Re: Feature freeze imminent

On 2007-02-26, Ted Zlatanov <tzz-mIZUurteI1BWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> wrote:
> After reading this, I think users will complain bitterly when they
> can't just tag two things the same way.  So the system needs to have
> an easy way to say: "OK, this file is exactly like the other one,
> except for one thing.  What is it?"
>
> Then the original file and the new one can both have their tag set
> extended, with the original set of tags becoming a "directory-level"
> tag set.  

This is precisely one thing that I want to avoid, the names of files 
changing automatically. If one were to allow for that, one might be able
to work with a standard metacrap file system. In the "SetFS", as I call 
it, you'll just have to add an additional tag to any "followup" files.
Yes, every "file" is a both a directory and a file, when you map
SetFS to the conventional unix file hierarchies. So, if you have
the file 'foo/bar' and want another file with the same tags, you'll
just have to use 'foo/bar/1' or something, and maybe manually rename
the original 'foo/bar/0', if you really want that.

One should less think of SetFS as a database file system with lots of
tags applied to each file, and more of as a plain old file system but
without the hierarchy. Of course, one could always add an additional set 
of meta-tags that do not contribute to the name of the file, just like
one could do filtering by creation date, etc. for search, but not 
addressing a particular file. (Accessing a particular file would just
ignore specially formed path elements.)

> After years of doing text and GUI work, I'm convinced that the best UI
> is the simplest one.  Thus, people who hate writing UIs should
> probably be doing it, because you can rely on them to do their best to
> simplify the UI :)  

I agree. Too bad few people who hate it, get into it.

-- 
Tuomo