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How do you tag (or even organize) your files?

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tinjaw:
do you have a link for x2 can't find it with google.
-justice (October 25, 2007, 05:33 PM)
--- End quote ---
justice,

I think he is using that as shorthand for xplorer2.

Armando:
Nosh :
Thanks for sharing! There are some interesting aspects in your system (like the color coding, X2 [thanks tinjaw!], etc.). I don't have much time now, but I'll think about all that in... a couple days maybe.  :)

jared1999:
Windows XP (and Vista I presume) has built-in metadata support. Properties -> Summary on a file gives you this:



These fields should be searchable.

Armando:
unfortunately, these fields are NOT always:
1- reliable (not always accessible for all file types, etc.)
2- searchable (through most desktop search software)
3- portable

nontroppo:
As I understand it, Windows has supported metadata (Alternate data streams, ADS) in some form since 1993 when NTFS was released; it was added to provide compatibility with Apple's file systems metadata and Novell.  In Windows 2000, MS added Author, title fields etc as shown above for XP.

But ADS appear to have been particularly attacked on Windows for security reasons (hiding stuff in "files") -- and so has sadly never really taken off. That critique could apply to any FS, but Windows is more security-concerned. The technology is/has been there but the culture certainly isn't/wasn't. Vista exposes this more clearly (i.e. command line awareness of ADS), and I very much hope the Windows community will standardise and promote ADS for functional metadata across applications. Sadly the current result is each app has its own index, its own metadata representation.

Historical aside: Regarding tagging and metadata, the most elegant original file system was the Be file system from BeOS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_File_System

Metadata was very well integrated, and a search system like a relational database built around it as a core OS function. It has taken years for others to catch up, if at all[1].

----
[1] http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/6 -- Apple basically hired the creator of the BeFS, though it took until Tiger to get close to parity. That article (pages 6 and 12) show the battle to go from metadata as possibility to rich metadata as functional reality.

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