved with it. That generally doesn't seem to be the case.

It is *never* the case if you're using DESCRIPT.ION -- the description files are not updated with drag & drop operations.

I also suspect that NTFS descriptions don't actually work very well, period.

That would require a fairly catastrophic bug in the Windows NTFS code, as NTFS descriptions are just streams attached to the file, so all description handling is done by Windows. Do you have an example that is failing?
 
It is *never* the case if you're using DESCRIPT.ION -- the description files are not updated with drag & drop operations.

Maybe they should be? That would be something the TCMD interface would have over just using Windows Explorer directly.

That would require a fairly catastrophic bug in the Windows NTFS code, as NTFS descriptions are just streams attached to the file, so all description handling is done by Windows. Do you have an example that is failing?

He did say he have non-NTFS disks as well, so perhaps he copied the files with NTFS descriptions back and forth between those. That would probably wipe out the descriptions right? (Unless TCC can do some magic)
 
That would require a fairly catastrophic bug in the Windows NTFS code, as NTFS descriptions are just streams attached to the file, so all description handling is done by Windows. Do you have an example that is failing?
I did originally, but I can't reproduce it now. I believe I understand what was happening, though.

The issue is the transition from one type of description to another. If I have file foo1.txt with description "bar1" in DESCRIPT.ION, and file foo2.txt with description "bar2" in NTFS, then when viewing the directory in TC or TCC I can only see one of the descriptions. That's not entirely surprising, but it is disappointing.

As I mentioned I have thousands of files with DESCRIPT.ION descriptions, so it sounds like the TC file explorer will never be of much use to me:

If I switch to NTFS those descriptions will become invisible - and over time be lost, as file operations will leave the descriptions behind. Also of course this won't work on non-NTFS drives like my NAS. So I guess I can't switch.

If I don't switch, I'll be unable to do any file operations using TC, since again the descriptions will get lost. So I guess I can't use TC.

I was hoping I'd finally found a file manager that would work with the descriptions I've spent years and years building up in 4Dos and Take Command. Total Commander handles descriptions seamlessly, but its UI is extremely non-intuitive to me. Any chance the file manager aspects of TC will be enhanced to handle DESCRIPT.ION?
 

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