Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 25, 2009 18:39 UTC (Sat) by dirtyepic (guest, #30178)
In reply to: Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME? by seilo
Parent article: Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

I've never understood the appeal of tagging. How is going through all my files and adding the appropriate tags to each one any easier/faster/more convenient than just putting them in a folder in the first place? Sure you can have multiple tags per file, but every one of the very few times I've had to find files based on some kind of arbitrary metadata, it's something that I never thought to use as a tag (eg. i have photos tagged with location and date, but i need to find pictures of my brother).

i do see the value in social tagging where it's likely someone else has already done the dirty work, but for my own stuff? Never.

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Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 25, 2009 18:52 UTC (Sat) by ms (subscriber, #41272) [Link] (3 responses)

Yeah, if people can't be arsed to put they files in a sensible folder structure then they won't bother to richly tag them. All such meta data should ideally come from the file content itself. E.g. id3 tags, exif data etc etc. The ability to have live projection with many, often pretty complex constraints (i.e. you need a full expression engine in this, not just some "show me files tagged with 'red'" crap) is actually pretty cool.

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 25, 2009 22:07 UTC (Sat) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] (2 responses)

Pretty cool, and we'll finally be where BeOS was ten years ago.

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 30, 2009 18:47 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (1 responses)

And where OS X is today (with Spotlight and QuickSilver).

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted May 5, 2009 20:13 UTC (Tue) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

You can do that with Beagle/Strigi/Tracker coupled with deskbar-applet/gnome-do/katapult already.

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Jun 3, 2009 16:29 UTC (Wed) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]

>>
How is going through all my files and adding the appropriate tags to each one any easier/faster/more convenient than just putting them in a folder in the first place?
<<
It's *exactly* the same work to put all your file in a folder or tagging the files: both are setting a metadata attribute on the files.

But hieararchical folders are more rigid and require an order even when there is no 'natural' order: ie /landscapes/NewYork isn't better than /NewYork/landscape..

So tags are more flexible.