A New Document Management System

newdocms is a proposal for a new and radically different way of managing your documents in KDE. It is a move away from the now over 30-year-old hierarchical file system towards a meta-data-based document retrieval system. A 0.1 preview has now been released along with a description and screenshots (typical, newdocms, save, open, results -- the GUI isn't all that pretty at this point). Although not yet ready for production use, newdocms has the potential to really change the way users interact with their computer. Herein lies a challenge to the Open Source community in general, and KDE in particular, to take a step ahead of the competition in a truly innovative way. Should newdocms be a standard part of a future KDE release?

Comments

by anon (not verified)

Nice, very nice. However, everybody knows that the Single Directory System is the wave of the future. :-)

PS Don't forget to vote here [linuxformat.co.uk] too! Everybody at GNOMEDESKTOP already has.

by David Johnson (not verified)

However, everybody knows that the Single Directory System is the wave of the future.

All too true, unfortunately. I cringe every time I walk by a cubicle and see every document the user ever worked on sitting on their desktop. They don't even bother with wallpaper because you can't see the desktop through the icons.

by dapawn (not verified)

Interesting, but I don't think I'm quite ready to buy into a Single Directory system quite yet. :-)

I do think the ability to store meta-data for files is an excellent idea. I would love to be able to browse the filesystem and have a document's meta-data pop-up in a tool-tip, or be displayed as a column in konqueror's detailed view.

I also love the idea of the special 'Search Folders' (persistent queries in BeOS, VFolders in Evolution?), coming in kmail (KDE 3.2), where the 'Search Folders' are dynamically updated (based on your original search criteria) each time new messages arrive or are deleted. It would be awesome if this could be extended to the filesystem using files' meta-data!

Example: In my digital photo collection, if I store meta-data about who is pictured in each photo, then I could create a 'Search Folder' of pictures of my Aunt who lives across the country. And every time I added another picture of my Aunt, it would magically appear in her 'Search Folder'. I could have a 'Search Folder' for pictures featuring myself too, and a picture of my Aunt and I together would show up in both 'Search Folders'. It wouldn't matter if photos were .jpg or .png or whatever. When she came to visit, I would show her her Search Folder (probably not the best example, but it was the first to come to mind :-). I could continue to organize my photos into regular folders like "Texas_Vacation_2002" or "Work/Joes_Farewell_Lunch".

You could this with music files; basing the 'Search Folder' on style, hard, soft, artist, etc., or with documents, perhaps you have a 'Search Folder' for KDE, it could contain graphics files, presentations, spreadsheets, plain text files, HTML, etc. all about KDE. I don't know how feasible such a system would be, but I would love to see it!

Anyway, good luck on the project! Its nice to see new ideas.

by Scott MacDonald (not verified)

Very interesting, it is indeed a fresh and intuitive take on things are organized.

However, I can see serious problems with users who are used to a simple preview of the document, organized by directory. While entering a concept name and shortcut keyword are nice for searching later, many people will find this unnecessarily complicated. It is unlikely that most people would take full advantage of such a system and would end up preferring how things currently are.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

I agree. The users I see occasionally will use directories to organize their work, but usually don't bother. And once their (and this goes for myself as well) finished with a document, they usually have no need to open it up again, but keep it in the off-chance they need it. So in other words the "Recent Documents" feature found in most products is pratically good enough.

But I know my grandfather could use something like this. He has saved about more then 10 years worth of documents. If he had been organizing them in this way the whole time, those documents would probably be more useful.

by Robert (not verified)

If you read his description, you would have noticed that users can simply save their docs without attributes, yielding a perfect "Recent Documents" structure, i.e. the docs are organized "save time descending".

by Peter (not verified)

Of course we want this, it is overdue. Managing the bookmarks in a HFS is
a pain - I use grok for this, which is only a workaround. But a question:
Does the newdocms have any impact on the shell? Is there a commandline
interface to retrieve and store the files? I see it uses sqlite which seems to
be a database - does that mean I can do `select * from theTable' and see
all files along with the attributes?
Anyways, my vote: YES!

by Shulai (not verified)

I guess a thing like

vi `newdocscm About:whatever`

then showing posible results should work.

by Giovanni Di Guardo (not verified)

I find it usefull especially in the area of education. It is a sort of LCMS (Learning Content Management System) simplified but more practical because catalogation (tagging) happens a the beginning of document creation and not in a second step.

by Thomas Olsen (not verified)

I think it is a very interesting project you have done. You are absolutely right that HFS is a dead end if you want to organize data. Having tried to work at a 200+ people company using one fileserver for storing all data about customers and projects it has really been proven to me. But simply keeping track of the files on your home computer is also a major job.

Some small points about your implementation:

- I couldn't find it in your writing but do you follow any kind of standard when cataloging metadata? Most of the attributes you mention fits perfectly into e.g. The Dublin Core Initiative ( http://www.dublincore.org/ ).
DC has the most common fields like Title, Description, CreationDate, ModificationDate etc. but also fields more suitable for doing 'intuitive searches' like Subject, a multivalue field which corresponds fine with your 'About' attribute, and Relation which as the name says defines relations between other documents. I think using DC as the basic metadata would standardize it a great deal and help people from getting confused about other peoples selfinvented metadata. Naturally it should be possible to extend the metadata set using other DTDs or schemas e.g. for multimedia, sales, communications etc.

- Personally I would miss not being able to catalog my files both by metadata and by filesystem hierarchy. maybe I have missed something in your description, but I couldn't see if it was possible.

Great job! Looking forward to seeing it grow - this could be a really great addition to the the desktop. As you mention this concept is mostly used in major CMS systems but try to have a look at Zope/CMF (http://cmf.zope.org) which implements some of the concepts and is both Open Source and free as in free beer :-)

*Yes*, I'd like it for KDE as an option for sure!!

Hell, hierarchical databases are so very dead for a park full of reasons. Time to send them HFS for companion.

However, there's not only KDE and Gnome. What about gv, emacs, acroread, and the infinite bunch of shell commands that take files as argument?

Hm.. I'm prgramming in Java (and on Windowze...) so i won't be able to deliver this myself, but, hey, it should be fairly easy to program a small console application that interfaces with the document management system and delivers e.g. a list of native filenames when supplied with metadata attribute values.
Then the user would put this small tool in shell backticks and off you go like this:

for i in `newdmssh attrib1=value1 attrib2=value2` do;
[do what you want to the native files]
done

Wouldn't that be cool?

Another approach would be to program a fully functional bash or sh extension that has some native commands and/or globbing tricks to allow interfacing with the doc. mngmt. system.
(Of course all the tools like tar, gz, cat, etc. etc. can not be expected to support this in the near future...)

Robert

by Roland Schäfer (not verified)

Maybe some kind of virtual filesystem:

--
cd /docs
cd attrib1=foo
cd attrib2=bar
dir
... List of all files, which match the query attrib1=foo, attrib2=bar
--

Every (virtual) subdirectory is a query on the results from the parent directory.

Comments?

that's it.

a virtual filesystem is great. (and to be done in not that much time).

but id prefer no special characters in the interface
( e.g: attrib=foo )

consider acroread (or any other commercial software made without a good toolkit) . i won't count on the ability to quote these characters.
and using
> /me/.attr/foo/.comment/bar/.type/pdf
to find pdf files is great!

and all those unix tools, acroread, realplayer, opera...
all software on your system will be able to use it, if the users knows how to cheat.
(gworkspace, konqueror, nautilus, etc will provide a better gui, but you got the idea)

~ibotty

towards other metadata filesytems.
having ONE fs with ONE user interface (e.g.: /me/.attr/foo/.type/pdf) and ONE api
is better than having reiserfs4, xfs, .
each having their own api, their own way of getting attributes, their own api.

having one api to bind them all in the lands of unix will help unix in general.
(i imagine a posix standard to access metadata...).

~ibotty

by Joel (not verified)

Nice concept. If made user friendly and intuitive it could be a real killer. I'd really love to see something like this that works, and works well. Something which can quickly and easily bring the data to you.

I think this should become a standard part of KDE, but I think the current model should also be available for those who would prefer to use it. Also, the system would have to be compatible with the way the current file system works so that files created in kde apps can be accessable with other apps etc.

Hi,

sorry for an offtopic question, but does anyone
here know a trick to make KDE konqueror shell
run "gvim -R filename" whenever I click the
middle mouse button? Or where could I ask?

Thank you!
Alex

by Philippe Fremy (not verified)

GVim is obsolete.

Try KVim and the KVim KPart: http://www.freehackers.org/kvim/

by Flemming Frandsen (not verified)

How well would this work if the files were stored on a central server?

I realize that this is a very early implementation, but getting too wrapped up in making it simple for one user to use could end up making it impossible to use for more than one user and that would be a shame.

IMHO this would be most usefull in companies where different people will need to share access to a large amount of documents.

There are two points to this post:
1) Please make it possible to have a file server to serve the files and have
that fileserver tell the clients what process to talk to to get metadata,
as that will enable clients to mount document directories from many
different servers in different places and keep the same global view.

2) Please keep the SQL/database interface separate, it would be a great loss
to be tied to a singleuser, file based sql-liberary, in fact I think you
should have a server process that takes care of all database access (and
caching).

It would be very nice if you could install a company-global filesystem simply by creating a database instance on the enterprise database box and a coda/nfs/smb/whatever filesystem and then start the metadata-server pointing it at the directory and the database instance.

You would probably also need some sort of replication of the metadata or a disconnected (laptop or whatever) user would be SOL.

I don't know if including the actual file serving in the metadata-server would be a good idea, it would make setting things up much simpler, but it could also mean replicating a lot of work...

Anyway, this seems to be a very cool idea, good luck!

by ibotty (not verified)

if using a (virtual) filesystem approach (as suggested above)
one could easily mount it via nfs, coda, or whatever you want (smb might be harder, it is not fully posix conform, is it?)

by moses (not verified)

I am in need of du\ocumentation on compiler technics or with construction of processing,utility programme,liberary file

Thanks

Mr.Moses

by Hubert Krause (not verified)

I think, this is the sort of inovation that "Linux/UNIX on Desktops" is missing. Something new, not a copy from Windows or MacOS.
But for succsess it has to get a nice and intuitive GUI, perhaps an kio plugin to "browse" your dokuments similar to the "well trained" classical HFS-way.
Further on it should integrate with the classical open and save-dialog, cause you will need both ways to access your documents (for example: configuration-files will depend on HFS the next few years I think ;)

Maybe it is time to learn C++.

by Stof (not verified)

Most users (read: Windows users and traditional Unix users) are all used to the HFS. In order to use this system, you must learn something new. We all know "average users" don't want to learn, they just want to get the thing to work. Won't this get lots of resistance from users?
I took a look at the screenshot, and honestly I can't figure out how it works just by looking at it (maybe it's just because of the GUI?). To me, it doesn't look intuitive at all.
I can already see it now: thousands and thousands of people flaming about how Linux is difficult to use and how it sucks and how Windows XP rules. *sigh*

Maybe this new way is "better", but I doubt it will succeed until users change their attitude and are willing to learn.

by Peter (not verified)

Hi Stof

I doubt that those users understand the HFS, they just memorized what to click when they want to open or save something. I have ~100 Users, and most of them expect that a double-click on an icon on their desktop will show them the files on the server even when they are not connected to a network - the whole concept of (network)drives, home directories and shortcuts is not really understood by most of them. So, the new approach _does_ force them to learn something new, but it is not that they would have to learn to think different - they have the chance to learn something sensible instead of learning a click-sequence by heart. So, if this could be made option in KDE - go ahead.

Cheers

Peter

by Jonas (not verified)

I think the author is unaware of all the other work on metadata over the years. This is nothing new in itself, but it work be great if KDE could get some user friendly metadata support in the open and save dialogs.

*But*! You don't have to remove file names just because you introduce metadata. Filenames are there for a reason. They make interoperability so much more important, because they are a least common denominator between file systems and because they serve as a unique global identification (which is human readable and pronouncable).

I don't want to dis the author for being an enthusiast and actually producing code, but I get the impression that he hasn't learned from history yet. So read up on all the work concerning metadata over the years! There's lots and lots of it and many good thoughts has been thought on the subject. (I think ArsTechnica.com had a good overview perhaps a year ago?)

Summing up:

Use filenames (and treat is as a metadata field)!

Stick to a standard metadata layout!

Look at file systems with metadata! (Especially reiser4!)

Interoperate!

by pos (not verified)

A great resource for thinking about file names and paths is located at the W3:

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/NameMyth.html

It's quite easy to read and is not as heavy as W3 specs are. Also, for anyone implementing a metadata scheme, I highly recommend all of the documents listed under the Semantic Web section of http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Overview.html

Someone above pointed out the similarities to the Dublin Core project. I would like to add that anyone developing this system or intested in Metadata representations also check out:

http://www.semanticweb.org/
http://DAML.SemanticWeb.org
http://www.sciam.com/2001/0501issue/0501berners-lee.html
http://www.w3.org/RDF/

by Datschge (not verified)

Am I reading correctly, W3 recommends people to omit the file extension? o.O

>>The last element of the path, "html" is not strictly necessary with most servers, as at least some servers will, given a URL of "readthis" , serve up the data from a file which is called "readthis.html". Here the student is making it difficult for himself later to change the format or formats in which the file is available, without at least some confusion. Suppose, for example, that he later decides that the information is worth providing in audio format for blind readers. The CERN server can easily be configured so that clients specifically requesting audio formats in preference to HTML can be served as preferentially whereas more normal clients will get the HTML. So, here again is a part of the path which may be later regretted.<<

Well designed and implemented, newdocms would contribute an important an innovative part to future versions of KDE.

"Well designed" comprises the consideration of teh following needs:
- convenient GUI that lacks nothing of todays HFS GUIs
- interface to "classic" programs (via virtual / live file system)
- support of different metadata-systems (e.g. IPTC, Dublin Core,...). Modularity recommended.
- multi-user and multi-machine / network support
- full-text-retrieval
- a powerful API
- solutions for backup and data migration
- switching from and to HFS should be easy

Nice additional features:
- implementation of non textual search (e.g. gift -> fer-de-lance.org)
- cooperation with OCR systsems and integrated image-capture systems (e.g. kooka).

by fred (not verified)

a very intelligent and highly effective idea. I only have a couple of comments:

- the project, as it has already been said, badly needs a different GUI, so intuitive as to require no extra information at all about how the system works. Now, this system makes it possible. For instance, next to a preview of the file to be saved, there would be several drop-down lists answering questions like: what type of document is it? about what is it? and so on. There would already be a list of possible answers: photo, music and son, this is of capital importance. It is absolutely necessary that the basic category tree is ALREADY present - believe me, if the user had to provide its own category tree, 90% of them would not come up even with document -> photo. Of course advanced users could extend and modify the given category tree, but it must be there and must be standard (the dublin one is an excellent proposal). The same of course, would hold for the open dialogue

- did you notice how this technically and conceptually very simple proposal does much more to change the way we interact with compters than the whole slicker nonesense put together?

by somekool (not verified)

im sure this features will rock. but im not sure im ready to lose my traditional file system.

maybe they could be use together, or we may need tool for reverting back
thinks like they was...

by soderic (not verified)

I want to push the overall goal just a bit further. What if I didn't have to think about organizing my data at all? For example, "save" doesn't need any kind of dialogue box and "open" works like Google. Save just puts it somewhere and an indexer looks at it and collects whatever it needs to enable a simple query based open. When I want to "open" something, I get a single text field where I type whatever I want and I get back a list of results I can browse, or I can further refine the query.

Perhaps this is simple and too naive. However, I have spent many hours trying to explain the concept of hierarchical folders to my wife and my father and something like this would eliminate this hurdle. Anyone can use Google.

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

"and "open" works like Google"

Sure, nice, but you shouldn't forget that Googles usefulness hinges heavily ont the pagerank system. How do you intend to do that without links between the documents?

by trukulo (not verified)

But doesn't seem too similar to the new windows file system?

I'm not an expert, but the concept is the same: http://news.com.com/2009-1017-857509.html

by antialias (not verified)

as hierarhical file system and it requires a lot of work to get things organized. It can be useful for libraries, universities etc. but not for the end user. Database concept is great when somebody else do the work for you and there where is a huge amount of entries.

I don't have thousands of documents and will never have them. I periodicaly do some cleaning in my apartment and throw old documents into the thrash bin. Everyone does it. I also periodicaly clean up my computer for garbage and old documents. And I can easily find the documents I need. Not a big deal.

When I want to search for some documents that interest me I do gg: in Konqueror. Even if you do your own database localy (which is a huge job) there will always be a bigger and better database stored on internet.

Database approach is as much complicated as hierarhical file system if you have many documents with similar or same attributes: then they don't fit to an open window, you have to scroll down or click on the next page and next page etc. Many of you have tried to search for a book(s) at a local library database and got a thousands of entries.

There is nothing wrong with hierarhical file system when you keep it clean. Database concept gets hierarhical as well when you get too many results. And here is the problem: when you have a few documents you can easily find them, but when you you have too many of them you need an amount of time to find them no matter if you use a hierarhical file system or a database. (see the screenshot of Save - in save dialog there is an option called 'Edit category tree' - so even here there is a 'tree' and you have hierarhical system inside)

Some people say that adding attributes is great because you can for example categorize your mp3 files by genre, author, album and year. And my question is: Is it so difficult to create appropriate directories and then create playlists out of them?

By the way, this story has already been discussed on Slashdot (the author of newdocms Manuel Arriaga posted it to Slashdot).

----------------------------------------------------------------

'The filesystem paradigm has been around for a long time, litterally thousands of years, because it works, it is easy, and it is how people think.'

ACNeal on Slashdot

by Shift (not verified)

Moreover KDE3.1 can know acces META Informations of the files (jpeg, gif, mp3, ogg, video,...) and you can use kfind to search for them.

For example I can go into my mp3's directory an search file with meta data containing Madonna and I can found all Madonna's mp3.
I can search for jpeg photos taken by a Canon camera in a thousand of other files.
I can search for videos with 400x300 resolutions
...

Just test kfind of KDE3.1 and test "Properties" of different files in konqui to understand what I am talking about :)

by Georg (not verified)

The hierarchical filessystem is a restriction in man machine-interaction.
Human thinking is more associative than merely hierarchical. I don't want to emulate the associative approach using symlinks. It's to easy to get messed up.

I *have* thousands of documents and will *ever* have them. I never do some cleaning in my computer and i don't throw old documents into the thrash bin. And I don't want to be forced to do so. Everyone does it (No!). It is hard for me to find the documents I need. It is a big deal. I'm very dissatisfied that finding documents on the local disks is soo slooow compared to search engines on the web.

Data based approch can be partly automated by content aware assistants that gather metadata or physical features (colour vs black&white, resolution) from the documents (e.g. metatags in html), from open databases (CDDB, ID3-Tags). Other helpers: using templates and a list of "recently used storage constellations". It's a matter of GUI-Design.

>Some people say that adding attributes is great because you can for example >categorize your mp3 files by genre, author, album and year. And my question is: >Is it so difficult to create appropriate directories and then create playlists >out of them?
What do you do if you want to access your mp3s in another "sort order"?

>Database approach is as much complicated as hierarhical file system if you have >many documents with similar or same attributes: then they don't fit to an open >window, you have to scroll down or click on the next page and next page etc. >Many of you have tried to search for a book(s) at a local library database and >got a thousands of entries.
That can be the case. Counteragents:
- assistants (see above)
- powerfull search options (boolean, thesaurus based, fuzzy)
- a little bit experience and discipline

> It can be useful for libraries, universities
You are right. Both are important target groups for KDE and they should get appropriate tools.

> but not for the end user.
I'm an end user. OK, one of the power sort ;-). And I really need it!

Georg

by David Johnson (not verified)

Human thinking is more associative than merely hierarchical.

That's funny, because when you look at human beings manipulating real world documents (books, letters, etc), you'll find that they use a hierachical system by and large. Books go on a book shelf. Magazines go in a magazine rack. All the old love letters go in a frilly box labelled "love letters". Take a look at an office an you'll see file cabinets, drawers, and folders.

Associative metadata is good, but not at the expense of the hiearchy. Metadata is great for making new "views" of the data, but they shouldn't be the "model".

by André Somers (not verified)

So tell me, how would you store your books associative in a 3d space (where a book can only be at one place at a time)?
Precisely: you don't, because you can't. However, this physical limit does not exist in storing documents in electronic systems, so why limit ourselves to it?

I know some people like Yahoo's hierarchical webindex, but I guess Googles associative index is far more popular...

by antialias (not verified)

'The hierarchical filessystem is a restriction in man machine-interaction.'

No. It is a requirement for a man-machine interaction. As I pointed before: do a search in any database or search engine and the results will be presented hierarchicaly. Scroll down, next page. What do you get? Another file manager/browser inside the database dialog. And when you do search in Google you get castrated hierarchy - links organized in pages and pages are named 1,2,3,4,5... Can you see or guess what is on the page nr. 10? No.

'Human thinking is more associative than merely hierarchical.'

You are right. Human thinking is more associative, but that is a problem. We forget things, and therefor we use hierarchical system for organizing things. Associative thinking is not powerful enough because we forget or better said suppress things.

' I *have* thousands of documents and will *ever* have them.'

Some people collect Barbies, and some do collect documents ;-)

'It is hard for me to find the documents I need.'

If it is hard for you to find the documents you need, you really don't need them. Otherwise you will know where did you put them. We remember only things we are really interested in.

'What do you do if you want to access your mp3s in another "sort order"?'

I move them around. I create another playlist. I know where my ogg files are, I know who the artist is, and I know what the genre is. Because I am interested in exactly that kind of music I have stored on my computer.

by KDE User (not verified)

> If it is hard for you to find the documents you need, you really don't need them. Otherwise you will know where did you put them. We remember only things we are really interested in.

No. If you will never remember nor be reminded of a document, then and only then you do not need it. If you however at some point in time do recall the existance of a document it is normal not to remember where it is. A good
example is a photo from your childhood.

by André Somers (not verified)

Hi,

As the author of the article (altough it got edited quite a bit after posting), I would like to address some of the questions raised. Note: I am not the author of newdocms, nor am I affiliated with it.

The idea is of course not completely new, there have been other attempts to make something like this. This project is very new though, and has received many, many suggestions for enhancements allready. He is open to suggestions, and is well aware that there are flaws in the way the system behaves at the moment. Still, I share his belief that the basic idea is very valid.

A lot of the questions raised above are answered by just really reading the site. I urge everyone interested to do that, before critising the idea based on the screenshots. A few comments though:
-The system is not depending on KDE. It uses a general backend server, and frontends for for instance GNOME and OpenOffice will be implemented too. KDE just provided a convient testing ground as I understand it... :-)
-The hierarchical "category"tree that is mentioned is NOT just another tree to replace the one of the filesytem. It represents an ontology of the world instead. The first idea was that the user would build his own ontology, but there have been suggestions that it might be possible to use allready existing ontologies that are around. These ontologies make it possible for the system to perform fuzzy queries, that will enhance the searchresults if you are retreiving a document.
-A pure hierarchical structure can never hold the same semantic value as using real metadata, because the data is not labeled. A very good example can be found on the newdocms webpage.
-Multiple databackends, both for personal and for corporate use, have been envisioned.
-Automatic inclusion of as much relevant metadata as possible from the files into the system is of course needed. That is largely a question of interface though, and KDE with it's KFilePlugins would be VERY usable for this! And yes, maybe if ways of automaticly generating enough metadata become available, it may be possible to stop bothering the user at all with entering it, if he want to.
-The presentation of the data has not received the attention it deserves yet. Sure, a lot need to be done in terms of cleaning-up the interface and making it more userfriendly. That was not the purpose of this release. The purpose was to show the basic technology to the world, and get the attention of people wanting to help to develop this further and take the concept to a level where it becomes usefull for the average user.
-This system will not replace your current filesystem, it will be build on top of it.

André

by Geoff Rivell (not verified)

I think the idea is good, but the implementation isn't.

Perhaps this would be a better way (off the top of my head):

Instead of a flat tree of unique numbers for storing those files, why not just let the user store the file like usual, and then be able to edit the meta-data (through properties dialog, maybe even on the SAVE dialog).

You could have the files' meta-data stored in meta.db for each directory.

And then when you want to do a search (or open) the dialog could have a "search meta-data" option. You select /Documents/ and do all the searches you have presented.

This has many advantages:

1) You can use command line tools on those files without them needing to be modified and it would be much more simple to "kedit my_diary_1_02_03.txt" then seeing 124321341.txt at a command line.

2) Someone mentioned about fileserving earlier. This keeps everything right for Samba and the like. And client "meta-data aware" apps can use the meta.db while others can be on Windows and still get reasonable use (if thats what you call it ).

3) It also means that SHOULD some simple minded user delete meta.db, that not everything is lost.

This is a project for KDE and GNOME to work together on for it to be an advantage for Unix/clones.

Hope this gets implemented :-)

by Georg (not verified)

- Powerful tools for ex- import
- Manual, semi-automatic (proposal based on contents with man-machine interaction) or fully automatic generation of file-names.
- The tool or its descendants should be capable to give access to all stored data, including bookmarks, addresses, emails and attachments, Web-Archives (.war-files).
- Storing of metadata should be robust and fault-tolerant. So i think that "a little bit" redundancy would be OK. Why not store documents and metadata in RPM-like archives or folders, so that the databases can simply be recontructed? It would also open a nice way to send metadata-enriched documents via email. The recipient can make use of some or all of the given categries and attributes.

by Joe Theriault (not verified)

I definitely think some FS abstraction concept like this is really necessary for Joe User... how many people's parents actually touch "My Computer" on their Windoze boxes? And this seems like a good way about it, but I do have one concern: that KDE will go it alone. That it will have a great system like this, but it will mash up the real file system in some way that it's unusable in any non-KDE app... like bash. Because if they're all to be found in $HOME/.kde/share/Newdocms with names like kword-01.09.03-12.kwd or something, it will be incredibly not useful outside a KDE open file dialog. Maybe a suite of command-line utilities or something is the way to go. I'm just afraid of a system that requires 100% KDE and hinders leaving it... that seems very anti-trust-like.

Just my $0.02.

by Daan (not verified)

Perhaps you could generate a nice filename out of the metadata, even with a hiearchical structure. For example, if I save this webpage, it would be stored as, for example "~/webpages/fora/KDE/unknown/Great... but don't go it alone.html", thus "~/type/category/subject/author/title".
This way, you can easily find a document back in HFS, but the new system still has great advantages: you can give queries to find everything about KDE, or everything written by John Petersen... and you don't have to make the directory structure yourself!

by anonymous (not verified)

Great idea! Probably impossible to do though.

by socialEcologist (not verified)

In fact everyone agress that it can be a good idea. The advantage of the open source model is that even if the majority doesn't want it, the minority that is interested in it can develop it. Just do a wonderful job and everyone will use it. This kind of things can send linux light years from windows and allow more intuitive uses of our computers and is in the direction of high-level semantic interactions with them.

Show us that it works and rocks !
:)

by Mike Mitterer (not verified)

Is there somewhere a discussion about .app Folders on Linux?

Because we are talking about inovation - has anyone seen how easy
these .app folders work under OSX?

You can install the most applications by just drag and drop them to
the harddisk. Everything a Application needs is in this folder.
The lib's (most of them), the Application itself, the icons and so on...

THIS would be a great inovation too.

Mike

the way you describe those app folders, there are some disadvantages:
- every app has their libraries inside their main bundle
meaning, that you'd have many (slighly different) versions of a lib on your filesystem.
imagine every kde app, having a libqt.so.3 and all kde apps (and standard icons).
a waste of resources.

this is why you dont have all libraries in anApp.app/.
there are libraries in another dir ( mac uses /Frameworks, if i recall correctly)

nevertheless, on unix where most admins have a package management system, you dont need the
"all resources in one place" app folder approach.

but there are other advantages.
app folders, or lets call them bundles, because all the following applies to frameworks (bundles with .framework suffix on mac) may store more than one binary in the bundle.
they may store one i386 (linux) binary, one alpha (linux) and one i386 (win) binary.
if your DE supports app folders, you could then start an app on your remotly mounted volume.
and it would start the right binary.
this is an advantage.

there are many others...
(this is why bundles are even used by gnustep on linux, etc)

nevertheless, i dont think kde will use frameworks and app bundles in the near term.
they simply are too much unfamiliar to most developers (and even admins).

~ibotty