XYplorer Beta Club

Hello,
After having read a thread about comment format - people wishing to have comments in the almost defunct extra file format, and comments being now in the same proprietary format as are tags within XYplorer -, I registered to post my question there, but was redirected to the landing page, that thread being "lost" for me, so I open a new thread.

So, my question, why doing / having done comments within your proprietary format? I fully understand that tags are in such a format, but for comments, I would like to have them "transferrable" to other file managers: My tags couldn't be seen but within XY, that's ok, but if I use another file manager intermittently, my comments would be displayed, like they would in DO, X2, etc. that all use the standard comment format for this, within the ADS (even if it's not supported by FAT).

Especially, I've GOT many such comments with my files, done with other file managers, and I open XY: NOTHING in the corresponding field, and how could it be, since, judging from the other thread, your proprietary format has finally been adopted for comments?

Why not doing both, then, perhaps? XY is just unable to display STANDARD file (and folder) comments, as it is, and if I understand well, so your proprietary comments may be very well on top (perhaps as "XYComment" vs. "Comment") of displaying the standard comments then, but INSTEAD if the standard ones, which is to say, by LOSING the standard ones?

Your file manager is considered to be one of the very best out there, and were it not for this missing feature, I'd happily agree. So what did you make adopt your proprietary format, for file metadata that can almost universally be displayed, but not in XY?

Or is there a way to display that data in XY which I did overlook, up to now? (I didn't find anything about that in the help file, which treats comments, tags and labels in one item.)

Well, I had searched for "comments", and read a lot, but had yet overlooked that very post from end of October,

http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7167

"Import document properties comments into XYplorer comments?"

where nas8e9 (1500 posts = the developer? is this info reliable, I mean?) said:
XYplorer is slated to support the extra Windows Shell columns, including comments, in its own column system. (...) My best guess would be somewhere next year.

That's VERY good new indeed!

But please could you confirm that the ADS comments will be displayed "as is" within XY, i.e. so that you can freely switch from third party file managers to XY and back, without them being transferred into another format, within XY?

What I mean is, just one single importing of those standard format comments into the XY format, without any further changes on them being available in third-party programs, would NOT be the solution to the problem as I'm concerned.

Please comment.

Besides that, XYplorer is tremendously good in my opinion: Search is excellent, tag function is extremely helpful (if not yet implemented in a real elegant way if I may so, repeating what others in this forum have said before me...), search results into a new tab from which you can group launch all (or any of) those hit files with one Enter command then: I'm very pleased with all this, except for the non-availability of industry standard comments.

With this problem really being solved, XYplorer will be the outstanding file manager indeed.

(DOpus' got a very poor search function, for example: Takes 3 to 4 times more time to search my files, and does NOT find the hits, correctly displayed in XYplorer, and other contenders have other faults / bugs / missing features I can NOT live with either...)

xp10 wrote:where nas8e9 (1500 posts = the developer? is this info reliable, I mean?) said:
XYplorer is slated to support the extra Windows Shell columns, including comments, in its own column system. (...) My best guess would be somewhere next year.

Hi and welcome to the XY forums!

For background: Donald Lessau (aka "admin") is the one and only developer of XY...the rest of us here are just XY fans! Some of us post here rather often...we all somewhat help guide XY development by suggesting ideas that Don often (but not always) implements, and by helping test XY beta releases (but not as "official' testers).

What nas8e9 posted was based on comments in the XY Roadmap (a thread here in forum).

J. C. Hallgren,

Thank you very much for the warm welcome and the clarifications, I appreciate both a lot.

So my problem was to not know the search term for my search,

"Shell Columns (extended file properties as optional columns in the list)" ;-)

and to have got much too many false hits for "roadmap" either, the link being, then

http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=830

(Mentioning it here again is only helpful for other newbies, I know that.) The feature was planned for 2010, for 2011... but it seems it's becoming near introduction at last, so I'm very confident.

Three things: I had feared that since XYplorer had its own format, there would be a refusal to introduce the industry standard; but then it seems DL perfectly sees the necessity to follow the industry standard, on top of the proprietary format (that works fine for tags, as said) - I'm pleased and relieved by this fact since continuous absence of this feature would have been a dealbreaker for me, and NOT knowing any serious alternative to XY, that is.

As a one-man project, XY, with all that has already been done, all the "green items" on the roadmap, and with its pleasant interface (which is not the case with xplorer2 even for search results, for example, those scrap containers there are terrible, or perhaps I missed something on the idea behind it, unknown to me), is a tremendous offering that lives up to the advertizements I happen now to understand (A while ago, I did some trial with XY, it crashed when searching my files, so I quickly left; now search within XY is one of its finest features for me). DL's doing a LOAD of (very fine) work, it seems to me.

Volontary workers with 1500 - 5000 posts / replies in your case: wow! "More than impressive" appears poor a term for describing that. (And now have a look into that other German file manager, Speed Commander: booo in all respects (except for looks but thats misleading...).)

EDIT:

P.S. I just bought the lifetime license (and to h*** with bdj where I could have got it for less, some weeks ago. They take 50 p.c. of the reduced price, and good programming is worth more than the rest coming to the developers from there - and with a lifetime license, there is no getting even with the updates afterwards, so...).

And now for the industry standard comments, PLEASE!

j_c_hallgren wrote:

xp10 wrote:where nas8e9 (1500 posts = the developer? is this info reliable, I mean?) said:
XYplorer is slated to support the extra Windows Shell columns, including comments, in its own column system. (...) My best guess would be somewhere next year.

Hi and welcome to the XY forums!

For background: Donald Lessau (aka "admin") is the one and only developer of XY...the rest of us here are just XY fans! Some of us post here rather often...we all somewhat help guide XY development by suggesting ideas that Don often (but not always) implements, and by helping test XY beta releases (but not as "official' testers).

What nas8e9 posted was based on comments in the XY Roadmap (a thread here in forum).

What j_c_hallgren says . Apologies for the confusion, I should have linked to the roadmap.

nas8e9 wrote:What j_c_hallgren says . Apologies for the confusion, I should have linked to the roadmap.

As should I but when I posted that, was in a bit of hurry to get back to cottage work so figured Roadmap thread would be easy enough to find...sorry!

xp10: I'm sure that Don will appreciate your purchase! Thanks for doing so!
BTW: Took me a minute to figure out what/who "DL" was in your post, as we normally just say Don here.

And yes, we have a core group of XY fans who spend a LOT of time here! I'm checking this forum typically at least 10 times per day and while I have used XY longer than some, I don't use as many features as others (like scripting) so I try and concentrate on welcoming new forum users and such.

Thanks a lot for these warm words!