On 03/03/2015 09:13 AM, 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 ...
For information organization concepts, have you read the Polar Bear book? I read an earlier version, and it was helpful:
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034674.do
For storage tools/ technologies, ZFS offers compression, deduplication,
snapshots, replication, redundancy, etc., among other useful features.
Note that there is a big debate involving ZFS and ECC memory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zfs
https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/zfs-fuse
http://zfsonlinux.org/
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=zfs++ecc
If you can code, FUSE allows you to roll your own file system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace
As you mentioned, another storage option would be a database.
For me, the user interface is a conundrum. It would need at least
user-level access to the file system(s). I've contemplated writing an
application. But I think it would end up resembling a file manager, so
why not write a file manager plug-in? But, which file manager? Similar
comments for a browser plug-in. Whatever I do, it needs to work with
existing CLI/GUI programs and desktop environments. What are your thoughts?
You might want to obtain access to a university library and browse research papers and publications. Also, take a look at Plan 9.
HTH, David