it has the potential to defeat one of my earlier objectives, which was that the tags needed to be simple/easy for the users to understand and use.

-IainB (November 26, 2016, 02:53 AM)

Yes, it's somewhat abstruse. It was the goal though : I wanted something for me, not for "others"; and as I think I said elsewhere: for tags to not be mixed up with other terms, you need to codify them; otherwise, using a search engine will return all the other stuff you never tagged.

By the way, it's probably not surprising that the reasons you described in that old thread, for using filenames, are almost the same as those that I gave. If it's a common problem in a common OS, with common constraints to a solution, then - given the nature of filenames - the solutions are probably going to be few in number and closely similar.

-IainB (November 26, 2016, 02:53 AM)

Probably, but analysis I've seen are often not that systematic... :)

Interesting you ask! I have abandoned my quest a long time ago, but I just googled tag2find, etc. and found this

https://www.tagspaces.org

It's open source -- a great thing for that type of software...

The funny thing is that it implements the same solution I implemented myself 8-9 years ago. Basically, to avoid compatibility problems, writing the tags directly in the file names, using specific tag delimiters, etc. I described my method somewhere on DC. (Wonder if someone in their team read my description of if they just reached the same conclusions after an analysis of the situation.)

After at least 8-9 years tagging my files this way, I'm still finding it convenient. Using it every single day. People laugh when they see my file names, but I smile... they don't realize that I can group files on "any" subject (or combinations of subjects) in just a few seconds... in any OS or file system.

Interesting open source project led by the University of Warwick. Its aim is to help users keep track of where information about them is stored online so that they can actually -- personally -- benefit from it. An important issue; whether this is a viable solution or not is another one...   :)

[...] a marketing professor at the University of Warwick who led RUMPEL's development, said: "It's time for people to claim their data from the internet."

"The aim of RUMPEL is to empower users and enable them to be served by the ocean of data about them that's stored in all kinds of places online, so that it benefits them and not just the businesses and organisations that harvest it," she added.

"The strapline 'Your Data, Your Way' reflects our determination to let people lead smarter lives by bringing their digital lives back under their own control."

TechRadar article : New web browser lets you take back control of your personal data

And the GitHub RUMPEL project.