Ubuntu Wiki

Meta Home Indexing

• Launchpad Entry:

• Created: 31MAY06 by NMWillard

• Contributors: NMWillard

• Packages affected:

Summary

A modification in Nautilus that would read the meta Data of files and sort files into virtual folders, all home directory files would physically be in the home directory but Nautilus would show them in virtual directoies based on file type and meta data.

Rationale

Currently all programs default save location is in the users home directory, this causes that directory to naturally become cluttered with various files making things very un-organized over time.

Use cases

This method would organize files folders on in existience through Nautilus and not physically on the drive. A user would be capable of making his own virtual folder to further organize content based on his or her own preference, and Nautilus would then index its location assignment within a data file.

One copy of the file could exist within multiple virtual folders, for instance Photo would contain all photos, but then I could have a self made folder called camping and it would contain photos of camping that I assigned to that location, ofcourse the Photo Directory would also contain it there.

Scope

This would is the direction many other proprietary OS vendors are trying to move their software into, and is believed to be the next step in file managment. such uses are similar in Mac OSX Spotlight, and was supposed to be a key feature in Windows Vista.

Ofcourse a System wide mode of this managment would be ridiculous and slow, a Home Directory only use makes alot of sense.

Design

A implentation within Nautilus would have to be created where Nautilus would acknowledge it is reading data from the user home Directoyr and then would read a Index file in which told it which which file would be assorted to predifined virtual folders based on file type and meta data, it would also acknowledge user created virtual folders for user definded file allocation.

when file are saved it can simple be saved to the same location assortment into virtual folders will be based on Nautilus predifined and user defined indexing giving the apearance of organization and automation.

Implementation

Initially a module could be made that would integrate with nautilus to tell it how to handle files whitin the home directory.

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

Users may become confused if they dont understand that it does not matter where they save a file within th ehome directory and that it will be allocated to its specific category automatically

Discussion

JackWasey: This is a great idea, especially if it were to be combined with free tagging, (a la del.icio.us) on any file. This would work with Beagle, and be like a 'saved search' as I believe you can have on a Mac. Reiser 4 (a really edgy idea) has a clever way of having file metadata: a file is a file and a directory, and the directory contains meta data. This would make free tagging nice and easy, and probably better than xattr.