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TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

tmsu.org

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Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#31

Post by jschulenklopper »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #16

Tags or folders - Aren't both of them mere kludges that we use when search isn't good enough?

Tags and folders are a way to structure and organize your stuff, not a kludge. Tagging things, or placing them in containers (possibly also containing other containers) are valuable to add metadata and semantics to the entities.

In a way, placing things in folders is some kind of (hierarchical) tagging, in which those 'tags' (folder and file names) form a traversable path to the entity. Adding tags to entities adds another retrieval path to the objects.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#32

Post by jschulenklopper »

Yizahi wrote: post #22
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #16

Tags or folders - Aren't both of them mere kludges that we use when search isn't good enough?

Search doesn't help when you don't remember filename.

Sure it does when the search also investigates the contents of the files.

For example, GMail and Outlook do this for mail items -- you don't need to know the subject, which is comparable to the file name, to retrieve an email -- and Google Desktop Search (discontinued) or Copernic does this for file systems. It is almost as if every system-retrievable item inside a file (e.g. every word in a text document) automatically becomes a searchable item of the file.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#33

Post by wvh »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #16

Tags or folders - Aren't both of them mere kludges that we use when search isn't good enough?

Funny, I'd put it the other way around. Isn't searching what we do when we don't know exactly where something is?

And – admitting I might not be a stereotypical computer user as my files have a high level of organisation – isn't searching the high-level kludge that fails relatively often, especially with hard to parse binary information?

I couldn't imagine relying more on meta-search than knowledge of where my files are located. A tag tool might be nice though, as it enables you to create an alternative hierarchy more suitable to a specific activity without completely abstracting away the physical layout.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#34

Post by lukashed »

sanswork wrote: post #28

I'm currently working on https://keepallthethings.com which offers a similar service only web based with a GUI so it will either be more useful or less for you depending on your use case. If anyone wants to try it out go through the sign up process until you hit the credit card form and stop then send me an email(in my profile) and I'll set you up with a free account. Its just launched so there are a lot of features…

You seem to have a typo on the pricing page: On the 100GB plan it says "50c/GB for space over 50GB"

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#35

Post by sanswork »

lukashed wrote: post #34
sanswork wrote: post #28

I'm currently working on https://keepallthethings.com which offers a similar service only web based with a GUI so it will either be more useful or less for you depending on your use case. If anyone wants to try it out go through the sign up process until you hit the credit card form and stop then send me an email(in my profile) and I'll set you up with a free account. Its just launched so there are a lot of features…

You seem to have a typo on the pricing page: On the 100GB plan it says "50c/GB for space over 50GB"

Thank you for that. I've been playing around with spacing pre-launch and missed that one.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#36

Post by dingaling »

Someone wrote: post #15
albertzeyer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is EA?

Probably Extended Attributes ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes ) They stick better with files, as long as your tools know about them and handle them fine. Weakness is that they can (will) get lost in tools that do not. There are many of them: zip-unzip, tar-untar, http requests, ftp, etc.

> Weakness is that they can (will) get lost in tools that do not.

Including, frustratingly, Linux's NFS implementation. A WONTFIX apparently.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#37

Post by wvh »

I haven't tried it yet, but at first glance, a lot of work and thought went into this tool: query parser, SQL, VFS layer, fingerprinting, file move detection ("repair"). The code looks pretty readable and well organised too.

Generally speaking, I can't help but feel we're not quite there yet when it comes to meta-data and flexible file system views. We're still coming up with all sorts of cataloguing systems for different types of binary files – I just implemented a Vorbis comment (music tag) parser the other day, and that's just one out of many formats.

Extended attributes (attr(5), "user_xattr") are enabled by default these days on most Linux file systems, but are limited in space and I don't see a lot of tool implementations around the functionality.

Sure there are some general blunt force search indexers, but overall I feel we still live in a Wild West meta-data age as opposed to the myriad of well standardised open data formats.

It would be nice to be able to use a (music, movie, picture, porn, whatever) site's existing meta-data when downloading a file, or hide all work-related files from the file system when you're at home.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#38

Post by innguest »

wvh wrote: post #37

I haven't tried it yet, but at first glance, a lot of work and thought went into this tool: query parser, SQL, VFS layer, fingerprinting, file move detection ("repair"). The code looks pretty readable and well organised too. Generally speaking, I can't help but feel we're not quite there yet when it comes to meta-data and flexible file system views. We're still coming up with all sorts of cataloguing systems for diff…

> Extended attributes (attr(5), "user_xattr")

Reminder: some programs will reset these xattributes upon the file being edited. Back when I was looking for a tagging program for the Mac I read Photoshop was one of those programs.

I would not trust putting in the effort to tag a bunch of files in a format so out of my control.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#39

Post by fallat »

Hm. How could this be used efficiently for real work? I think because many of our tools are already file-based, this is not the greatest idea for uses cases that require structure. If anything tagging should be used along side hierarchical layouts...Or users should follow the standard of what /etc, /home, /lib and friends are used for. They are essentially tags in directory form.

Take TMSU's example command:

tmsu tag summer.mp3 music big-jazz mp3

We could come up with the same behavior WITHOUT an additional program:

mkdir ~/music/big-jazz/mp3/

ln -s ~/Downloads/summer.mp3 ~/music/big-jazz/mp3/summer.mp3

Could easily make this into a shell script.

Just my 2 cents.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#40

Post by dmd »

fallat wrote: post #39

Hm. How could this be used efficiently for real work? I think because many of our tools are already file-based, this is not the greatest idea for uses cases that require structure. If anything tagging should be used along side hierarchical layouts...Or users should follow the standard of what /etc, /home, /lib and friends are used for. They are essentially tags in directory form. Take TMSU's example command: tmsu tag…

This quickly becomes cumbersome when you have dozens or hundreds of tags, and doesn't address tag values.
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