IDEA: label files to store them by type & find them by label

[eusebius]

We all know what a mess your pc can be ... you're looking for a file, that's somewhere and you can't find it. I've searched over the internet for a program like this (and which i couldn't find, so i request it here ):

A program which is basically a explorer, but with the abillity to add a virtual treenode. Why? With such a program, you can store all your files by type (for example: all doc's in /docs, all xls in /xls etx). The "program" can add to each file a label (eg in a xml db or something) or labels. So you get an explorer like window like this:

+ by type (the physical tree, so is it on the HDD)
|   - /docs
|   - /xls
+ by subject (virtual tree)
|   - /car
|   - /work
etc

foobar1.doc and foobar2.doc are stored in /docs, but foobar1 is labeled as
car and foobar2 as work. foobar3.xls is in /xls and labeled as car.
Clicking on the different node's will result in something like:

+ by type
|   - /docs [foobar1.doc and foobar2.doc]
|   - /xls [foobar3.xls]
+ by subject
|   - /car [foobar1.doc and foobar3.xls
|   - /work [foobar2.doc]
etc

[jgpaiva]

I think that program you proposed is extremely usefull, and unfortunately, I've never seen one like it.

It would be something somewhat similar to windows vista's "virtual folders", right?
I like the tag utility, i use it in gmail, and consider it a great way of organizing things.

The problem is, that this is not exactly a "coding snack", i think it's much harder than that.
Altough, if someone decides to do it, i think it would be a very nice app to be running in the tray, and then you just drag and drop a file in the icon, and a dialog comes up to ask you for a tag and a description of the file. (maybe even a contextmenu in explorer? )

Anyways, I'm a supporter of your idea, eusebius, I'd like to see such app. And who knows, maybe it even already exists!

[eusebius]

I'm not sure if it exists ... i've spend the whole day to search for something like this.

* Wintree can tag files, but only tag or untag.
* there are some dms-systems (document managment systems), but that's a whole different approach.

The idea is to have only in every folder a xml with data (such as "doc1.doc" tag="house, money"). The program act only as an explorer & explorer with a filter. A basic explorer isn't hard to build (there are several snippets around), but the problem is the 'virtual explorer'. This one reads the xml-files and sorts the labels together.

In fact, it is a way to enter your files trough a database-system.

[Rover]

I think there was some talk about something like this in association with a Database Oriented Filesystem.  I haven't looked into it for a couple of years. 

Personally, I was pretty excited about the possibility of finding something like this at the file system level.   I think the trend now is to do it at the web level.

If you look at Google desktop, MS Sharepoint services and Novell Ifolders (plus virtual office), that's sort of the grown up version of all of these apps.  The cool think about doing it on the web is that the OS becomes irrelevant.


Good lick in your quest.

[mouser]

i think zaine had a post about a program that does this on his blog.

go to http://www.anova.org/blog/ and scroll way down to this:

07 August 2005
TaskTracker's unique non-hierarchical file model

[jgpaiva]

TaskTracker is nice, possibly what eusebius was looking for.
I wanted a slightly different thing, i made a ahk script that i just drag and drop a file to a box, and it gives me the comment i had on it, or creates a new one. So as when i download something, i add it to my program and create a new comment on it. (next version,I'll integrate it with opera's transfers window )
ps: i did it mostly for the fun and exercise, but anyone interested, please post a line

[Rover]

Re-read the request and had a thought.  PC Tools used to do something like this in one of their Windows versions... if I remember correctly.  It had a text file stuffed away somewhere and related filesystem files to descriptions in the text file.  You could only see them when using their file manager of course.

If you could hook into the properties tab on a file, you might be able to do something similar.  You would need to find the NTFS file id for each file to prevent screwups when files move.  XML integration would be cool for creating attributes.  Author, version, category, key words, summary, etc.

Hmm.....

[brotherS]

We all know what a mess your pc can be ... you're looking for a file, that's somewhere and you can't find it.

-eusebius (January 31, 2006, 08:12 AM)

Since I'm using Locate (https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1385.0) and the Google Sidebar (http://desktop.google.com/en/) I'm having no more problems finding files!


I understand you did ask for a different approach, but did you try those tools yet?

[eusebius]

Yes, but when i'm working on an 'activity' (like volunter-work, or an organisation i work for) i want to see only that files and i want to see them all. Searching isn't my main point, it's organizing.

[brotherS]

Some years ago, I started to name my documents in a way I could easy find them again later, so in my case searching is based on organizing - and vice versa.

[eusebius]

It's mentioned that my suggestion would be like the virtual folders in Vista. I looked around on the internet, but i can't find an alternativ for this. Does anyone know if something like this exists (i mean an alternative?) I remember that during the launch of XP, some functions of XP has been coded for Win98

[nudone]

directory opus has virtual folders.

[eusebius]

badly enough, it isn't free  It's even  85 euro, what is a lot of money for me

[edit] It seems to me that the folder option is just an advanced filter option, no 'virtual folder' a la Vista thing.

[Rover]

Don't know if this will solve the original problem, but it is a file description/notes application....

FileNote is a little shell extension that allows you to add textual descriptions to your files. It adds one command to the shell context menu of a file object. This command lets you easily edit or create a text file that has the same name as the initial file, but with the extension TXT.

http://www.moonsoftware.com/freeware.asp

Enjoy! 

[JavaJones]

This sounds a lot like something I've wanted for a looong time, and that was supposedly going to be coming in Vista (at the time Longhorn), but has now been postponed: WinFS, the new database-driven file system. The capabilities of such a filesystem go far beyond your need of course, but it would be the ideal solution at least. I'm not even sure exactly what WinFS will consist of when it's released, after Vista, and I'm not exactly understanding how they intend to release it as some sort of patch since it's an entirely different file system - I suppose it'd come with an upgrade tool. But it definitely seems like a risky upgrade, probably the most major ever released for Windows between major Windows releases.

Anyway, this is also similar (as far as I can tell) to a combination of Spotlight (on OS X, or Google Desktop Search and similar apps for PC), and something like "persistent searches" or "search folders". A persistent search is basically just a keyword, file type, data range, or whatever that is visualized as a folder and constantly scans the file system for files that match its criteria. Any matching file shows up under that folder (and any other search it matches to). This kind of functionality already exists in Spotlight I think, and probably in Google Desktop, Locate, Coppernic, and other such tools. But I must admit I don't find any of those fast or smooth enough to work with to make it feasible. I have literally billions of files here (5TB of storage in my home network) and so indexing speed, while fast relatively speaking, is still too slow for my needs. The only solution is a true DB-driven file system.

The way I see such a file system work is essentially like a totally flat storage system with metadata/database fields being used to define any necessary organizational characteristics. Storing everything flat allows you to much more flexibly arrange data on your drive so that it's easy for the underlying hardware to find when needed (file system fragmention ought to decrease dramatically). Allowing unlimited metadata/db fields means you can organize your data in any way you want. The file comments feature discussed in this thread: https://www.donation...12.msg18364#msg18364 is taken care of by the underlying file system itself. The advantages of this are tremendous and really the only disadvantage is the need for a bit faster system to handle all the DB transactions when dealing with your file system. But done intelligently the performance hit would be minimal and we have systems plenty fast enough to handle it these days.

So, when do we get our DB-driven file system MS? :-p

- Oshyan