Created attachment 125462 [details] Screen Recording SUMMARY: It is possible to create a "new folder" when viewing a tag folder in Dolphin. This folder is empty as there are no files on the filesystem with the given tag. It is a construct within Dolphin. In certain situations, the folder will vanish if the folder view is refreshed (with an F5). Refreshing multiple times, shows the folder disappearing, reappearing and disappearing again (see attachment). It will not be present if Dolphin is closed and relaunched. STEPS TO REPRODUCE: Observed with two files tagged with 'mytag', the baloo index recreated (with balooctl disable, balooctl purge, balooctl enable) then: 1. On a newly launched Dolphin, open "All tags" (the tags:/ folder) 2. Right click to get the pop up menu and "Create New", and choose "Folder" 3. Give a name not used before. The "Tag" folder will appear OBSERVED RESULTS: Press F5, the folder disappears, F5 again the folder appears (although this is not deterministic; it is occasionally repeatable, occasionally random). The screen recording shows a 'refresh' button and a mix of behaviours. EXPECTED RESULTS: Dolphin should remember the new (tag) folder exists, even if empty. It should not disappear and reappear with repeated refreshes. If should be possible to drag-and-copy items into the new/empty folder and have this action add the tag. DESIRED STATE: Creating a tag via a "Create New", "Folder" and dragging and copying items into it is an intuitive way of adding tags to groups of files, this should not be lost. "Empty" tags should have an intermediate term existence, it should be possible to create a tag (by, as an example, creating a new folder in the Tag view) and having it behave stable manner SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS: Dolphin 19.12.1 from Neon 5.17 KDE Plasma 5.17.5 KDE Frameworks 5.66.0 Qt 5.13.2
Yeah, the concept of creating a folder (or anything, for that matter) while browsing tabs makes no sense. IIRC what we need to do is mark the tags ioslave as not supporting file creation, or something like that, or it might be that we need to disable the create new menu in Dolphin itself. CCing some folks who may remember.
GUESSWORK AND SUPPOSITION: Looks like Dolphin uses a set of slave processes (tags.so) to handle the sets of data returned by baloo. The F5 refreshes may trigger enquiries to different tags.so processes that may hold different information (as the "Create New", "Folder" has not made any changes to the filesystem and baloo does not see any changes?) It would be interesting to see if the behaviour changes if Dolphin was limited to creating "just the one" tags.so process. However it is unclear whether this is possible (a configuration option maybe?)
Discovering the https://phabricator.kde.org/D26952 discussion Looking at the Dolphin "tags" functionality with a naive view, it's possible to create an empty filesystem folder (and put stuff in it later), it would be intuitive to do the same for a "tags" folder. The workflow is then create the tag folder you want, then drag-and-copy the items into it. Otherwise the workflow is create the tag you want on one of your items, refresh Dolphin, then drag-and-copy the rest. It's clear that a newly created tag folder is transient; if it's not used, it will disappear. Maybe it should have a different icon in the folder view (greyed? or outline form?) it signal it's transience. I would not be surprised to see such a folder disappear if I closed Dolphin and reopened it. Harking back to the "Desired State"; tags are very useful to get out of the "a file can only live in one place" straightjacket, each step to making them predictable and frictionless helps...