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WinCatalog
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Posted by 22111
Jan 23, 2014 at 10:49 PM
Somebody mentioned WinCatalog ( http://www.wincatalog.com ) on bits today; I had never heard of this prog (and it has never been mentioned here), and the price (50 bucks) seems “excessive”, by comparison (all the more so since U.S. customer could “buy” it for free, by “trial pay”, for just some two cinema seats e.g. (which would never cost the official price of this prog), but having had a quick look at its feature list, I’m aghast: This prog seems to offer everything that all current file managers, free and paid, unforgivably have left out.
It’s more than just “interesting”, it seems to be something splendidly useful, and if it’s up to it claims, 50 bucks is more than acceptable. I’m really impressed, and I’ll trial.
Posted by Wayne K
Jan 23, 2014 at 11:29 PM
I don’t see it on Bits today but thanks for bringing it up. I’m going to try it. I’ve been trying to better organize my PDF’s. I wasn’t looking for anything too complicated: just something that will allow me to add columns of simple information (eg author, source, date, etc). I thought it would be easy to find multiple programs to handle this but that hasn’t been the case so far.
I first looked to my file managers. XYplorer does a nice job overall but has only two columns that can be customized. Donald said he’s going to increase this in a future upgrade.
Xplorer2 provides columns but you can’t add information to them (!). I emailed them about it and support confirmed that. They did not answer my question about why they provide columns that can’t be modified.
Opus Directory has a nice assortment of columns and I might end up using it. My one complaint is that you can’t enter information directly in a column. You have to go to the attributes pane, which I find awkward.
I thought MyInfo would handle this with ease but that didn’t work out either. If you select a column of pdf’s in your file manager and drag it into MyInfo, it creates a nice list of files. Unfortunately, these are not links; they’re embedded files. There’s an 11 MB limit on file sizes, which alone makes it unusable for me. In addition, if you modify the original file, you have to remember to embed the new version in MyInfo. Too much trouble.
Zoot might do the job but I haven’t tried it yet.
Wayne
Posted by Wayne K
Jan 24, 2014 at 01:13 AM
Big letdown. Looks like you can’t customize columns.
Posted by Wayne K
Jan 24, 2014 at 01:31 AM
I went to “Alternative To” website and entered Wincatalog. The top choice returned was “Where Is it”. I just installed it and gave it a quick try. No customizable columns there, either.
Posted by 22111
Jan 24, 2014 at 11:53 AM
Wayne,
It’not on bits, it’s just somebody who mentioned this prog in the Zentimo offering there.
“Xplorer2 provides columns but you can’t add information to them (!). I emailed them about it and support confirmed that. They did not answer my question about why they provide columns that can’t be modified.”
I gave up on x2, exactly because of this style of “support” there you describe here, I’m fed up with such stubbornness of a developer who has had good ideas but then does not give them the necessary follow-up (and it seems his (very nice and trying to be helpful all the way they can, btw, but they can neither spice up the prog, nor decide for the developer, unfortunately) “boys” did all the work, for free, in the pdf help - incredible!).
I didn’t have time yet to look into WC (oh! nice acronym, all your stuff put into the loo!), but I strongly suppose that by “columns”, you mean ntfs attributes, that famous ADS info that Windows has taken away after XP, and which survives in those file managers you mention; here it’s important to bear in mind that this info becomes more and more proprietary - perhaps even between x2 and DO, and certainly within XY: Don never bothered to process the original ADS attributes but used proprietary info instead, from day 1, then promised his customers to replace it with the ADS variety, and then never changed anything here, and indeed, now such a move seems to have become perfectly dispensable indeed.
Perhaps WC is not so much a prog for everyday use, but more an “idea quarry” - but if I take some ideas from there to implement them into something else, I’ll certainly say so, and it seems to have a very generous trial scheme, i.e. not the usual “all-functional but for 30 consecutive (!) days only”, but “never-expiring, but with quantitative limitations”, so that extensive trial is possible.
IF we’re speaking of the same detail, i.e. “columns” = “ADS attributes”, any such prog today has got a big prob, because Windows simply cut off those attributes, but without replacing them with anything else (= something presumable “better”, but anything standardized though (MS’ argument was security considerations with ADS: ok, but they should have replaced it with something more “secure”, then), so that any prog relying on such info necessarily creates a proprietary system, which is catastrophical for the “industry” and especially for individual users and little workgroups (whilst big corporations often run alternative sw and alternative storage formats at least on their servers (no ntfs there).
Not mentioning TC, which even relies upon that ancient descript.ion system… I did not find any viable solution to this very big problem; no wonder all prof. sw for workgroups (e.g. law office group sw and such) does it with proprietary db solutions now, MS literally killed any development of file-system-based group solutions you could find in earlier stages.
I tried to discuss these questions in the x2 forum - no interest from the part of the developer whatsoever.
Btw, this will marginalize the use of paid file commanders (of which I own 6 or 7, incl. 2 versions of NC, both for Dos and Win), since free ones like FC XE are now even better in most respects, and even the paid ones just integrate some additional functionality third-party (free) solutions, e.g. batch rename, some search, pic display, and more such goodies, and especially DO tries to convince its users that “it has got it all”, when in fact, for every such “integrated” additional functionality, there is an available (free) prog that does it better than the respective DO function.
On the other hand, NONE of the paid file commanders today does (without internal scripting that is, so development is delegated onto the individual paying user) proper = really quick “batch” copying/moving (= quick distribution of your inbox files, and such) of individual files:
In every one of them, you will need to write your own macro to copy/move (a) “selected” (= previously copied/cut = ^c, ^x) file(s) to a target:
Either, you must switch target in the second pane, again and again,
or you must open many addititional panes (in several instances or several “windows”, etc.), and then move your mouse over long distances,
or you must switch between source and respective target folder within your current pane, again and again:
NONE of them provides a (technically very simple to implement) command for just “copy/move the previously copied/cut file(s) to the currently selected item if that is a folder”
(which means you copy/cut one or several files (selection, in case with control-mouse, then ^c/^x),
then you select some folder (in the current pane or the opposite pane (where you could have listed most of possible target folders, hence the interest of such a “shortcut” to work really speedy),
then you do a “control-F5/control-F6” or something,
and this new command would simply copy/move all these files into that target folder, WITHOUT forcing you to SWITCH to that folder first.
I tried to convince SEVERAL of these developer to implement such a feature, but was treated a fool, an idiot.
Then I wrote an external AHK macro, for doing exactly this, in ANY file commander… but then, I don’t need the paid ones, right? If I do it externally, FC XE is perfect for me, and to the loo with all those paid contenders which won’t go the extra mile for their customers all the same!
In real life, with the above macro, I process my inbox and other file collections this way:
up or down arrows, then 1-key for “cut”;
again up arrows for reaching the target folder
(or in some instances, tab key to reach the opposite pane first, then another tab to go back - and you could even integrate this switch forth and back into your macro, and have the same folder in both panes, in order to minimize arrow key pressings, will do this soon as an alternative for when most of the targets are referenced within the current folder anyway);
1-key for “put it into this folder” (if the current line represents another file instead, I’ll get a message box, and simply select an appropriate target after closing that box);
down arrows for processing the next such file (and yes there is room for improvement in order to minimize arrow key pressing).
And of course, such functionality should be natively implemented in ANY such paid file commander, at least AFTER having contacted those lazy developers on this behalf… ;-)