ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Matt Richardson <m.richardson.1990@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Since Ubuntu-Touch is a new system we have a potential to replace
files/folders with tags.

1) Why?
Tags offer a much more flexible file management system than
files/folders because they allow a single file to exist in multiple
locations, without the use of symlinks.

2) To tackle the obvious issue: The current filesystem and operating
system are built on the folder/files system, as are almost all existing
applications.
The idea of the tag based system would not be to replace the
folder/files system as far as the system is concerned, merely to hide it
in day to day use.
My idea would be that the tags would operate as follows:

    When saving/creating a file any number of tags can be selected as
    well as a name. By default the 'username' tag would be selected.
    The actual filesystem would place the file in /home/username/tag1/tag2/
    Tags beyond tag 2 would not be included in the folder hierarchy. A
    database (similar to zeitgeist) would also be updated to contain the
    full list of tags and files
    When selecting files (file manager or open dialog) all of the
    available tags would be listed. When a tag is selected, the list
    updates to show tags which contain files matching the first tag
    In order to show root files the "system" tag would have to be
    selected. The file manager would then switch to standard file/folder
    view, since we can't easily update the root filesystem

Hopefully that all makes sense

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Matt