This is just PDM.I built a system that does all of this, more, and integrates into our company's existing products for managing manufacturing data. While my version only watches the directories you tell it to, it also detects file movement and changes via a service and through the hashing of files. I'd be more impressed if someone built this into a file system directly. Combine advanced tag based indexing with zfs and you've got something impressive.
TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
121–130 of 131 posts
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
There needs to be a middle ground between hierarchical organization and search. Hierarchical organization is painful because an object can only be in one place in the hierarchy (disregarding links, which are a hack), and search by itself (as implemented in e.g., Spotlight) is not optimal because spatial/temporal/conceptual clustering of documents is important for discovery of related materials. I have more than 5 tod…
Why don't you put everything in one folder and name it with what the document is?
Because I would like to find the file later if I need to.
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have all sorts of associations -- our brain is fundamentally an association engine. One kind of association is simplification/abstraction. This perhaps proves to be one of the most useful kinds of associations, because it helps us make decisions quickly without sifting through massive amounts of data. I'd say it's fundamental, not any kind of mystery.
If language-use and conceptualisation are not any kind of mystery I'm sure you won't mind explaining how language acquisition works? Also, why does natural language grammar appear to be mildly context-sensitive and not context-free nor fully context-sensitive? Also, given the topic: why does the brain stereotype, and what's up with cognitive prototyping? Also, how does the brain associate the objects of conception wi…
Wow talk about waste of time, you jumped to a conclusion about what meant in a casual comment (you were way off, by the way, I didn't and wouldn't ever make the silly claim that language acquisition is a simple concept), and proceeded to assault us with a diarrhea of lingo meant to, what... prove how much you know about a topic? It comes off like a first year linguistics student trying to show off to his friends.
What I'm trying to say is that your time would be better spent in not correcting every instance of mild hyperbole
What was I correcting, exactly? I was giving a casual opinion. To call a casual, armchair hypothesis that differs from someone else's "correcting"... well let's just say you failed spectacularly at understanding human language patterns.
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#124The reason hierarchical structures are used in file systems is because they are a pretty intuitive and, most importantly, generic way of classifying and storing information. For the most part, just about any file you have on your computer can be stuffed into some sort of folder structure. Specialized files like music, movies and images are a solved problem. iTunes and other software do a great job at organizing this…
I don't think its intuitive at all. We don't ask questions like "What parent folder did I put that document it?" We ask "Where is that document I printed yesterday. The one that I got via email." With liberal use of tags, and the ability to browse them fluidly, we could ask those sort of questions.
> My Documents [Sort by Date]
At the top.
The way that one person manages their documents probably isn't going to be the same as another, but generally a person is consistent with all their files.
In this case, it's either a document that you have several types of, in which case you would have an existing folder structure, or it's a one-off that you dump in My Documents along with all your other one-offs. Even if you lose it, file systems all keep date-time information, so you can easily search for the all the files last modified yesterday.
The problem with liberal tagging is that it requires a bunch of up-front effort that you're never going to perform. In this case, if it were an email, you'd just use your email browser (specialized software!) to find the document again based on the things you remember about it (date, source, size, etc).
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think its intuitive at all. We don't ask questions like "What parent folder did I put that document it?" We ask "Where is that document I printed yesterday. The one that I got via email." With liberal use of tags, and the ability to browse them fluidly, we could ask those sort of questions.
> My Documents [Sort by Date] At the top. The way that one person manages their documents probably isn't going to be the same as another, but generally a person is consistent with all their files. In this case, it's either a document that you have several types of, in which case you would have an existing folder structure, or it's a one-off that you dump in My Documents along with all your other one-offs. Even if you…
I don't remember it by date or size or maybe even source. That's just parroting what we do now. I remember that I printed it. That could easily be a tag. The tags need not be created by me; the tools could be promiscuously tagging persistent data all the time, with useful clues. I'd learn some clues, learn to use them.
That 'my documents' thing - you could easily create a 'view' on tags that yielded that result. Without relying on Microsoft or whomever to do it for you.
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#126I wish it would support tag hierarchies.
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did Mac Classic make use of that?
In Mac Classic each folder you opened created a new window which remembered all of its settings for size, position on screen, scroll position, icon size/layout, etc. This window is an explicit and exclusive representation of that particular folder and attempting to open the same folder again does not create a new window, it simply shifts the focus to the already-open window. The change in Mac OS X towards a browser f…
Very interesting, thank you.
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Humans organise and memorise things in hierarchies, Humans also track a lot of things based on spatial memory, which no OS since Mac Classic has even tried to make use of, which is a shame.
How did Mac Classic make use of that?
The short answer is: stuff stayed where you put it. Every icon, every window, opened up exactly where you left it last time you saw it.
So you had the option of remembering "Excel is the icon below the Special menu" and you could be confident that the Excel icon would always be located below the Special menu, exactly where you put it.
One of the reasons I switched from OS X to Windows is that Apple threw that brilliant design in the garbage. Shame.
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did Mac Classic make use of that?
In Mac Classic each folder you opened created a new window which remembered all of its settings for size, position on screen, scroll position, icon size/layout, etc. This window is an explicit and exclusive representation of that particular folder and attempting to open the same folder again does not create a new window, it simply shifts the focus to the already-open window. The change in Mac OS X towards a browser f…
Ars did an amazing series of articles about the (IMO) missteps made in OS X, and presented a theoretical design that would satisfy both Mac Classic fans and fans of "browser-based" windowing systems.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2003/04/finder/2/
Any software developer interested in designing usable software should read and digest this. Alas, nobody working at Apple did, so I'm no longer an Apple customer.
Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Mac Classic each folder you opened created a new window which remembered all of its settings for size, position on screen, scroll position, icon size/layout, etc. This window is an explicit and exclusive representation of that particular folder and attempting to open the same folder again does not create a new window, it simply shifts the focus to the already-open window. The change in Mac OS X towards a browser f…
Ars did an amazing series of articles about the (IMO) missteps made in OS X, and presented a theoretical design that would satisfy both Mac Classic fans and fans of "browser-based" windowing systems. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2003/04/finder/2/ Any software developer interested in designing usable software should read and digest this. Alas, nobody working at Apple did, so I'm no longer an Apple customer.
Thank you for this! I vaguely alluded to this (active debate) in my comment but I had forgotten the source. I'm going to read through this now! :)