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I think those ideas don't take off because tags don't really solve the problem adequately for normal people. A folder structure is a self-contained map that wi

I think those ideas don't take off because tags don't really solve the problem adequately for normal people. A folder structure is a self-contained map that will help guide me to the correct document. Each step has hints about where I can go next (sub-directory names), starting from most broad going to most specific. It takes advantage of both locality (similar topics are usually next to each other) and logical, hierarchical grouping. A tag is a random thought or property stuck onto a file that I now have to remember every time I want to find that file again. I have no way to specify that tags may have a useful hierarchy of other similar but distinct items without manually coming up with a tagging system to give me that. Folders do it by default. Basically - Folders are a good enough default. Tags might be better in some cases, but you have to be excruciatingly disciplined about using it and I find most people just end up recreating a structure that looks suspiciously like folders.

atoav 7y ago
While I agree with the general sentiment that the mental model of tags is more complex and discovering the right tags is a bigger challange than slapping some tag onto some file, I don't see it as something that needs to replace a traditional file system. Tags are more useful for certain types of files than others. E.g. let's say you want to mark certain projects done. Instead of moving them to a done folder you can just add tags to them – without changing any paths you change their status. Tags are also quite useful for pictures, music and other media content. I never really got, why even in 2019 there is not good support for tags on most desktops.
- ElFitz 7y ago
  macOS' Finder has had tag support for some time. That's ~10% of desktops in the world (and 1 of the 3 "mainstream" desktop OS out there, counting linux) I'm too much of a mess to use them, but they're there.
  - einr 7y ago
    Windows has had file tagging since at least XP. Not a lot of people use them (probably because the UI for it is hard to discover), but I have used stuff like royalty-free photo libraries that have searchable tags. Here's a reference: https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file-for-easy-organization/ https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file...
    - kwhitefoot 7y ago
      The problem is that it can only tag those files that provide data structures for tagging like IPTC and EXIF You can't tag the notes that you write about the holiday you had.
    - kwhitefoot 7y ago
      The problem is that it can only tag those files that provide data structures for tagging like IPTC and EXIF You can't tag the plain text notes that you write about the holiday you had or the bitmap that you created from one of the jpegs.
      - pwinnski 7y ago
        I'm not familiar with Windows file tagging, but on MacOS this is not true. Any and all files may be tagged, regardless of their type or contents.
        kwhitefoot 7y ago
        What happens if you move or copy a file?
        pwinnski 7y ago
        Moving and duplicating both preserve the tags: they're metadata. They're part of the reason for those pesky .DS_Store files that proliferate on network shares and non-Mac filesystems, in fact.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    Yeah, they had it back in OS9
yoodenvranx 7y ago
I want to have both options because traditional folders and a tag based file system solve different problems. Let's say I go on vacation with my dog and make pictures. After I am home again I want to sort the pictures but then I have a problem: the pictures in which you can see my dog in belong into the '2019 vacation to Bavaria' collection _and_ also in the 'Best pictures of my dog' collection. I'd love to have some sort of universal file-database where I can store all my "final" images and then create collections by adding tags.
- blunte 7y ago
  In macOS (for some number of years now) you store files in a standard folder hierarchy, and you can add tags to files. With or without tags, you can use Spotlight (cmd-space) to quickly find files.
  - yoodenvranx 7y ago
    Yes, I know that there are approaches which use the normal file system. But what I want is different: I want a universial "DB for binary files" where I can store binary data and all its metadata. Then I can use this DB to build a app for picture galleries, music collections and tons of other things. This DB should also support: * automatic checksumming so that I can detect data corruption * Some sort of version history so that I can store multiple versions of a file * there could be built-in replication which I can use to see the same data (or parts of it) on all my devices
    - ViViDboarder 7y ago
      Is this common enough a use case that it ought to be a file system feature? Plenty of applications do just this today by using the file system plus an index in SQLite. Is that method insufficient?
      - sfopdxnonstop 7y ago
        You asked: "Is this common enough a use case?" Then you answered your own question: "Plenty of applications do just this today". So yes, it is a common enough case that it could/should be built into the OS.
cesarb 7y ago
> A folder structure is a self-contained map that will help guide me to the correct document. A hierarchical structure like folders also maps well to how we locate things in real life. Suppose I want to get a particular book I have. I enter my home through the front door, pass through the living room, from it enter the corridor which links all the rooms, then enter the office, within it go to the bookcase, open the first door on the left, go to the third row, and it's one of the books which are located in that shelf.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- anderspitman 7y ago
  In a typical house there's likely also at least one alternative route to get to the office. How do you represent that path with tree hierarchy? Tags (at least nested tags, as shown in OP) allow you to create a generic graph.
  - sjy 7y ago
    For most desktop users this is solved with links and shortcuts; I might navigate directly to a document's location in the hierarchy, but it's more likely that I'll rely on an automatically generated link in the 'recent files' area, or a shortcut I created somewhere to the folder containing it.
  - theamk 7y ago
    Even if there are multiple routes, I still remember by location. What I remeber is "The forks are on the top left kitchen drawer" -- not "to get to the forks from the fridge, turn around and walk two steps to the right; and to get to the forks from the table, turn left, then walk around the cabinet"
  - chongli 7y ago
    How do you represent that path with tree hierarchy? You represent that by using a spatial Finder [1] (with aliases), instead of a browser. Files and folders can be organized spatially on the desktop and within each window. Since a given window is a permanent view into its folder (there was no way to open multiple windows of the same folder nor could a window ever show a different folder) it was extremely easy to remember what you were looking at, visually. The classic Mac OS also had tags which you could use to flag files and folders by colour and of course you could change folders into small icon or list view in order to handle many files at a time. These view settings permanently applied to a given folder, so every time you opened it you would see the same window, in the same place, right where you left off. To someone who may never have used this system, it's hard to describe how incredibly productive it was. Humans have extremely powerful spatial memory and the classic Mac OS Finder leveraged that perfectly. Just like the example of someone walking through their house to retrieve a book from their library or a letter from their desk, you could navigate your folder structure visually, without even reading the file names; it was incredibly powerful! [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/2/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/2/
sfopdxnonstop 7y ago
Tags are a strict superset of folder functionality. There's nothing you can do with folders that you can't do with tags. You want nesting? Tags can nest. You want visual clues? Tags can have visual clues. Folders can be and sometimes are implemented as tags.
- megous 7y ago
  Well, tags and folders are identical. You can have the same file linked to from multiple folders at once. `ls` will even show you the number of folders the file is part of in the second column.
anderspitman 7y ago
I agree that there's lots of value in the simplicity of a tree hierarchy as a default, but sometimes the extra power of a tagging/labeling system would be valuable. Essentially it gives you a generic graph structure. Others have mentioned that this is valuable for things like media, ie photos that often need to be members of multiple album collections. It could also have other benefits as well, such as being able to visualize your filesystem as a graph, and easily see clusters of data depending on which tags are used the most. The only heuristic we really have for tree filesystems to get a feel for a subtree (child folder) is the total disk usage of that folder, or maybe total number of files in the subtree.
fouc 7y ago
I agree that tags shouldn't really be some additional meta property on the existing files/filesystem. I had an idea to use folders as tags, and to make a script that moves folders around according to the usage of the tags. So that way we have hierarchical folder structure, and the folder name is the tag, but it will stay organized according to the usage. The trick in my case was to come up with a convention for a folder name in order to make it obvious it's a "tag" folder. https://github.com/foucist/tagmv https://github.com/foucist/tagmv
ma2rten 7y ago
I am also not a huge fan of tags. Gmail uses tags. It allows hierarchies of tags. In theory that is more powerful. It's like a folder system where something can be in multiple folders. In practice it just makes things messy.
0x445442 7y ago
Gelernter disagreed and proposed temporal vs spacial organizational metaphor. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/dissertation/etf.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/dissertation/etf.pdf
anigbrowl 7y ago
Autogeneration of topology tags should solve this. I also need tagging agents that run around when I'm not busy and tag things on my behalf, particularly recognizable patterns in existing tagged structures.
Mikhail_Edoshin 7y ago
Tags are like a book index while folders are like a table of contents. Both are very useful, but I'd say an index is more useful as it can scale very well across multiple books. (Such an index would have its own table of contents, I think :) You can have hierarchical tags even with a flat system, just name them "foo", "foo/bar" and so on. (And if you design a tag system nothing prevents from adding a hierarchy of tags.) But you're right tags need discipline and single source. There's no way to have a community-based tag soup without some sort of tag police. Another problem is that all tag-based system I saw (not many) looked very much in their infancy. All they had was very basic flat tagging without hierarchy and very basic search. These are not enough to realize their potential.

atoav 7y ago

While I agree with the general sentiment that the mental model of tags is more complex and discovering the right tags is a bigger challange than slapping some tag onto some file, I don't see it as something that needs to replace a traditional file system. Tags are more useful for certain types of files than others. E.g. let's say you want to mark certain projects done. Instead of moving them to a done folder you can just add tags to them – without changing any paths you change their status. Tags are also quite useful for pictures, music and other media content. I never really got, why even in 2019 there is not good support for tags on most desktops.

ElFitz 7y ago
macOS' Finder has had tag support for some time. That's ~10% of desktops in the world (and 1 of the 3 "mainstream" desktop OS out there, counting linux) I'm too much of a mess to use them, but they're there.
- einr 7y ago
  Windows has had file tagging since at least XP. Not a lot of people use them (probably because the UI for it is hard to discover), but I have used stuff like royalty-free photo libraries that have searchable tags. Here's a reference: https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file-for-easy-organization/ https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file...
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    The problem is that it can only tag those files that provide data structures for tagging like IPTC and EXIF You can't tag the notes that you write about the holiday you had.
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    The problem is that it can only tag those files that provide data structures for tagging like IPTC and EXIF You can't tag the plain text notes that you write about the holiday you had or the bitmap that you created from one of the jpegs.
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      I'm not familiar with Windows file tagging, but on MacOS this is not true. Any and all files may be tagged, regardless of their type or contents.
      - kwhitefoot 7y ago
        What happens if you move or copy a file?
        pwinnski 7y ago
        Moving and duplicating both preserve the tags: they're metadata. They're part of the reason for those pesky .DS_Store files that proliferate on network shares and non-Mac filesystems, in fact.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Yeah, they had it back in OS9

yoodenvranx 7y ago

I want to have both options because traditional folders and a tag based file system solve different problems. Let's say I go on vacation with my dog and make pictures. After I am home again I want to sort the pictures but then I have a problem: the pictures in which you can see my dog in belong into the '2019 vacation to Bavaria' collection _and_ also in the 'Best pictures of my dog' collection. I'd love to have some sort of universal file-database where I can store all my "final" images and then create collections by adding tags.

blunte 7y ago
In macOS (for some number of years now) you store files in a standard folder hierarchy, and you can add tags to files. With or without tags, you can use Spotlight (cmd-space) to quickly find files.
- yoodenvranx 7y ago
  Yes, I know that there are approaches which use the normal file system. But what I want is different: I want a universial "DB for binary files" where I can store binary data and all its metadata. Then I can use this DB to build a app for picture galleries, music collections and tons of other things. This DB should also support: * automatic checksumming so that I can detect data corruption * Some sort of version history so that I can store multiple versions of a file * there could be built-in replication which I can use to see the same data (or parts of it) on all my devices
  - ViViDboarder 7y ago
    Is this common enough a use case that it ought to be a file system feature? Plenty of applications do just this today by using the file system plus an index in SQLite. Is that method insufficient?
    - sfopdxnonstop 7y ago
      You asked: "Is this common enough a use case?" Then you answered your own question: "Plenty of applications do just this today". So yes, it is a common enough case that it could/should be built into the OS.

cesarb 7y ago

> A folder structure is a self-contained map that will help guide me to the correct document. A hierarchical structure like folders also maps well to how we locate things in real life. Suppose I want to get a particular book I have. I enter my home through the front door, pass through the living room, from it enter the corridor which links all the rooms, then enter the office, within it go to the bookcase, open the first door on the left, go to the third row, and it's one of the books which are located in that shelf.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
anderspitman 7y ago
In a typical house there's likely also at least one alternative route to get to the office. How do you represent that path with tree hierarchy? Tags (at least nested tags, as shown in OP) allow you to create a generic graph.
- sjy 7y ago
  For most desktop users this is solved with links and shortcuts; I might navigate directly to a document's location in the hierarchy, but it's more likely that I'll rely on an automatically generated link in the 'recent files' area, or a shortcut I created somewhere to the folder containing it.
- theamk 7y ago
  Even if there are multiple routes, I still remember by location. What I remeber is "The forks are on the top left kitchen drawer" -- not "to get to the forks from the fridge, turn around and walk two steps to the right; and to get to the forks from the table, turn left, then walk around the cabinet"
- chongli 7y ago
  How do you represent that path with tree hierarchy? You represent that by using a spatial Finder [1] (with aliases), instead of a browser. Files and folders can be organized spatially on the desktop and within each window. Since a given window is a permanent view into its folder (there was no way to open multiple windows of the same folder nor could a window ever show a different folder) it was extremely easy to remember what you were looking at, visually. The classic Mac OS also had tags which you could use to flag files and folders by colour and of course you could change folders into small icon or list view in order to handle many files at a time. These view settings permanently applied to a given folder, so every time you opened it you would see the same window, in the same place, right where you left off. To someone who may never have used this system, it's hard to describe how incredibly productive it was. Humans have extremely powerful spatial memory and the classic Mac OS Finder leveraged that perfectly. Just like the example of someone walking through their house to retrieve a book from their library or a letter from their desk, you could navigate your folder structure visually, without even reading the file names; it was incredibly powerful! [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/2/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/2/

sfopdxnonstop 7y ago

Tags are a strict superset of folder functionality. There's nothing you can do with folders that you can't do with tags. You want nesting? Tags can nest. You want visual clues? Tags can have visual clues. Folders can be and sometimes are implemented as tags.

megous 7y ago
Well, tags and folders are identical. You can have the same file linked to from multiple folders at once. `ls` will even show you the number of folders the file is part of in the second column.

anderspitman 7y ago

I agree that there's lots of value in the simplicity of a tree hierarchy as a default, but sometimes the extra power of a tagging/labeling system would be valuable. Essentially it gives you a generic graph structure. Others have mentioned that this is valuable for things like media, ie photos that often need to be members of multiple album collections. It could also have other benefits as well, such as being able to visualize your filesystem as a graph, and easily see clusters of data depending on which tags are used the most. The only heuristic we really have for tree filesystems to get a feel for a subtree (child folder) is the total disk usage of that folder, or maybe total number of files in the subtree.

fouc 7y ago

I agree that tags shouldn't really be some additional meta property on the existing files/filesystem. I had an idea to use folders as tags, and to make a script that moves folders around according to the usage of the tags. So that way we have hierarchical folder structure, and the folder name is the tag, but it will stay organized according to the usage. The trick in my case was to come up with a convention for a folder name in order to make it obvious it's a "tag" folder. https://github.com/foucist/tagmv https://github.com/foucist/tagmv

ma2rten 7y ago

I am also not a huge fan of tags. Gmail uses tags. It allows hierarchies of tags. In theory that is more powerful. It's like a folder system where something can be in multiple folders. In practice it just makes things messy.

0x445442 7y ago

Gelernter disagreed and proposed temporal vs spacial organizational metaphor. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/dissertation/etf.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/dissertation/etf.pdf

anigbrowl 7y ago

Autogeneration of topology tags should solve this. I also need tagging agents that run around when I'm not busy and tag things on my behalf, particularly recognizable patterns in existing tagged structures.

Mikhail_Edoshin 7y ago

Tags are like a book index while folders are like a table of contents. Both are very useful, but I'd say an index is more useful as it can scale very well across multiple books. (Such an index would have its own table of contents, I think :) You can have hierarchical tags even with a flat system, just name them "foo", "foo/bar" and so on. (And if you design a tag system nothing prevents from adding a hierarchy of tags.) But you're right tags need discipline and single source. There's no way to have a community-based tag soup without some sort of tag police. Another problem is that all tag-based system I saw (not many) looked very much in their infancy. All they had was very basic flat tagging without hierarchy and very basic search. These are not enough to realize their potential.