Re: Looking for document and file organisation tools
On Fri, 6 Mar 2015, Victor wrote:
> On 03/03/2015 18:13, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > What free software is there in the way of organizing lots of documents?
> >
> > To be more precise, the ones I *need* to organize are the files on hard
> > drives, though if I could include documents I have elsewhere (bookshelves
> > and photocopy files) I wouldn't mind. They are text documents in a
> > variety of file formats and languages, source code for current and
> > obsolete systems, jpeg images, film clips, drawings, SVG files, files,
> > object code, shared libraries, fragments of drafts of books, ragged
> > software documentation, works in progress ...
> >
> > And I'm not looking for one single solution that will do everything I'd
> > like. Indeed, I suspect that's impossible without building an entirely
> > new OS. Which I'm not likely to find off the shelf, nor am I likely to
> > be able to do it myself in the few decades I may have left in my life.
> > And even if it were feasible, there's probably a lot of research to be
> > done before we even know what such a thing should actually do.
> >
> > Of course the files are already semi-organized in directories. But I
> > haven't yet managed to find a suitable collection of directory names.
> > Hierarchical classification isn't ideal -- there are files that fit in
> > several categories, and there are a lot files that have to be in a
> > particular location because of the way they are used (executables in a
> > bin directory, for example) or the way they are updated or maintained.
> >
> > Of course the taxonomists would advise setting up a controlled vocabulary
> > of tags and attaching tags to the various files. I'd end up with
> > triples store or some other database describing files.
> >
> > But how to identify the files being tagged? A file-system pathname isn't
> > enough. Files get moved, and sometimes entire directory trees full of
> > files get moved from one place to another for various pragmatic reasons.
> > And a hashcode isn't enough. files get edited, upgraded, recompiled,
> > reformatted, converted from JIS code to UTF-8, and so forth. Images get
> > cropped and colour-corrected. And under these changes they should keep
> > their assigned classification tags.
> >
> > Now a number of file formats can accommodate metadata. And some software
> > that manipulates files can preserve metadata and even allow user editing
> > of the metadata. But more doesn't.
> >
> > Much of it could perhaps be done by auttomatic content analysis. Other
> > material may require labour-intensive manual classification.
> >
> > No I don't expect to see any off-the-shelf solution for all of this.
> >
> > But does anyone have ideas as to how to accomplish even some of this?
> > Even poorly?
> >
> > Does anyone know of relevant practical tools? Or have ideas towards
> > tools that *should* exist but currently don't?
> >
> > I'm ready to experiment.
> >
> > -- hendrik
> >
> >
> For tagging your files, have you seen tmsu (http://tmsu.org/)? The homepage
> says:
>
> TMSU is a tool for tagging your files. It provides a simple
> command-line tool for applying tags and a virtual filesystem so that
> you can get a tag-based view of your files from within any other
> program.
>
> TMSU does not alter your files in any way: they remain unchanged on
> disk, or on the network, wherever you put them. TMSU maintains its
> own database and you simply gain an additional view, which you can
> mount, based upon the tags you set up. The only commitment required
> is your time and there's absolutely no lock-in.
>
> Never used it myself. I?m not sure how it handles moving/renames of files,
> which is one of your concerns. Maybe there?s something planned in it for
> that. At least it makes the tagged filesystem available in any program, which
http://org-mode.org/ may also be helpful for mind-mapping purposes if
nothing else.
> is quite convenient I think.
>
jude <jdashiel@shellworld.net>
Twitter: @JudeDaShiell
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