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I've been thinking recently about that too. It's inefficient to use a traditional folder/file system, at least for your personal documents (for system and progr

I've been thinking recently about that too. It's inefficient to use a traditional folder/file system, at least for your personal documents (for system and program files I think they're better off the original way.) What about folders that represent tags? I could tag a file (say a picture) with Danny (my name), Vacation, and 2007. The system creates 4 "folders" as we understand them, each one labeled with a tag, and the final one labeled as "images" or something similar (whatever the file type is). You could open the "images" folder and see the image, along with all other images. You could drill down further into images>vacation and see all files tagged with both images and vacation. You will also see additional folders for other items that have additional tags and fit in the images>vacation tag. You could also get to the same file by going into the "Danny" folder, to see all files tagged with "Danny," It's a little difficult to explain, and I'm sure that what I'm trying to express is already being developed by someone, but either way, it is a more efficient system than what we already have. No more annoying shortcuts and restrictive folders.

Xichekolas 19y ago
Yeah my thoughts on the matter have always included tagging. It just seems logical to have the same file in more than one group (or folder if you want to call it that), and I hate drilling down seven levels to find something. My problem has always been in dealing with system files. The current setup seems rather logical for them anyway. Maybe a two pronged approach like you suggest makes the most sense.
frankus 19y ago
It seems like that would be pretty straightforward to add to any filesystem that already supports metadata. I'm sure Windows has something similar, but on MacOS X.5 (a feature borrowed from BeOS, IIRC), you can create a Smart Folder that's basically a canned query for files matching a very large set of criteria. I'm not sure what the API is for extending the criteria, but presumably adding tags wouldn't be all that difficult.
staticshock 19y ago
I've considered this idea myself, previously, and I like it a lot. The beauty is that if you go to \Images\Vacation\2005, it's the same as going to \2005\Vacation\Images, so you can access your files in an intuitive way no matter which train of thought got you there. The only thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to represend these tags as directories. You shouldn't see them all at the top level, that'd be pretty crowded.
- Xichekolas 19y ago
  I always just thought you'd index the tags and search on them.
wallflower 19y ago
What is your opinion (on the concepts) of David Gelenter's Lifestreams project? http://www.cs.yale.edu/~freeman/lifestreams.html http://www.cs.yale.edu/~freeman/lifestreams.html One can imagine it's Time Machine'sque metaphor being extended to archive your online life (twitter, Facebook) as well (assuming the data could be retrieved)
Prrometheus 19y ago
At my work, some people organize documents on the shared drive by date and others by location of the client. So, if you want to look for the pitch we did for a certain Virginia client in January 2006 you first have to check the /Virginia/ folder and then check the /2006/Jan/ folder. If it's not in either one of those, it may be in /smith/companies/name_of_company/, where "smith" is the name of the guy that originally authored the documents. It's a mess.
projectileboy 19y ago
Google Docs is organized this way.
- dkokelley 19y ago
  Is it really? I thought it was just search for your documents by keywords found in them. There is no way to look at all the tags or navigate through them. That's actually one of my issues with GDocs. You don't have many organizational tools for the documents. They would actually be a good candidate for an overhaul similar to what we're discussing.
  - projectileboy 19y ago
    Maybe I'm confused, but I think the "folders" in Google Docs behave the way you'd like. I can put a doc in one or more folders, and then I can look at the contents of only one folder. And I can have sub-folders. And really the folders are just tags.
fugue88 19y ago
What about this? Put every document in a directory called 'All' or something. Want to tag foo.txt as vacation? 'mkdir vacation && ln All/foo.txt vacation/'
halo 19y ago
You could do something extremely similar with BFS 10 years ago, and that's the concept behind the long-delayed WinFS.

Xichekolas 19y ago

Yeah my thoughts on the matter have always included tagging. It just seems logical to have the same file in more than one group (or folder if you want to call it that), and I hate drilling down seven levels to find something. My problem has always been in dealing with system files. The current setup seems rather logical for them anyway. Maybe a two pronged approach like you suggest makes the most sense.

frankus 19y ago

It seems like that would be pretty straightforward to add to any filesystem that already supports metadata. I'm sure Windows has something similar, but on MacOS X.5 (a feature borrowed from BeOS, IIRC), you can create a Smart Folder that's basically a canned query for files matching a very large set of criteria. I'm not sure what the API is for extending the criteria, but presumably adding tags wouldn't be all that difficult.

staticshock 19y ago

I've considered this idea myself, previously, and I like it a lot. The beauty is that if you go to \Images\Vacation\2005, it's the same as going to \2005\Vacation\Images, so you can access your files in an intuitive way no matter which train of thought got you there. The only thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to represend these tags as directories. You shouldn't see them all at the top level, that'd be pretty crowded.

Xichekolas 19y ago
I always just thought you'd index the tags and search on them.

wallflower 19y ago

What is your opinion (on the concepts) of David Gelenter's Lifestreams project? http://www.cs.yale.edu/~freeman/lifestreams.html http://www.cs.yale.edu/~freeman/lifestreams.html One can imagine it's Time Machine'sque metaphor being extended to archive your online life (twitter, Facebook) as well (assuming the data could be retrieved)

Prrometheus 19y ago

At my work, some people organize documents on the shared drive by date and others by location of the client. So, if you want to look for the pitch we did for a certain Virginia client in January 2006 you first have to check the /Virginia/ folder and then check the /2006/Jan/ folder. If it's not in either one of those, it may be in /smith/companies/name_of_company/, where "smith" is the name of the guy that originally authored the documents. It's a mess.

projectileboy 19y ago

Google Docs is organized this way.

dkokelley 19y ago
Is it really? I thought it was just search for your documents by keywords found in them. There is no way to look at all the tags or navigate through them. That's actually one of my issues with GDocs. You don't have many organizational tools for the documents. They would actually be a good candidate for an overhaul similar to what we're discussing.
- projectileboy 19y ago
  Maybe I'm confused, but I think the "folders" in Google Docs behave the way you'd like. I can put a doc in one or more folders, and then I can look at the contents of only one folder. And I can have sub-folders. And really the folders are just tags.

fugue88 19y ago

What about this? Put every document in a directory called 'All' or something. Want to tag foo.txt as vacation? 'mkdir vacation && ln All/foo.txt vacation/'

halo 19y ago

You could do something extremely similar with BFS 10 years ago, and that's the concept behind the long-delayed WinFS.