File managers that support file descriptions

[epement]

I would like to hear recommendations for file managers, currently supported or compatible with Windows 8, which display Take Command/TCC file descriptions. I am partial to two-pane, Norton Commander-like file managers, but I'd like to first know what's available. Even better would be the ability to edit file descriptions.

My favorite file manager, Altap Salamander, doesn't display file descriptions. What do you use?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Charles Dye]

Eh, TCC is the One True File Manager. But this site might be of interest, if you aren't already aware of it: Orthodox File Managers.

 

[w_krieger]

File Commander / 2 and /W supports descript.ion files. It has its own command line expansions, which are quite powerful. !p is the current directory, !P the opposite directory, ! the current file, etc. It's brilliant, but it relies on an insert key which the surface does not have. It's text mode, and you can edit your own menu like NC.

FAR does pretty much the same thing, but has less powerful aliasing at the prompt. It has a good support for plugins. It is character-mode too.

 

[Stefano Piccardi]

TotalCommader displays and edits file descriptions. Generally speaking, be careful matching the maximum description length setting between TCC and the file manager. I think default max length is 512 for TCC and 1024 for TotalCommander (you can change that in totalcmd.ini). One minor point, TCC creates DESCRIPT.ION (uppercase), while TotalCommander creates descript.ion (lowercase).

 

[Jay Sage]

Long ago, Magellan Explorer was recommended here, and I have been using it for as long as I can remember. It supports file descriptions and has a very nice built-in FTP client. One caution: at some point, my configuration got messed up, and I can no longer get the file-description feature to work properly. Since I generally use V for that, it hasn't been enough of an issue for me to figure out what has gone wrong. I use it now mostly for operations involving FTP sites.

 

[Charles G]

One I used to use is winnc.com - can't remember if it worked with descript.ion files though....

 

[Christian Albaret]

TCC can be configured to store descriptions in the NTFS SummaryInformation stream (Options / Advanced / Descriptions). I expected this to provide descriptions visible in Windows Explorer — but I could not make it work (Windows 7, french), and I could find no information about any file manager/browser that uses this information.

 

[Alpengreis]

TotalCommader displays and edits file descriptions. Generally speaking, be careful matching the maximum description length setting between TCC and the file manager. I think default max length is 512 for TCC and 1024 for TotalCommander (you can change that in totalcmd.ini). One minor point, TCC creates DESCRIPT.ION (uppercase), while TotalCommander creates descript.ion (lowercase).

No, it's not possible to define in the .INI (by the way: now it's the "wincmd.ini" no more "totalcmd.ini" ("totalcmd.ini" should be valid too yet); however: this is not the point. The point is: it's hard-coded, at least with Total Commander 8.50 till 8.51a is the situation as follow (copied from Total Commander 8.50 Help-File):

"When using descript.ion, the comment length is limited to (new!) 4095 characters. Please note that some tools will not support comments longer than 511 characters. You will get a warning beep and the number of characters will be shown in bold when the comment length exceeds 511 characters.
The comment may have multiple lines, now also when using descript.ion files. The comment will automatically be changed to the correct format."

Greetings
Alpengreis