Re: Looking for Dired mode to comment directory listing

[Will Parsons]

Alan wrote:
> At one time, 4dos, an alternate M$DOG shell, enabled a file listing
> command to include a comment.  In the days of 8+3 filenames, this was
> simple feature improved my work output considerably.  Later on, GNU/
> Linux with extremely long filenames worked ok, and I was able to
> forget about 4dos.
> 
> It occurs to me, however, that it might be possible to do a similar
> thing with dired, transparently.  Is it currently possible?  I saw an
> ipa.el, In Pace Annotations,  on the emacs.sources group/list (http://
> www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs/ipa.el), enabling commentary
> annotations  to be saved in separate files, and viewed transparently.
> To use this feature for directory listings, however, it would be
> necessary to save the listing to a file.  Or would it?

I'm not familiar with ipa.el, but 4dos worked (if I remember correctly)
by having an invisible file DESCRIPT.ION in each directory containing the
mappings of file names to file descriptions.  As long as one used the 4dos
versions of copy, move, &c. to copy and move the files, the annotations
would follow the file names.  You could do this in Emacs, but you would
have to use the annotation-aware version of dired to maintain the
annotations.

 > I have received comments in the past, that long filenames
are enough.  > I could still use other kinds of comments, for example, with
photos, > and it would seem to be more convenient.  > > Thanks for any ideas.