Peter Todd wrote:

>> 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. 
> 
> Yup, exactly what I'm thinking too. Of course, I'd do it with command
> line software, after using Linux for a good 7 years, windows shareware
> looks almost quaint!

The nice thing is to see the list filtering down while typing. At every
letter I type, I see how many entries are there to browse, if I decide I'm
done with filtering. This is a typical GUI function that doesn't lend
itself well to command lining.

> Indeed, such a system could be usefull for multiple individuals, so
> running a centrally accessible server would be usefull. 

But only with a locally synced copy. Otherwise it loses the snappiness.


> It wouldn't be a big deal to make a universal indexing backend that tied
> into the regular file system. MIME types exist to make it easy to filter
> when you want to only search for application/email or
> application/bookmark (made up examples) Everything could tie into a
> UUID, path, or hash as appropriate.

While it really doesn't seem to be that big of a deal to put a database on
top of the file system that can do this, the problem is probably to create
all the infrastructure for all the programs that access the file system.
Currently they are all path based.

> The key thing is to make sure the base filesystem layer doesn't really
> have to know all that much, and keep the things name spaced in usefull
> ways, mime types may be a good model to start with.

The moment you have your apps integrated and make them use the new
"addressing" mode, the underlying file system practically degenerates and
becomes obsolete.

Gerhard

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