Version: (using KDE KDE 3.1.3) SCENARIO: I have a directory called "doc", which stores all my documents (books, articles, tutorials, mostly in pdf). I don't arrange them in directories, because of course there is no possible static arrangement: sometimes I want to find all the books about programming languages; sometimes I want all the books published by addison wesley, sometimes all the books about C++... sometimes all the "articles" about "physics". Sometimes all "good" books! :-) Therefore, I put all those books in the same folder, without directories. And I make really long file names, like the-origin-of-the-species--charles-darwin--biology--science--book---GOOD.pdf quantum-theory---john-benson---addison-wesley---science--FAIR.pdf So i can dynamically search all the queries I stated before: for example find . -iname "*physics*" -iname "*articl*" find . -iname "*book*" -iname "*good*" I am sorting _dynamically_, by _features_. THE PROBLEM: I find it annoying to open a terminal everytime I must do a query, and type the query! POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Since there is only a finite number of ways I can sort, konqueror could REALLY help. Here is how: Konqueror should allow me to add "attributes" or "features" to my files: instead of putting everything in the file name, I would simply call the file the-origin-of-species.pdf and then add the features author: charles darwin topic: science, biology. type: book. rating: very good. Of course, 1) I should be able to create my own features. 2) I should be able to sort by any feature with the mouse. I should also be able to combine features (e.g. "show me all good books"). I believe this is where longhorn is heading with WinFS.
I think this would be a good thing to have. Organizing files using metadata and interactive queries (see bug #79715) could make finding files much easier. I think there would be no need to completely rearrange the filesystem structure (like WinFS is going to), but using config files stored in each directory (preferably XML) and some caching of results for queries, this could work well on top of a regular hierarchic filesystem. There is a project in Gnome which aims at implementing such functionality. Perhaps one could create a standard for the files used to store metadata so other DEs could easily use the same files. Perhaps freedesktop.org should help with establishing a single standard. I recently started using digikam and I found that being able to add metadata to documents is really useful. Of course, digikam is limited to the specialized task of dealing with digital photos and konqueror would need to be more flexible. I think it sould support arbitrary metadata fields, but also some work should be done towards standardizing the metadata fields used for different types of documents. But even with just the ability to attach arbitrary keywords to files, finding information would be much easier. I see Juk as a good example of how useful that can be. The hierarchic structure imposed by using folders to group documents is good in many situations, but sometimes it is not good enough. For example with music, I can either make a directory structure like Artist/Year/Album (so all songs from a single album are in one place) or Year/Artist/Album (so all songs from one year are sort-of in one place) but I can't have both (using symlinks is not an option, since they can't dynamically readjust). The same goes for my photographs: do I make folders to group by year or by subject ? Again, using metadata and dynamic searches, I can find the data I need easily - far easier than using a filesystem hierarchy.
Actually, the handling of metadata itself should be done on a lower level than KDE - I imagine it would be a set of libraries and perhaps a userspace daemon (to automatically update the cache when files or their metadata is modified). Konqueror would only be a front end to this system.
About metadata there are some open source projects that try to deal with it: Gnome Storage http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/ Gnome Medusa ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/medusa/ (see Bug 55868: Use medusa indexing system for file searching) Gnome Beagle http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/ Reiser4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiser4 Other Projects are WinFs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS) and Spotlight (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html)
I'd love to see Kaffeine remeber where I was, playing a movie... :D (hint hint) will KDE 4.0 do this?
Oh, very good idea. Same with KPDF remembering the page where I was. A lot of other applications/formats could benefit of that!
sure. that is what makes meta-data cool :D it is just usefull... imagine, kword (all applications) keep the undo/redo information after you saved the file! And you have a 'timeline' where you can drag a slider in the 'development line' of a document, so you can go back and forth in the changes for that file... and you can always go back to a certain point, where you put some piece of text or a picture. You never loose stuff... And I love to be able to see more integration in this regard. ReiserFS will make this easy, as files are directories: you can open kolourpaint, go to the map mails, cd into a mail (!) and open the picture inside it. with some nice powerfull search capabillities in the file open dialogue (queries, like 'last 10 viewed files', which takes into account you need a picture in a picture vieuwer, so you'll see mails with attached pictures, a chat log with a picture, webbrowsing history, etc) it becomes damn easy to work with your data. I really hope this will be reall in KDE 4.0 - I think KDE can do it, and finally FOSS will beat the heck out of Windoze and Mac OS X :D
btw Gnome has a kind of flags for files, a usefull feature, imho. altough custom meta-data is even better - and automatic meta-data (where is this file from etc) is the best ;-) can't wait for KDE 4...
This should be fairly easy to implement now since Konqueror now displays this metadata in the tooltip preview. For example when I mouseover a pdf file I see the title, author, subject, creator, producer, etc. OpenOffice documents I see similar data. It should be possible to add a column with those names such as 'title', 'author' creation date' etc and pull the data out of the files in the same way it is being pulled now for the preview. Most file types see to have a 'keyword' field which couple be used for the original request of 'good' or 'fair'. This may slow down directory listing so maybe those colums can be enabled/disabled on a per directory basis. Some programs also allow user defined fields so maybe support the addition of user defined columns in the show/hide details list so those fields can be displayed as well.
All reports about file management mode reported against KDE 3 (konqueror) has been closed: konqueror in KDE 3 is no more developed and mantained. All bugs and wishes which could be interesting for Dolphin in KDE 4 (the new KDE file manager) has been collected into a specific list. Please try the new file manager before request new features and report bugs. Before submitting new reports check carefully the already opened KDE/Dolphin reports in order not to add duplicates. Many thanks. P.S: on KDE 4 you can use the filter bar (dolphin) and in the future tagging files will be well supported (using nepomuk).