Hi David, As someone who has worked with the "tags" vs "files and folders" problem quite a lot I can imagine your insights would be very interesting to hear I completely agree with the difference in needs between applications and humans and I agree that the tag system should not replace the folder/files system, merely be a different way of browsing it.
I would be very interested in hearing more about your implementation of the tags system and about the problems you have faced. I really think that with a relatively clean slate ubuntu-touch might offer a fantastic platform to explore this idea and an access point to expand it to the rest of the ubuntu platform. I would also like to hear more from other users about how they feel about the idea. How have your users responded to it? Thanks, Matt On 25/02/13 09:19, David Jordan wrote: > As someone who has worked with the "tags" vs "files and folders" > problem quite a lot via the Novacut project, I thought I should chime > in here. > > The problem with the traditional files and folders system is that it > conflates two very different concepts, location and description. > Applications need to know where a file is in order to work with it, > while humans need a readable description of the file in order to > understand what it contains and how it relates to other files. The > problem with tradtional file systems is the same hierarchical > structure is used for both purposes, and this can become a problem > when the user's understanding of a file or set of files changes over time. > > Human understanding of what particular files mean and how they're > interelated can and will change over time. And if you've strongly > coupled location with description like we tend to do with traditional > file systems, that means the location changes and all the > interconnections between files break if the description is ever updated. > > If I start a new project, I might start it out with a given working > title or perhaps no title at all because it started with just a flurry > of writing at 2 in the morning. I can change it later. This is fine > as long as nothing else relies on being able to find that particular > set of files, but say I had needed to use some bits of it in another > program, suddenly I'm either locked into all the assumptions I'd made > about file structure or I have to start forking separate copies into a > bunch of different places. > > Fortunately, we don't have to ditch all the great work on file systems > that has been done already. They do work great for storing and > locating files. What we have to do is let the user find and interact > with their files without caring about exactly where they are in the > hierarchy or what their true name is. > > The way Novacut handles this is through a database that keeps track of > its set of files and stores metadata about them. Every file has a > unique ID in the system and even though files are read-only in our > system, it's quite trivial to indicate relations between the raw files > with metadata, so applications can simply point to the most up to date > version of something. > > While we probably shouldn't hide the underlying file system from the > user, I do think a way to search and organize one's files based on > metadata rather than traditional folder hierarchies and file names is > a great idea. Moreover, applications should be able to relate to > files using either the traditional route or through unique > location-independent identifiers. > > David Jordan > > > On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Matt Richardson > <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Since Ubuntu-Touch is a new system we have a potential to replace > files/folders with tags. > > 1) Why? > Tags offer a much more flexible file management system than > files/folders because they allow a single file to exist in > multiple locations, without the use of symlinks. > > 2) To tackle the obvious issue: The current filesystem and > operating system are built on the folder/files system, as are > almost all existing applications. > The idea of the tag based system would not be to replace the > folder/files system as far as the system is concerned, merely to > hide it in day to day use. > My idea would be that the tags would operate as follows: > > When saving/creating a file any number of tags can be selected > as well as a name. By default the 'username' tag would be > selected. > The actual filesystem would place the file in > /home/username/tag1/tag2/ > Tags beyond tag 2 would not be included in the folder > hierarchy. A database (similar to zeitgeist) would also be > updated to contain the full list of tags and files > When selecting files (file manager or open dialog) all of the > available tags would be listed. When a tag is selected, the > list updates to show tags which contain files matching the > first tag > In order to show root files the "system" tag would have to be > selected. The file manager would then switch to standard > file/folder view, since we can't easily update the root filesystem > > Hopefully that all makes sense > > Thoughts? > > Thanks, > Matt > > -- > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone > <https://launchpad.net/%7Eubuntu-phone> > Post to : [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone > <https://launchpad.net/%7Eubuntu-phone> > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > >
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