Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 4th Nov 2010 22:40 UTC, submitted by rhyder
"For a fairly scruffy looking guy, I have a surprisingly healthy approach to organising my files. However, I'm constantly pushing up against the limitations of a system that is based around directories. I'm convinced that Linux needs to make greater use of tagging, but I'm also beginning to wonder if desktop Linux could abandon the hierarchical directory structure entirely."
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Member since:2006-06-09
Say, if I look for music, I go in Search/Music. That folder full of symlinks is automatically updated by the indexing service, with the hierarchies I like (Artist/Album/Title, Genre/Artist/Title...). If I look for documents, I go in Search/Documents and can search by date of last modification, document type (PDF, Word processing, Slides...), and so on.
It's called live queries in BeOS and Haiku, and work on automatic mime type discovery and indexing.
So... see you soon under Haiku?
;-)
Member since:2010-03-08
It's called live queries in BeOS and Haiku, and work on automatic mime type discovery and indexing.
Interesting, should have a look at this...
So... see you soon under Haiku?
;-)
;-)
Not soon, but maybe later. Tried it, and found it as boring to use as it is exciting technologically-speaking ^^
Member since:2005-07-11
So in my opinion, a better idea would be to offer an automatically-generated hierarchy in order to make search functionalities more discoverable.
Yet another way BeOS was released to world before its time.
This was implemented in the file manager and the filesystem. Supposedly, it worked well (never used BeOS myself). This is something I really like about Zimbra. You can save a search anywhere in your folder tree, and it will update the results every time you "open" the "folder". Works quite nicely, with a barely noticeable 1s lag.
Say, if I look for music, I go in Search/Music. That folder full of symlinks is automatically updated
Why symlinks? Why not just show the files themselves?
Member since:2010-03-08
Member since:2005-07-11
"So in my opinion, a better idea would be to offer an automatically-generated hierarchy in order to make search functionalities more discoverable.
Yet another way BeOS was released to world before its time.
This was implemented in the file manager and the filesystem. " Just to make this clear; BFS automatically indexes certain attributes to speed up searching, it does not automatically populate those attributes. With Neolander's suggestion, creating a link is like adding a tag, not indexing an existing tag. If/when Haiku will automatically fill attributes, this too will be by a continuously running userland process.
This is something I really like about Zimbra. You can save a search anywhere in your folder tree, and it will update the results every time you "open" the "folder".
Saved queries in BeOS/Haiku work this way too. Tracker makes them behave more or less like folders. You can for instance make a search for program files and put it in your Leaf menu folder (Haiku-speak for start menu), or anywhere else for that matter, to have a dynamic application launcher.
Edited 2010-11-06 12:10 UTC
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
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Member since:
2010-03-08
-Tags make file organization a nightmare once you use too much. But it takes a lot of mastery to only use a few tags. So I'm not sure that for the average guy, this would really be an improvement.
-Tagging files at hand is a very lengthy process compared with giving a name and creating a directory hierarchy. Automatically tagging files is doable, but error-prone once it gets a bit fine-grained.
-Tag discoverability is poor once there are many tags around, so it's more of a companion for search than a companion for hierarchy.
-More over, too many people and programs are used to hierarchical storage for such a breakthrough change in the way files are organized.
So in my opinion, a better idea would be to offer an automatically-generated hierarchy in order to make search functionalities more discoverable.
Say, if I look for music, I go in Search/Music. That folder full of symlinks is automatically updated by the indexing service, with the hierarchies I like (Artist/Album/Title, Genre/Artist/Title...). If I look for documents, I go in Search/Documents and can search by date of last modification, document type (PDF, Word processing, Slides...), and so on.
Current search functionalities only work properly when you know the name of the file by heart. In my opinion, a search functionality which allows finding a long-lost file through a more thematic search would be more interesting.
Edited 2010-11-05 06:59 UTC