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Filesystems are confusing because they force a hierachy, and we all know that real-world data isn't all hierarchical. The best filesystem abstraction is GMail,
by drblast 16y ago
Filesystems are confusing because they force a hierachy, and we all know that real-world data isn't all hierarchical.
The best filesystem abstraction is GMail, because you can tag things and search them. Instead of saving my photos to /home/user/Christmas/2009/DecoratingTree/ I should be able to label a group of photos with those tags and filter by them later.
For the novice, the operation would go like this: Show me all things related to "Christmas..." wow, that's a lot of stuff, now limit those results to "2009"...and just show me photos. Ah yeah, there's the one of the kids chewing on the tree light wires.
"Tagging" files in this manner would require no more effort than organizing them in directories, and it's a lot more intuitive.
I've been meaning to write an application that works like this for years, but something else has always taken the priority away. If you want to work on it send me an email and I can dig up the code.
- kabdib 16y ago... and that's the way we did it on Newton. Well, more or less. No file system, just databaselets and indexes and search. Ironically, it's harder to reflect actual heirarchies when you have a set of flat, easily searchable records like this. What you probably /really/ need is a multi-edge graph with queries.
- thasmin 16y agoThe problem with tagging is that it's a laborious process and prone to errors which accumulate over time to make the system very inaccurate.
- drblast 16y agoHow is tagging any more laborious than saving in directories? If I save to /home/user/Photos/Christmas/2009, then treat each one of those as a "tag." If later I navigate to /home/user/2009/Christmas, I should see everything "under" that directory. The point is that the hierarchical system filters too early. I want to see everything under a directory without having to drill down and filter from there.