Are file comments possible?

[trinidad]

Sorry wrong thread.

[Tyrannocaster]

Yes, that's the Mac function I was referring to. The options you came up with don't really sound like what I'm after, but they do sound useful anyway, so I'm going to look into that. Thank you.

I need to be able to add more than just tags (or labels, as Linux Lite calls them). For example, I might want to say something like "Red Tele, Marshall Plexi, no fx, SM 57 off-axis, using splits." Not really a tag, LOL.

[Moltke]

All file types. Basically, on a Mac you can append a note to any file via the file comments. I often used these for adding descriptions of equipment setups on recordings, for example, but they have many applications. I don't think you can do this with Linux, I just thought I should ask while I was wondering. It takes two clicks and some typing; it's very easy.

The Mac system is not perfect, though; the comments can be lost if you have a bad system crash; they are stored in the file's icon, I believe, and if it gets corrupted, so does the comment.

You mean something like this? http://www.mactips.info/2009/07/add-and-display-file-comments If I understand that correctly, in Mac you can append a note to a file by opening the file manager, selecting the file, righ-clicking on it, select get info from the context menu and then add your comment, did I get that right? Well, AFAIK in thunar that's not possible, however, KDE's dolphin manager does provide that feature https://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin/File_Management so yes, you can do that in Linux too just not in every distro/DE it seems. If you need that feature, there are two tools, that I'm aware of, that might be worth taking a look at;
TMSU https://tmsu.org/

a tool for tagging your files. It provides a simple command-line tool for applying tags and a virtual filesystem so that you can get a tag-based view of your files from within any other program.

 
TagSpaces https://www.tagspaces.org/ 

an offline, open source, file manager. It helps organizing your files and folders with tags and colors. You can add a custom thumbnail and text description to every file or folder. You can create and edit notes in plain text, markdown or HTML file formats.

[Tyrannocaster]

All file types. Basically, on a Mac you can append a note to any file via the file comments. I often used these for adding descriptions of equipment setups on recordings, for example, but they have many applications. I don't think you can do this with Linux, I just thought I should ask while I was wondering. It takes two clicks and some typing; it's very easy.

The Mac system is not perfect, though; the comments can be lost if you have a bad system crash; they are stored in the file's icon, I believe, and if it gets corrupted, so does the comment.

[Moltke]

Is it possible using Linux to do the equivalent of what you can do on a Mac with file comments? That is, a separate comment about the file that you add to it later but which is separate from it, yet stays attached to it and can be edited. They are really useful for labeling things or making notes about whatever. This question may not make sense to people who haven't used it on a Mac, in which case I suppose it's probably not possible to do with Linux.

What file type are you talking about? A text file? zip file? .deb file? pdf? .odt?  Depending on the file type there are different tools and techniques to do that. For .zip files there's

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zipnote You can use it like this:

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zipnote some_file.zip > comments.txt edit comments.txt file and add your comments, then

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zipnote -w some_file.zip < comments.txt to write them onto some_file.zip read the man page for more info

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man zipnote
Hope this helps!

[Tyrannocaster]

Is it possible using Linux to do the equivalent of what you can do on a Mac with file comments? That is, a separate comment about the file that you add to it later but which is separate from it, yet stays attached to it and can be edited. They are really useful for labeling things or making notes about whatever. This question may not make sense to people who haven't used it on a Mac, in which case I suppose it's probably not possible to do with Linux.