Most advanced tagging functionalities?

[Hennt]

What programs have the most advanced file tagging functionalities? To clarify: I am not talking about multimedia tagging, where the metadata fields are fixed. I am talking about free-form tagging of any files, with tag fields arbitrarily defined by the user, for managing large collections of heteronegeous files.

Functionalities such as logical operations with tags (set theory and such), wildcards in the tag queries (e.g. include all tags that match abc*), virtual folders based on tags, etc. would especially be very much appreciated.

Any ideas related to tagging programs, even if not currently implemented in a program, would be welcome in this thread.

Thanks

[Paul Keith]

Well nowadays there's different functionalities of tags depending on the service.

Plus wanting virtual folders then I can't imagine there's a software out there that has both unless you mean something like Evernote Notebooks.

I haven't tested any software but this seems advanced: http://www.tagspaces.org/

Personally the tag manager I use the most is Tobu and online it's Workflowy. Neither supports virtual folders though.

For ideas, imagine an emotional tag that syncs with another tag. Basically turning one tag into an off/on button and the other tag into a container for two different sets of tags.

[Hennt]

I would have imagined virtual folders to be something normal for tag-based systems. Maybe I used the wrong word. What I mean is custom views (file listings) based on a user-defined search specification, based on tags of course. For instance, the query may request the list of all files that have tags tag1 and tag2 but not tag3.
The resulting listing is what I was calling (maybe wrongly) "virtual folders".

Edit: to be proper "virtual folders", I think that probably they will need to be sort of permanent (i.e. until they are deleted). Of course they would have to update themselves automatically.

[IainB]

There's been some discussion in DC Forum related to File Tagging, but it's been ad hoc and is a bit scattered about.
For example, some that I know of:
Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful
On the lack of standardisation in "tagging" .
DiviFile from Qnomad - Mini-review
Help please! - Unable to install MS SQL Express 2012 on laptop.

Hope this helps or is of use.
____________________________________________
Note 2014-08-07 1029hrs: Link to SQL Express Problems added to this post, as it relates to a rather interesting Tagging/Categorisation tool called Tabbles.

[Hennt]

Thanks for the links.
I hope to revive the discussion in this thread.

[IainB]

...I hope to revive the discussion in this thread.

-Hennt (August 06, 2014, 05:26 PM)

Could be an interesting discussion. Tagging and commenting of files and data records is a subject I am particularly interested in, because it assists in categorisation and faster/easier data retrieval. One aspect worth considering is whether the Tags should be embedded or separate to the data/file to which they relate, and how "separate" is separate?
For example:

• Lotus Agenda applied Tags as embedded strings appended to the text data records it held. Those records could be held either as records within Agenda's proprietary database, or as links in the database, pointing to discrete .TXT  files on the Client, and the user could select which he preferred as a general or specific rule (i.e. he could select one or the other for all, but vary the rule for any specific record).
• The Tags field in the NTFS ADS is separate to but attached to a file, and can become irretrievably detached in file copy or move operations where the NTFS ADS is not fully supported either in the data transfer process or on the file system of the target storage media.
• Tabbles (mentioned in the link(s) above) uses either a proprietary Cloud-based database of Tags, or a Client-based SQL database of Tags. Where offline data access and retrieval is a mandatory user requirement, the database would need to be on the Client, alongside the data to which it relates.

Please note that I have just added a link re SQL/Tabbles to my post above:

Note 2014-08-07 1029hrs: Link to SQL Express Problems added to this post, as it relates to a rather interesting Tagging/Categorisation tool called Tabbles.

[Paul Keith]

I would have imagined virtual folders to be something normal for tag-based systems. Maybe I used the wrong word. What I mean is custom views (file listings) based on a user-defined search specification, based on tags of course. For instance, the query may request the list of all files that have tags tag1 and tag2 but not tag3.
The resulting listing is what I was calling (maybe wrongly) "virtual folders".

Edit: to be proper "virtual folders", I think that probably they will need to be sort of permanent (i.e. until they are deleted). Of course they would have to update themselves automatically.

-Hennt (August 06, 2014, 12:18 PM)

Ahh yes I misunderstood. What you are referring to are found in RemembertheMilk. They are called Smart Lists

[DonL]

What programs have the most advanced file tagging functionalities? To clarify: I am not talking about multimedia tagging, where the metadata fields are fixed. I am talking about free-form tagging of any files, with tag fields arbitrarily defined by the user, for managing large collections of heteronegeous files.

Functionalities such as logical operations with tags (set theory and such), wildcards in the tag queries (e.g. include all tags that match abc*), virtual folders based on tags, etc. would especially be very much appreciated.

Any ideas related to tagging programs, even if not currently implemented in a program, would be welcome in this thread.

-Hennt (August 06, 2014, 09:05 AM)

Try XYplorer. It's a file manager with tagging as a central feature.

For detailed information and screenshots check out the links after "Tag Clouds" and "Tag-Based File Management" on this page: http://www.xyplorer.com/features.php

Don

[sword]

@Hennt, Re: "...programs...most advanced file tagging...":
Tagspaces works best for me combined with filenames based on folders, date and subject. I leave searching to an independently made selection of files in gnumeric (linux) and to stored files using wordperfect (advanced file search).

[IainB]

Personally the tag manager I use the most is Tobu and online it's Workflowy. Neither supports virtual folders though.

-Paul Keith (August 06, 2014, 10:17 AM)

Thanks for making this reference to Tobu and Workflowy - I know nothing of either one. I had overlooked the reference when I first read your comment, but after reviewing this discussion just now, I noted the reference and read these:

• Tobu: take notes management beyond hierarchical structures to the next level - freewaregenius.com
• Tobu Tutorial

- and Tobu looks very interesting, so I am about to download and trial it.

I shall have a look at Workflowy later.

EDIT: Some feedback:

• Tobu: I gave this a whirl and then uninstalled it. It's very good as far as it goes, but that's not very far. It seems to have stopped development in Feb. 2010, and seems to be a demonstration of good coding rather than a finished, fully-developed and useful piece of software. Lots of potential there, but, as it stands, it was already surpassed by the DOS-based Lotus Agenda from the '80s, to which it bears some crude similarities but with a GUI. A bit of a disappointment for me.
  
  
• Workflowy: I don't really need a cloud-based organiser and collaborating tool, so I didn't try it out. I recall going through the same look-and-see motions a while back now, and arriving at the same conclusion.

[IainB]

...Tagspaces works best for me combined with filenames based on folders, date and subject. I leave searching to an independently made selection of files in gnumeric (linux) and to stored files using wordperfect (advanced file search).

-sword (August 08, 2014, 03:39 PM)

I was interested in your reference to Tagspaces. I tried this out and thought it was pretty useful, though not so much for me. The experience was partly what triggerred me to write the post (referred to above) On the lack of standardisation in "tagging".
I thought Tagspaces was a brilliantly simple idea, and I liked the way it was used within the browser UI (though that was perhaps a constraint also).

[IainB]

In trying to review the latest Tabbles updates, I found that it looks like Tabbles is dead, with no explanation as to why:

• There's an inactive site at: https://github.com/tabbles/
• There's a 404 at: http://tabbles.net/
• After doing some searching, I gathered that Tabbles was linked to "Yellow Blue Soft, UAB" - looks like that is/was registered in Lithuania by a 1-man company, a person (developer, I think) called Andrea D'intino (direktorius).
• Wayback has some backups of http://tabbles.net/, but none of the latest/last website pages, it seems
• Latest version was v3.1.22, or something, and I can't seem to download it from anywhere.

Must be a lesson in there somewhere...

Pity. I thought that it had potential, though I couldn't install MYSQL and run Tabbles on my laptop, so was obliged to run the Cloud-based version until my laptop died.