Peter Todd wrote:

> It'd actually kinda like my bookmarks list. I keep a file called
> urls.otl that's a vimoutliner file with a big hiearchy of stuff. But
> really, I don't think of my bookmarks as a hiearchy, they should have
> tags, just like del.icio.us does it. But that's an app I need to write
> someday... 

I'm using Powermarks for a few years now (on Windows,
<http://www.kaylon.com/power.html>). 

For me, that's how bookmarks should work. When I store a bookmark, I add an
ad hoc list of keywords (you may call them "tags" :). When searching for
something, I just start typing what I think I might have added as keyword,
and it filters the whole bookmark list as I type. 

Email could be similar, as could be file storage -- as could be /any/ type
of storage, actually.

Hierarchies just don't work for most things. Programs simply force their
users into hierarchical storage schemes because they don't need a lot of
thinking to implement :)  Hierarchical file systems are complete nonsense.
They had their time, like when Unix ran on the equivalent of a Z80 and
maximizing efficiency was necessary to be able to just store something, but
that's long over. It's a complete pain to have to decide whether an invoice
belongs to the client dir, the project dir, the accounting dir, the tax
dir, and so on. 

A reasonably structured system of tags (like GUIDs for the stuff that needs
to be predictably found) together with complete free-form tags and a good
search engine is what's needed.

Gerhard

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