TMSU is a tool for tagging your files • Hacker News Board

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#61

Post by Springtime » Sat, Dec 13, 2014, 5:32 PM UTC

pronaway wrote: post #21

slackson wrote: post #9

I remember looking at this a few years ago. My main reason for not using it was the time it would have taken to tag all my files. Basically, if you have so many files that it's worth tagging them, you need to spend a lot of time tagging, and if you have so few that it's reasonable to tag them all, you don't need this system. If you have a manageable number but expect tagging to be useful in the near future, then this…

Throwaway, but I've used it to organize downloaded porn. Downloaded videos tend to have terrible filenames, but reasonable titles or tags on the website. I have some scripts to scan through the filenames and automatically apply tags, but for the most part it still goes unused. It's a fun idea though.

A number of years ago my media filenames were getting out of hand and after a drive crash I decided to start naming all media files manually with a basic structure. It worked quite well and I've kept to the same basic idea for a number of years, with more than 10k files named this this way when initially saving the file.

It follows a fairly loose mental structure: Broad Category - [Sub-category -] [Series Title -] Name/Media Title (Creator, Source, Short Description/Tags)

Which usually looks something like:

* Keyboards - Keycaps - Warmaster (martinyeah, geekhack.org) - 2.jpg

* Paintings - Market In Cairo (Leopold Carl Müller, Middle Eastern desert).jpg

* Themes - Android - Themer (mycolorscreen.com) - Wrong Way (Victor Burgoa).png

* Trailers - Godzilla (2013) - Comic-Con Teaser.mp4

* Typefaces - Lettering - Gospel Waffle Sunday syrup logo time-lapse (Lauri Johnston).mp4

The basic idea has been to organize the filenames by broad to narrower info from left-to-right, which helps with quick filtering/searching and allows many categories of files to be kept in large single directories while being readable. By adding the creator and site where needed it also allows me to trace the source. Not a perfect naming system but it only takes a little longer to save while adding considerable value long-term.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#62

Post by Zuider » Sat, Dec 13, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

ap22213 wrote: post #42

I've always wanted this for Windows. I wonder how hard it would be to port it. In a business setting, I often see people's desktops cluttered with files. It'd be nice to give them a virtual folder on the desktop where they can drag and drop files into in to it, with tags.

Taggedfrog does something very similar on Windows, except it uses a drag and drop GUI instead of the shell. You can have ready made customized tag clusters (so you don't have to type the tags for each file), and it will tag anything, including web URLs.

http://lunarfrog.com/taggedfrog/

That said, I would like to be able to tag and recall from the command line in order to integrate tags with other tools. Windows already offers a limited tagging service for Office documents.

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#63

Post by galfarragem » Sun, Dec 14, 2014, 11:56 AM UTC

To predict where is something, I use an hierarchical folder system to organise my documents based on GTD [1]. The initial investment (file renaming) pays off on the long run.

[1] https://github.com/we-build-dreams/folder-system

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#64

Post by fsiefken » Sun, Dec 14, 2014, 5:53 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #49

fsiefken wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TagSpaces has excellent GUI support.

That looked excellent until I read that it stores the tags in the filename. That's just... completely not what I'm looking for, or would use, ever.

Yes, it's a trade-off; or you keep the tags in a database on which you are dependent or you store everything in the file name or the file itself. Tagging inside the file can only be done if the filetype has support for it (exim or mp3 tags) and you have to program support for the different filetypes. Keeping it in a database necessitates a sync step between moving and renaming actions in the filesystem and the database itself and has to be programmed and tested for every OS. By keeping the tags in the filename, this way this tag system still keeps working without the tooling itself and across operating systems, but you have to give up some freedom in the naming of your files (so it doesn't really work on DOS). Why wouldn't you use such a system ever? People accept metadata in the file itself, the file name usualy describes the data - so why not use tags in the filename other then that it seems ugly hack? How are the alternatives better?

Re: TMSU is a tool for tagging your files

#65

Post by natch » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 4:27 AM UTC

zokier wrote: post #54

natch wrote: post #51

I tag directories, not files. Way more sustainable over time, because there is no way I'm going to tag every single file. Files tend to be better at describing themselves. To take an example from the TMSU docs, why would I ever need to tag an .mp3 file as music? If it's an MP3, and it's under my music directory, it's pretty clear what it is.

> If it's an MP3, and it's under my music directory , it's pretty clear what it is. Putting files in a directory is semantically equivalent to applying a tag. But directory structure is no way fundamental to computing, and indeed tagging is more general and flexible solution to organizing files.

>Putting files in a directory is semantically equivalent to applying a tag.

Yes, equivalent to a single tag. Not multiple tags.