Mountain Lion's new file system • Hacker News Board

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#21

Post by pooriaazimi » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:03 PM UTC

jgeorge wrote: post #9

DannoHung wrote: post #2

When is someone in charge of such things for an OS vendor going to realize that for any of "my" documents, what I really want is to tag them?

I would jettison every piece of computing hardware I own right now and switch to the first device that would let me add (and search) tags in file metadata.

Type 'man xattr' in your OS X terminal; isn't it what you want?

xattr -s author George file

(It might need a -w, I'm not sure as I'm writing it with my iPad)

I'm not sure it's searchable though.

But unless I'm very mistaken, mdls (metadata list) Is searchable. It lists what's been saved by Spotlight and you can add to it.

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#22

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:04 PM UTC

> But that’s not the real reason why geeks are skeptical. It’s because we are smart asses. We are the people that put salt and pepper on the pizza before trying it, because we just know best.

I couldn't have put it better. It goes double for us coders.

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#23

Post by LaSombra » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:05 PM UTC

callil wrote: post #17

For some reason I think the author is being overly wordy. The point if I understand it, is that Apple is once again moving OSX towards iOS by switching from a strict folder based filesystem to an App structured file system (from the user's point of view). This allows people to find content and files more easily because they will always be where they left them. In the app that uses them.

I almost would not mind this if I could open files in new programs like the Share feature of Android. This is one of the reasons I dislike iOS and barely use my iPad for anything but comics and web reading.

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#24

Post by mbq » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:06 PM UTC

I'm sure this will add a lot of awesomeness to tasks like creating a web page or an application; all the pngs and jpegs mixed together in Photos, templates and styles in Documents...

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#25

Post by cyclinghacker » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:08 PM UTC

jgeorge wrote: post #9

DannoHung wrote: post #2

When is someone in charge of such things for an OS vendor going to realize that for any of "my" documents, what I really want is to tag them?

I would jettison every piece of computing hardware I own right now and switch to the first device that would let me add (and search) tags in file metadata.

I use "Spotlight Comments" on OS X for tagging files. Not sure if this is exactly what you want but works great for me.

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#26

Post by crazygringo » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:08 PM UTC

> We are the people that put salt and pepper on the pizza before trying it, because we just know best.

Salt and pepper... on pizza?

Is that a thing?

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#27

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

eblume wrote: post #12

I couldn't get past this part: Even geeks can’t handle folders in folders Hierarchical file systems weren't invented because it was ancient times and they were the easiest thing to produce. Hierarchical file systems were invented because they are a really, really good paradigm for storing and retrieving hierarchical data - which I strongly believe is still the case for the majority of files. I didn't read further in…

> Hierarchical file systems weren't invented because it was ancient times and they were the easiest thing to produce.

Correct. They were invented because it was just past the middle of the 20th century, and they were the best organization mechanism for the resources available. They're also very robust, versatile, and wonderful in innumerable ways, especially for the audience at the time. Unfortunately, they're not the best thing for most users today, when we have more computing power and experience with search as an organization tool.

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#28

Post by rflrob » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

I find the claim that nobody understands multi-level file systems a hard to swallow. Inside my Documents folder, I have a folder for one of each of several organizations I work with, inside of those a set of folders for one of several different things I do for those organizations, and within some of those, a folder for every project I have going on. I don't necessarily need to know the complete path to everything, but anyone can generally look at the directory listing and see what the next directory to look into is.

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#29

Post by simcop2387 » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

justincormack wrote: post #11

jgeorge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would jettison every piece of computing hardware I own right now and switch to the first device that would let me add (and search) tags in file metadata.

I think there are some Linux solutions for this using extended attributes (which are by the way pretty easy to use).

And one that doesn't, and is AFAIK incompatible with others. Nepomuk from KDE does this with a separate database, I believe this is mostly to allow it to work when xattr isn't available (say for some network filesystems). I've not actually used it much myself, (there's far too many files for me to even begin doing it.)

Re: Mountain Lion's new file system

#30

Post by quote » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

I guess we'll have to see how this holds up: Usually the problems arise not from one's own folder structure (most people know their way around what they've created) but when working together in someone else's structure. Does this approach solve that problem?