Bug 200461 - Boxes - a new Concept for Dolphin to organize files
Summary: Boxes - a new Concept for Dolphin to organize files
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: dolphin
Classification: Applications
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: 16.12.2
Platform: Compiled Sources Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Dolphin Bug Assignee
URL:
Keywords:
: 180903 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-07-16 17:45 UTC by martin
Modified: 2018-01-29 18:44 UTC (History)
12 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


Attachments
Mock-Up and description of the general problem (626.31 KB, image/png)
2009-07-16 17:47 UTC, martin
Details
Second Mock-Up - showing different use-cases and the "On-The-Go" box which is core part of this concept (570.23 KB, image/png)
2009-07-16 17:50 UTC, martin
Details
Mock-Up that shows what happens when a box in the panel is selected (377.39 KB, image/png)
2009-07-16 17:51 UTC, martin
Details

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Description martin 2009-07-16 17:45:51 UTC
Version:            (using Devel)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Compiled sources

whenever i work with a lot of files, modern file managers like dolphin become to feel unsafe for me.
on the one hand this is because i hate to select many files from one folder to perform actions on them (e.g. select photos i want to keep... probably 30 out 
of 300) because i always fear to accidentally deselect all of them, on the other hand working with related files which are located in different locations makes 
me nervous. i have to switch folders all the time.

it gets even more uncomfortable when i want to collect a few files from different locations to perform actions on them.
for example i'd like to RAR the work i've done and send it over to a buddy. 
what i do is finding all the files needed from all the different locations, copying them over to a new folder i have created (or the desktop) and select them all again to create the archive.

this takes a lot of time and the chance that i miss files in this process is 
very high.

so what to do against this? how can i feel more safe and comfortable with my everyday file management-work?

here is the solution:

File Boxes

Think of File boxes as a kind of "virtual folder". I can drag-drop files to them, open them up to see the contents and perform actions on the box and the files it contains.


SO... WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

boxes won't copy your files to a new location. what they do is to store links to your files.
this way it becomes very handy to manage your files efficiently.

- working on a project? simply drag all the files you want to track to the box and you will have access to them very quickly (this is pretty similar to why files on the desktop became so successful).

- sending a email to a friend with your work as attachment? simply drag the box on your mail window and all files inside the box will be added as attachment.

- RAR up all the content of the box? simply open the context menu of the box and choose "Create Archive"

- done with your work? simply delete the file box, the linked files won't be deleted... only the links

To illustrate it a bit better i have created 3 mock-ups... see how FileBox integrates perfectly into your file-management habits:

http://mofux.moches.de/stacks.png
http://mofux.moches.de/stacks2.png
http://mofux.moches.de/stacks3.png

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND and OTHER COOL STUFF:

with the uprising of semantic file tagging this concept becomes very interesting. technically a "box" can be seen as a collection of files that share the same tags (aka Nepomuk tags). This concept can greatly improve the way we tag files and the way we make use of tags. The basics are already done, only the interaction is lacking.
Comment 1 martin 2009-07-16 17:47:36 UTC
Created attachment 35385 [details]
Mock-Up and description of the general problem
Comment 2 martin 2009-07-16 17:50:14 UTC
Created attachment 35386 [details]
Second Mock-Up - showing different use-cases and the "On-The-Go" box which is core part of this concept
Comment 3 martin 2009-07-16 17:51:24 UTC
Created attachment 35387 [details]
Mock-Up that shows what happens when a box in the panel is selected
Comment 4 Sebastian Trueg 2009-07-17 09:23:51 UTC
Would you want these boxes to be persistent over sessions? Or could they be thrown away when logging out?
Comment 5 Sebastian Trueg 2009-07-17 09:28:45 UTC
I created a link on the Nepomuk ideas list although I am not sure Nepomuk is the best way of doing it: http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Nepomuk#File_Boxes
Comment 6 Tom Deblauwe 2009-07-17 11:18:20 UTC
+1 for this idea!!

So you should be able to add random files to a box, and per box you should have an option to say "all files with that tag must also automatically be linked in this box".

That is nice, making boxes is neat, but the tage feature can maybe be confusing for the user. if you tag a file with a tag X and suddenly it is added automatically in a few boxes where you don't expect it(or you forgotten about old boxes contain all files with tag X).... that could be a problem. But the feature is ok in itself of course.
Comment 7 martin 2009-07-17 11:31:42 UTC
@ Tom Deblauwe:

there are 2 solutions to avoid this problem:

a) giving the boxes tags a prefix autmaticly boxes:TagName
b) removing tags from files when the box that give the files it's tag is removed
Comment 8 martin 2009-07-17 11:36:14 UTC
@ Sebastian Trueg:

boxes will stay until the user removes them.
special options for boxes could be to aggregate other system tags (the 'Downloads' box would do this)
Comment 9 Sebastian Trueg 2009-07-17 13:42:25 UTC
please please please forget about this tags idea.

This is really not how things are supposed to work in Nepomuk. What you would do for Nepomuk is that you define an rdf class FileBox or something and link files to that via nie:isPartOf or pimo:isPartOf (I am not sure about that yet). 

One could then also think about gathering files for a project or a task by simply relating the files to that project or task or person or whatever.
So in the end it is simply about a GUI that displays the boxes and a query to determine which boxes to display (you probably do not want everything that is related to some file be shown as a box in Dolphin). And of course a fancy way to "open" boxes. The advantage of this approach is also that the boxes will be searched by Nepomuk.

But using tags is just cumbersome and totally defies the idea of semantics.
Comment 10 martin 2009-07-17 14:10:00 UTC
ok, thanks for clearing this up sebastian. i'm not really deep into all this semantic stuff at a technical level, so the idea with the tags was just my first guess.
Comment 11 FiNeX 2009-07-18 00:46:32 UTC
I like the idea. Moreover it reminds me an already reported wish... bug #144384 . It also has a video of Quicksilver, an interesting macosx utility.
Comment 12 Donald Benoot 2009-10-08 17:07:09 UTC
Looking at your mockups, it feels like your Boxes could prove useful not just in dolphin, but more system-wide. Maybe some kind of plasmoid could then provide this feature, which could then be docked in dolphin? 

In this way dolphin doesn't have to be open to select files from the box (eg. quickly dragging a file from the box to an email attachment without opening dolphin or using the file dialog, ... ).
Comment 13 Dotan Cohen 2010-03-28 15:26:27 UTC
This seems to be a possible resolution to the bug:
http://www.osnews.com/story/19866/FolderView_Gets_Nepomuk_Search_Integration
Comment 14 Kai Uwe Broulik 2011-01-04 23:37:46 UTC
I really like this idea. It would so much increase productivity when working on my webpages since I have the stylesheet in a subdirectory, the main scripts and some in subdirectories, then there are shared libraries that are in a common folder and now I need to have like 5 dolphin windows opened and stuff. Go for it, Mr. Penz ;)
Comment 15 ro.ggi 2011-05-27 01:12:56 UTC
You can just use symbolic links for this. Actually you can do almost the same like file boxes using symbolic links: create an entry in places, drag some files to this entry and select “Link Here”.
The difference between file boxes and normally folders (entries in places) is only different management of symbolic links:
-always link files for this folder and not ask if you will copy, move or link;
-move/copy/remove linked files and not links itself (but if just moving/coping/removing file box, then take it only for links).
For things like “Downloads” or “On-The-Go" box we need preconfigured file boxes.
Comment 16 Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems) 2012-08-24 16:20:02 UTC
Resetting assignee to default as per bug #305719
Comment 17 Richard Llom 2013-08-23 11:06:23 UTC
This is an awesome idea!

Maybe this should be (re-) posted KDE Brainstorm:
http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php
to get some more people interested (and hopefully  a dolphin dev :-)
Comment 18 Frank Reininghaus 2013-08-23 11:17:09 UTC
(In reply to comment #17)
> (and hopefully  a dolphin dev :-)

I'm not sure if Dolphin is really the place where this should/could be implemented (provided that anyone is willing to invest a *massive* amount of time into the implementation, of course - this is definitely not going to be me because I already have way to little time to work on the things that do belong to Dolphin).

If you want to access the "boxes" also from other applications (which you do want, if I understand correctly), then the solution would probably be to write a "boxes" kioslave that provides access to the files in a "box".

The functionality could then be used from Dolphin and other applications with no or only minimal changes to those applications (one of these possible minimal changes could be to provide access to the "boxes" via the Places Panel).
Comment 19 Richard Llom 2013-08-24 12:10:08 UTC
(In reply to comment #18)
> I'm not sure if Dolphin is really the place where this should/could be
> implemented (provided that anyone is willing to invest a *massive* amount of
> time into the implementation, ...
> 
Oh, I judged from comment #15, which didn't sound so time intensive...

> If you want to access the "boxes" also from other applications (which you do
> want, if I understand correctly), then the solution would probably be to
> write a "boxes" kioslave that provides access to the files in a "box".
> 
In the OP is actually Nepomuk suggested, wouldn't that be suitable?

> The functionality could then be used from Dolphin and other applications
> with no or only minimal changes to those applications (one of these possible
> minimal changes could be to provide access to the "boxes" via the Places
> Panel).
> 
This at least would be possible when implemented via Nepomuk.
Comment 20 Christoph Feck 2013-08-29 22:38:24 UTC
Wouldn't tags solve this? You could name those tags starting with "box-", e.g. "box-Project1".
Comment 21 Elvis Angelaccio 2016-12-26 16:03:10 UTC
*** Bug 180903 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 22 Nate Graham 2018-01-29 18:44:23 UTC
Yep, tags perfectly enable this idea. You're describing more or less the exact use case for them, in fact.

If you'd like to propose UI improvements to make tags more discoverable, efficient, or useful, please feel free to file new bug reports. Thanks!