Hacker News Reader

Comment by polivier | Hacker News Reader

I have found it surprizingly difficult to categorize my files in a way that is elegant and intuitive. I've been meaning to look into FUSE for a tagging-based system instead of the current hierarchical one, although I suspect that the difficulty of categorizing things is unlikely to go away even with tags.

View on HN

The underlying problem is that the way your brain works doesn't really map well into categories. Text searching sometimes works, but has the same problem.

Source: Nearly two decades ago we worked on this problem and read a bunch of research. We ended up making an app that let you input multiple facets to narrow things down, with the basic view being a calendar: https://nemo-docs.com/

We didn't have anyone marketing it, so it never really took off. The original plan was to build a serverless/P2P storage system underneath so sharing would be seamless and not require messing with servers, but never got that far.

I really like the idea behind this. That's what the Recent view should look like.

> The underlying problem is that the way your brain works doesn't really map well into categories. Text searching sometimes works, but has the same problem.

What did you find that works ?

Oh, I see. You put files/objects/data on a timeline. I wish the semantic desktop had brought us that. There's a firefox extension that conveniently displays your history in a calendar form and it's really useful.

Do you have any articles about that ?

I always like the idea of tags, but whenever I get into a proper tagging system with thousands of entries I always end up having to regularly "refactor" my tags, which is fun exactly once and then it's just another goddamn chore.

The problem I have is that the optimal categorization seems to change depending on my current job and life situation. Tagging requires a whole new level of discipline ...

I am genuinely surprised tagging never got more traction in the native FS space. I use MacOS's tagging pretty extensively and Dropbox at least keeps them in sync, a lot of other services lose them.

I've tried using tags, but the effort isn't worth it for me. Between search, occasional housekeeping, and a decent folder structure I have everything I need without being coupled to Apple.

You can tag bookmarks too. No one does this, of course.

Tagging data is such a niche feature. But when it's useful, it's very useful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com