I used this years ago. I had a few scripts that would copy files to the appropriate tags, but it ended up being super slow. Eventually I wrote my own tools around the sqlite database it created (it's a pretty simple schema) but I've since lost most of those and ended up rewriting a bunch in a system I've been working on. This was all back for the 0.2 release and I think the author changed a bunch of this stuff in lat…
Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#12My mind read this as tagistant - which is cool and awful name at the same time.
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#13Humans have to tag the files, though. This is the same problem which kept the "semantic web" from going anywhere.
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#14Hierarchical file systems lack expressiveness and are awkward in places. In my day-to-day computing this has become more apparent and problematic with each passing year. For example, I dislike that you are forced to give unique names for each file, that you can classify each file in only one way, and that you can't tell how many copies you own of a piece of data.
The smallest step up from a hierarchical file system is to allow any file to have any number of tags, where each tag is just a simple string (no hidden IDs or anything). I believe most tag proposals implement this concept and not much further. I briefly looked at Tagsistant and numerous software and papers.
I sketched some of my own ideas about identifying immutable files by hash and creating arbitrary tags that reference such files. It turns out that this way of organizing files goes really deep, and I haven't explored all the implications yet. It yields a completely different landscape than the file system that we are used to today - the concepts of path, mutability, attributes, etc. are replaced with different mechanisms.
The article is long, but I would appreciate hearing if the concepts resonate with anybody else: https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organizatio...
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#15Great project!
I feel that the problem of archiving files is not well served by the POSIX file system, and deserves attention. Gaps are in data safety and backup capabilities (dropbox is a huge leap forward here) and document retrival. Usually external idices (which go out of sync) are used to query file names. Also there is no way to attach semantic metadata to files (appart from date stamps, and permissions).
This tool provides an interesting stab at the latter problem. I have always thought that semantics would be layered ontop of a POSIX file system. This project fips the logic and implements tagging within the fs.
I wonder how compatible this is with NFS/Dropbox/git. Can I use this to tag files on a Mac via Dropbox Sync? digging...
I have been using some home grown tools that allow me to put sematics into filenames for a while now. And it has served me quite well. Files look like this:
2017-04-04 #S4907 #Choir List of names.pdf
2017-04-05 #EXCITE #S5005 Notes on Data Repositories.pdf
2017-04-06 #ARAG #S5031 $Amount=14.2EUR Invoice.pdf
https://github.com/HeinrichHartmann/pile
(waaay to early to use, yet. But the README elaborates a little). Has anyone aware of similar approaches?
E.g. using JSON documents as file names seems another obvious way to layer semantics ontop of POSIX/fs. Is anyone doing this?
EDIT: Formatting fixes.
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#16I often wanted a tag system, but this is not what I was picturing, I think. I'll rather like to have a database and an entry in the context menue to tag files without moving them. It should also be able to identify the file if is being moved or renamed.
It must be possible to get the same effect without copying the files by using links. If it is all on the same file system then hardlinks would work and be very space efficient.
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#17Great project! I feel that the problem of archiving files is not well served by the POSIX file system, and deserves attention. Gaps are in data safety and backup capabilities (dropbox is a huge leap forward here) and document retrival. Usually external idices (which go out of sync) are used to query file names. Also there is no way to attach semantic metadata to files (appart from date stamps, and permissions). This…
Thanks for sharing your system!
I'd like to give you some HN formatting tips, if I may:
Add two new lines for a new line. Otherwise the formatter will put your text on the same line (eg. with your list of files, it looks like one big filename now)
italics work by putting asterisks (*) around the word or phrase. Though maybe you meant to use underscores in this case :)
Best wishes!
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#18Hierarchical file systems lack expressiveness and are awkward in places. In my day-to-day computing this has become more apparent and problematic with each passing year. For example, I dislike that you are forced to give unique names for each file, that you can classify each file in only one way, and that you can't tell how many copies you own of a piece of data. The smallest step up from a hierarchical file system i…
Awesome writeup! This goes right to the printer :)
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#19Great project! I feel that the problem of archiving files is not well served by the POSIX file system, and deserves attention. Gaps are in data safety and backup capabilities (dropbox is a huge leap forward here) and document retrival. Usually external idices (which go out of sync) are used to query file names. Also there is no way to attach semantic metadata to files (appart from date stamps, and permissions). This…
Thanks for sharing your system! I'd like to give you some HN formatting tips, if I may: Add two new lines for a new line. Otherwise the formatter will put your text on the same line (eg. with your list of files, it looks like one big filename now) italics work by putting asterisks (*) around the word or phrase. Though maybe you meant to use underscores in this case :) Best wishes!
Thx. Fixed now.
Re: Tagsistant: semantic filesystem for Linux
#20Now we just need a redesign of Unix tools and principles/practice to accommodate these :-S
That's actually a fairly reasonable conclusion.
You'd want to have tools which are aware of a semantic filesystem, or new tools which can make use of them. Probably a mix of both.
Wrappers around extant tools might be a reasonable migration path toward the former.