[sugar] Tagged Journal Proposal
pgf at laptop.org
pgf at laptop.org
Wed Oct 15 18:03:12 EDT 2008
a few random observations that i had today, prompted by scott's
talk/demo:
- while people don't tend to name their jpegs (today), they
do tend to group them into folders (e.g. "vacation_pix").
the equivalent of this in a tagged world would be bulk
tagging. i assume scott has thought about this in his
UI, though i don't recall noticing it.
- likewise, removing all the files in a directory, or moving
half of them elsewhere (imagine rearranging the photos
you just pulled off the camera), implies that there
should be equivalent tag operations for doing bulk tag
removal, and bulk tag editing. (note that this need is
independent of the path-component-as-tag feature -- these
operations are simply required of any system intended to
replace hierarchy with tags.)
- jim made the observation that he found himself using tags
less and less over time, once he realized that the
full-text indexer he was using made traditional "filing"
unnecessary. i've found the same thing (i index my MH
mail folders with mairix) -- but i do still use folders
(i.e., "tag equivalents") to make it easy to retrieve
things for which i think i may not remember the right
search terms later on. and of course i especially use them
when the tags (folders) can be assigned automatically
(with sort filters). all of which is to say that i view
tagging as an extension of full-text search, not a
replacement.
- we need to be mindful of erik's concern that if the goal is
to solve the problems deployments are reporting, whether
with file management or anything else, that we not
over-engineer the design in a way that keeps us from
finishing the implementation. while our mission may be
to build something "better", we shouldn't let that get in
the way of building something that, while "old", is very
useful. (e.g., if we haven't made enough progress on the
"real" solution, and kids would be best served in 9.1 by
a file manager activity of some sort, then we should
provide one.)
=---------------------
paul fox, pgf at laptop.org
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