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Reading this article left me wondering just where the 200 million tags this guy needs are supposed to come from. Manual curation?! Automatically derived by file

Reading this article left me wondering just where the 200 million tags this guy needs are supposed to come from. Manual curation?! Automatically derived by file extension? file headers? what is the cost of opening a file, parsing its filetype, comparing against a reference, writing it to a database, etc. How is that cheaper than current indexers (which all seem to work fine btw)? I rarely waste effort trying to remember filenames in the first place, much less needing some expensive tag curation to locate files. I simply use a bit of discipline organizing the directory structure(s). If I do ever need to actually search for something, it will be constrained to a narrow subset of directories and ignore the other 199.9 million files or whatever. Moreover, I just don't have the problem of searching for filename fragments to begin with. Nor do I see a reasonable way to use a whole host of powerful unix techniques with a whackadoodle tiny tags filesystem. Or the need to produce a list of 20 million images in 2 seconds. What use would that be anyway? I'm not going to read a list like that - I'm going to operate on it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the versatility of `find` is far more powerful if you actually need to handle/sort through that many files, and something like `fzf` probably curtails all these complaints in the first place.

bombcar 5y ago
It sounds somewhat like “gmail for files” which is … problematic because email search works well enough because it’s relatively rarely done. I suspect a system like this would work, but the tags would eventually be used by many as a way to badly implement a hierarchy.
- Izkata 5y ago
  Kinda like gmail's nested labels. Hierarchies win again.
- celdon25 5y ago
  > eventually be used by many And that’s the issue. The status quo may be the best choice for the lowest common denominator. But some power users could get much more out of something with a different approach. You can’t force a one-size-fits-all ontology onto the masses. People need to wake up and realize that not all software technologies need to be popular to be successful or useful. It seems people around here assume this without even thinking about it first.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > It sounds somewhat like “gmail for files” which is … problematic because email search works well enough because it’s relatively rarely done. Gmail does not work for me. As someone in IT I get some number of automated messages (e.g., cron). With Gmail all I can do is tag them and have a "folder" / view of just those tagged messages. But they also pollute my Archive 'folder' as well. But I do not want them there, because they are not a priority generally, and they pollute search results. I want an actual separate folder to file these messages in that is out of the way so as not to pollute the rest of the namespace.
  - Liquid_Fire 5y ago
    You could tag them with a special label (e.g. "ignored"), and then append "-label:ignored" to your searches.
vicda 5y ago
Google photos' style AI driven curation maybe? I like the idea of having a queryable filesystem, but I wouldn't want that as a complete replacement of the directory structure.
- brabel 5y ago
  Google photos is pretty amazing. I enter a search for "car" and immediately can see the photos os several of the cars I've owned over the years. One day I needed to remember when I had travelled to a certain city, searched on my Google photos and it instantly showed the photos I took in the city, including the exact dates. Yes, I know letting Google know all about my life like that through photos may not be the greatest idea... but wow, does the photo search work nicely?!
  - derekdahmer 5y ago
    The google photos image search is amazing. The other day I was trying to remember how long it had been since I smashed my toe doing yard work so I tried searching “toe nail” and it pulled up exactly the picture I was looking for.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Unless it's local, hell no. Sounds like a privacy nightmare.
brigandish 5y ago
If I had a penny for every time someone on HN responds with something like this - "just become more disciplined and you don't need X" - I'd be a millionaire. Doesn't matter what it is, type systems, memory safety, a better UI for Git… there's always someone ready to chime in with how their workflow means these problems don't happen, or, even better, asking the question why would anyone need this? Yes, why would anyone need better search or a faster, easier to organise file system? I can't think why.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Having every file pollute a global namespace seems to require more discipline than the current hierarchical system where you can easily copy a directory tree without having to worry about breaking something else. That is the main problem with these so called "solutions", they usually take more effort and discipline than the problem they originally set out to solve. The right solution is just to learn the original system properly rather than trying to invent an even worse way to work around it.
  - rolandog 5y ago
    Indeed; on one occasion I had to help my wife troubleshoot something on a shared folder in her workplace's Google Drive... I was shocked by my wife's colleagues extensive use of special characters because they wanted their file to appear first. The proposed solution won't be any better if the average user doesn't know how to name things properly or how to search for them.
  - Khoth 5y ago
    Yeah, you can see the downside in the demo video. When he shows off the search for pictures, there's a random mixture of actual photos and things like toolbar icons and whatnot. Sure, you could fix this by tagging everything and doing a more complex search, but that sounds like a lot of work and discipline, more than eg the guy doing the demo was willing to put into it.
    - didgetmaster 5y ago
friendzis 5y ago
The core problem at keeping the files organized is that unless you are dealing with a stream of effectively pre-tagged files, tagging/categorizing/grouping emerges after sufficient number of files arrive. Therefore organizing is proactive
prepend 5y ago
My response to these types of proposals is “just imagine that folders are tags and each level of hierarchy is a tag, symlink for multiple tags.” It’s funny because the author just proposed a different, I think worse due to novelty and minimal benefit, organizing hierarchy. I think Apple has a decent approach where their spotlight indexes very well (I use hit command+space and the first letter or two instead of navigating finder), and they support tagging files.
everforward 5y ago
> it will be constrained to a narrow subset of directories and ignore the other 199.9 million files or whatever. I think this is a vastly underrated point. I am usually not interested in searching the majority of files on my filesystem. I can't remember the last time I needed to search through system files for normal computer use reasons. I also think the author completely skips over how to handle related files. If my application needs to load a library, how does it find the file to use? If it's by name, how are name clashes handled? I suppose it could be by tag, with built-in tags, but then you won't be able to change the tags without having to change configs or the binary itself.
didgetmaster 5y ago
When importing files into Didgets, the program automatically gathers information from the source file system and attaches specific tags to each file. For example, the file name is attached as a 'name' tag. Each folder name in its path is attached as a 'folder' tag. The file extension is attached as an 'extension' tag. In addition a SHA1 hash is created from the data stream and attached as a tag. You also imported them by dropping the files or folder onto a 'drop zone' on the create tab in the GUI. Any tags attached to that drop zone are also automatically attached to any file dropped on it. So dropping 100 photos on the 'My Wedding' drop zone might attach the tags 'Event = Wedding' and 'Year - 2022' to every photo. Searches for files that have a tag 'Folder = Microsoft' would find every file that had 'Microsoft' as a folder anywhere in its path.

bombcar 5y ago

It sounds somewhat like “gmail for files” which is … problematic because email search works well enough because it’s relatively rarely done. I suspect a system like this would work, but the tags would eventually be used by many as a way to badly implement a hierarchy.

Izkata 5y ago
Kinda like gmail's nested labels. Hierarchies win again.
celdon25 5y ago
> eventually be used by many And that’s the issue. The status quo may be the best choice for the lowest common denominator. But some power users could get much more out of something with a different approach. You can’t force a one-size-fits-all ontology onto the masses. People need to wake up and realize that not all software technologies need to be popular to be successful or useful. It seems people around here assume this without even thinking about it first.
throw0101a 5y ago
> It sounds somewhat like “gmail for files” which is … problematic because email search works well enough because it’s relatively rarely done. Gmail does not work for me. As someone in IT I get some number of automated messages (e.g., cron). With Gmail all I can do is tag them and have a "folder" / view of just those tagged messages. But they also pollute my Archive 'folder' as well. But I do not want them there, because they are not a priority generally, and they pollute search results. I want an actual separate folder to file these messages in that is out of the way so as not to pollute the rest of the namespace.
- Liquid_Fire 5y ago
  You could tag them with a special label (e.g. "ignored"), and then append "-label:ignored" to your searches.

vicda 5y ago

Google photos' style AI driven curation maybe? I like the idea of having a queryable filesystem, but I wouldn't want that as a complete replacement of the directory structure.

brabel 5y ago
Google photos is pretty amazing. I enter a search for "car" and immediately can see the photos os several of the cars I've owned over the years. One day I needed to remember when I had travelled to a certain city, searched on my Google photos and it instantly showed the photos I took in the city, including the exact dates. Yes, I know letting Google know all about my life like that through photos may not be the greatest idea... but wow, does the photo search work nicely?!
- derekdahmer 5y ago
  The google photos image search is amazing. The other day I was trying to remember how long it had been since I smashed my toe doing yard work so I tried searching “toe nail” and it pulled up exactly the picture I was looking for.
selfhoster11 5y ago
Unless it's local, hell no. Sounds like a privacy nightmare.

brigandish 5y ago

If I had a penny for every time someone on HN responds with something like this - "just become more disciplined and you don't need X" - I'd be a millionaire. Doesn't matter what it is, type systems, memory safety, a better UI for Git… there's always someone ready to chime in with how their workflow means these problems don't happen, or, even better, asking the question why would anyone need this? Yes, why would anyone need better search or a faster, easier to organise file system? I can't think why.

Jensson 5y ago
Having every file pollute a global namespace seems to require more discipline than the current hierarchical system where you can easily copy a directory tree without having to worry about breaking something else. That is the main problem with these so called "solutions", they usually take more effort and discipline than the problem they originally set out to solve. The right solution is just to learn the original system properly rather than trying to invent an even worse way to work around it.
- rolandog 5y ago
  Indeed; on one occasion I had to help my wife troubleshoot something on a shared folder in her workplace's Google Drive... I was shocked by my wife's colleagues extensive use of special characters because they wanted their file to appear first. The proposed solution won't be any better if the average user doesn't know how to name things properly or how to search for them.
- Khoth 5y ago
  Yeah, you can see the downside in the demo video. When he shows off the search for pictures, there's a random mixture of actual photos and things like toolbar icons and whatnot. Sure, you could fix this by tagging everything and doing a more complex search, but that sounds like a lot of work and discipline, more than eg the guy doing the demo was willing to put into it.
  - didgetmaster 5y ago

friendzis 5y ago

The core problem at keeping the files organized is that unless you are dealing with a stream of effectively pre-tagged files, tagging/categorizing/grouping emerges after sufficient number of files arrive. Therefore organizing is proactive

prepend 5y ago

My response to these types of proposals is “just imagine that folders are tags and each level of hierarchy is a tag, symlink for multiple tags.” It’s funny because the author just proposed a different, I think worse due to novelty and minimal benefit, organizing hierarchy. I think Apple has a decent approach where their spotlight indexes very well (I use hit command+space and the first letter or two instead of navigating finder), and they support tagging files.

everforward 5y ago

> it will be constrained to a narrow subset of directories and ignore the other 199.9 million files or whatever. I think this is a vastly underrated point. I am usually not interested in searching the majority of files on my filesystem. I can't remember the last time I needed to search through system files for normal computer use reasons. I also think the author completely skips over how to handle related files. If my application needs to load a library, how does it find the file to use? If it's by name, how are name clashes handled? I suppose it could be by tag, with built-in tags, but then you won't be able to change the tags without having to change configs or the binary itself.

didgetmaster 5y ago

When importing files into Didgets, the program automatically gathers information from the source file system and attaches specific tags to each file. For example, the file name is attached as a 'name' tag. Each folder name in its path is attached as a 'folder' tag. The file extension is attached as an 'extension' tag. In addition a SHA1 hash is created from the data stream and attached as a tag. You also imported them by dropping the files or folder onto a 'drop zone' on the create tab in the GUI. Any tags attached to that drop zone are also automatically attached to any file dropped on it. So dropping 100 photos on the 'My Wedding' drop zone might attach the tags 'Event = Wedding' and 'Year - 2022' to every photo. Searches for files that have a tag 'Folder = Microsoft' would find every file that had 'Microsoft' as a folder anywhere in its path.