Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

blog.doctape.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 61 posts

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#11

Post by roc »

japhyr wrote: post #7

Tags are good in conjunction with folders, because they provide another way to search when you forget where a file is, and you don't remember the file name. But folders are really good at collecting files with a similar purpose together. Does a good tagging system have a notion of a "collection" or something, instead of just categories and tags. If so, it just seems like folders by a different name. Moving away from…

The ideal implementation of tags (at least during the transition) is tags as pseudo-folders. That is, you drop a document into "Projects"->"2012"->"Foo" and the flexibility of tags is simply hidden away until needed.

When it is needed, that file can also be 'added to' the 'folders' "Teams"->"Alpha" and "Clients"->"XYZ Corp".

So, sort of like folders by a different name. But more like folders++. With complexity hidden until desired.

How files are physically stored is neither here nor there.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#12

Post by jessriedel »

japhyr wrote: post #7

Tags are good in conjunction with folders, because they provide another way to search when you forget where a file is, and you don't remember the file name. But folders are really good at collecting files with a similar purpose together. Does a good tagging system have a notion of a "collection" or something, instead of just categories and tags. If so, it just seems like folders by a different name. Moving away from…

Tags subsume folders in the UI. They can replicate everything folders do, and then do more.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#13

Post by Splines »

webwanderings wrote: post #2

Has Microsoft done away with folders in their upcoming OS? Just curious. What about the file systems of other OS's out there? It is indeed true that folders are the least efficient aspect of operating systems but it is strange that we're still holding on to them.

I don't know if you could call it the "least efficient" - they seem (to me) to be a simple way to understand what and where something is. Look at the problem users are having with Mountain Lion's "Save As" feature to see what could go awry once you start abstracting the user away from files.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#14

Post by bsphil »

How would this file system work for the non-technical user? I'm sure there will be plenty more people chiming in on the inefficiency and inferiority of the folder structure, but how about the average user?

Genuinely curious. The more I think about this type of system, the more questions I have. It seems like you would only want to use this with a SSD or other non-disk based storage.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#16

Post by funthree »

roc wrote: post #11
japhyr wrote: post #7

Tags are good in conjunction with folders, because they provide another way to search when you forget where a file is, and you don't remember the file name. But folders are really good at collecting files with a similar purpose together. Does a good tagging system have a notion of a "collection" or something, instead of just categories and tags. If so, it just seems like folders by a different name. Moving away from…

The ideal implementation of tags (at least during the transition) is tags as pseudo-folders. That is, you drop a document into "Projects"->"2012"->"Foo" and the flexibility of tags is simply hidden away until needed. When it is needed, that file can also be 'added to' the 'folders' "Teams"->"Alpha" and "Clients"->"XYZ Corp". So, sort of like folders by a different name. But more like folders++. With complexity hidden…

This seems the most intuitive. You could have some flattened view of a folder where it shows everything with tags, or you could navigate by folders. So if you have two folders and two subfolders by the same name, with the flattened view you can see all of the similar items. However, doing away with hierarchical folder structure is a bad idea.

    > module-1
        > views
        > other-thing
             > views
    > module-2
        > views
    > module-3
        > views

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#17

Post by barik »

bsphil wrote: post #14

How would this file system work for the non-technical user? I'm sure there will be plenty more people chiming in on the inefficiency and inferiority of the folder structure, but how about the average user? Genuinely curious. The more I think about this type of system, the more questions I have. It seems like you would only want to use this with a SSD or other non-disk based storage.

"How would this file system work for the non-technical user?"

It does raise a number of questions that aren't immediately obvious without immediately falling back to a hybrid approach, even if it's internally. But then, you're back to folder structures again, just in a way that is opaque to the user.

For me, I was actually curious how existing namespaces in languages that are so intertwined with nested folder structures would now work (such as Java and Python).

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#18

Post by maxerickson »

evanhamilton wrote: post #6

While I do like tags for myself, they are also inherently problematic with a group. I tag a photo of my friend "Chardo" (his nickname). Friend #2 tags another photo of him "Richard" (his real name). Now viewing all items tagged "Richard" won't show all the photos of Richard. (Replace human names with names of places, descriptions ["bbq" vs "tom's party"], etc) Do you have any plans for how to address this?

There's not really any need to address it specially. Tags only get added to the extent that users care, so mismatches are a problem of abundance, and to the extent tags are meaningful/accurate, they facilitate editing to personal preference.

I'm sure that successful file managers will also have some degree of fuzzy matching. But tags are still useful, even if we never realize the RDF dream of a perfect global ontology.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#19

Post by roc »

funthree wrote: post #16
roc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ideal implementation of tags (at least during the transition) is tags as pseudo-folders. That is, you drop a document into "Projects"->"2012"->"Foo" and the flexibility of tags is simply hidden away until needed. When it is needed, that file can also be 'added to' the 'folders' "Teams"->"Alpha" and "Clients"->"XYZ Corp". So, sort of like folders by a different name. But more like folders++. With complexity hidden…

This seems the most intuitive. You could have some flattened view of a folder where it shows everything with tags, or you could navigate by folders. So if you have two folders and two subfolders by the same name, with the flattened view you can see all of the similar items. However, doing away with hierarchical folder structure is a bad idea. > module-1 > views > other-thing > views > module-2 > views > module-3 > vi…

Eventually users might get to the point that the hierarchy is unnecessary. Surely it's more efficient to type out "2012, foo, xyz corp, alpha". And it's certainly easier to type out a few tags than navigate a few trees to do a search.

But people have stubbornly resisted that for so long, I wouldn't hold my breath. [1]

[1] It seems just about every document management system since the 90s was designed under the "search, don't scan!" assumption, stubbornly clinging to theoretical efficiency and then grumpily (and often painfully) adding back in 'artificial' folder structures built from the tags for both file->open and file->save UI.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#20

Post by barik »

jessriedel wrote: post #12
japhyr wrote: post #7

Tags are good in conjunction with folders, because they provide another way to search when you forget where a file is, and you don't remember the file name. But folders are really good at collecting files with a similar purpose together. Does a good tagging system have a notion of a "collection" or something, instead of just categories and tags. If so, it just seems like folders by a different name. Moving away from…

Tags subsume folders in the UI. They can replicate everything folders do, and then do more.

Can you give some examples of this? Would this be an emulation layer to support classical hierarchies or something else entirely? Academically, I've seen some research in this area from file systems researchers and it certainly has not been a trivial problem for them, particularly due to nuances that emerge like cycles in graphs (maybe? I know there is some data structure oddities, though I'm certain what they are), labeling, and when requirements like backwards-compatibility get thrown into the mix.

It's often said that the devil is in the details. Simply saying, "Tags subsume folders in the UI" likely has many cascading implications and edge cases.

Post reply on HN