I want to share my thoughts on this topic and see what other people.

TL;DR: Can we have Labels (ala Gmail) for organizing personal files/folders within filesystems? Wouldn't it be great? How come neither Windows/OS X/Linux offers something like it?

Folders have been with us for a long time, shortly after the first file-systems came to be. At the very beginning, you were limited to placing all files in top level folder, then later single-level folders, and finally relatively unlimited stacked folders as we know them today.

I focus on the aspect of organizing one's personal files, and ignoring completely the need for files/folders for OS/application reasons.

Folders are good for doing that. You can have a hierarchical tree. For example, a folder for all your photos (that contains folders for years, which then contain folders for events, and finally the photos themselves). Another folder for all your movies. Another folder for music.

I tend to have yet another folder that I called "Organized Storage" where I put a whole bunch of various small files that are relevant to some task and which I know I might need in the future. It's broken down into various categories: Computer-related, Technology-related, Real Life-related, Car-related, Game Dev-related, TV-related, Mac-related, etc.



The problem occurs when something "belongs" to more than one category or location. If I arbitrarily pick one of them and place the files there, later on I have no idea which of the relevant categories to look in. If I put a copy in both places, that's both a waste of HD space, but also causes headache because I don't know which is the "latest" version. Deleting one item means you might have to search for its lost copies, and so on. As a strong believer of DRY principle I'd never do that.

Shortcuts can work, but they're highly OS-dependant, they stop working if the relative path of the root folder changes, and they cause other misc. problems.

On the other hand, I really like how Gmail has a concept of Labels, which you can apply to your emails and search for them that way. Labels are great because any one email can have as many or as few labels as you want.

Can the concept of Labels be somehow applied to filesystems for the purpose of personal file organization? I'd really like something like that...

If I put a copy in both places, that's both a waste of HD space, but also causes headache because I don't know which is the "latest" version[/quote]

Particular reason this isn't more widespread are licensing issues. Versioning/journaling/deduplicating file systems are a patent minefield since they were extensively covered in mainframe era. While IBM doesn't care much about consumer side of computing, it would immediately jump after one of brand name vendors trying to provide stuff like that out of box.

File systems with all of these have been the staple of some large data systems for a very long time.

Similar reason why Windows didn't support DVD playback for so long.

Other reason is inertia and general user education. Versioning and similar are simply too complex of concepts for widespread use. Transfer of data also becomes an issue, file can easily bloat to multiple factors of its original size and its mostly useless for media, which represents majority of content for typical user today.

But they're trying to innovate in this area. Windows XP originally had My Documents, My Music, My Movies folders. Then with Vista/7 they introduced the concept of Libraries, which is basically a view to multiple folders (your personal user files + public shared files). I'm sure each time they talk about how these new Libraries are amazing for organizing your files.

Guess what, they're not. I never use the Documents libraries, or the /Users/<user>/Documents, Movies, Pictures folders on the OS X side for one simple reason: they are not personal. What I mean is, other applications randomly put their files there. Often, against my desires.

I can't stand to have a folder with personal files that gets polluted with random application files. If I have a folder for personal things, I want to have just those things there, nothing else. Also, when backing up my computer to transferring files to a new one, I know where all my important files are - in one place. Instead of being scattered between various folders and including unneeded program-generated temporary files.

On the mobile front like iOS, the way they're innovating in this area... by completely removing the concept of a "user-managed folder for personal files". Yeah. It's better than keeping the Windows 3.11-era model, but we still need it on our desktop systems. Having a folder with your files can last 10-30 years. iOS apps and devices have a life-span of a few years at most, and then transferring your personal files from old device/app onto a new one is usually a nightmare of manual labour.

Guess what, they're not. I never use the Documents libraries, or the /Users/<user>/Documents, Movies, Pictures folders on the OS X side for one simple reason: they are not personal. What I mean is, other applications randomly put their files there. Often, against my desires.

Seriously, it's very annoying. Many programs puke their documents into my folders, so I always create my own directories instead (often on another partition for shorter filepaths and easier backups).

What I'd like better tagging, without getting rid of filestructures, and shortcuts that are smart if the target file gets moved, and easier to create symbolic links between folders.

[quote name='shurcool' timestamp='1333216386' post='4926971']
Guess what, they're not. I never use the Documents libraries, or the /Users/<user>/Documents, Movies, Pictures folders on the OS X side for one simple reason: they are not personal. What I mean is, other applications randomly put their files there. Often, against my desires.

Seriously, it's very annoying. Many programs puke their documents into my folders, so I always create my own directories instead (often on another partition for shorter filepaths and easier backups).

What I'd like better tagging, without getting rid of filestructures, and shortcuts that are smart if the target file gets moved, and easier to create symbolic links between folders.
[/quote]
I could not agree more, and I do the same thing!

It's reassuring to hear I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Why don't you just remove that folder from each of the Libraries? I did. You can remove the "new" My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos folders from each of the libraries, change the default save folder if you want, or just make a new library.

Because the Windows-assigned "Documents path" is what many applications use to puke files into. You can remove "My Documents" from the Library (easy to do), and you can even change "My Documents" to a different filepath or filename (say, "D:/MyMovedDocuments/" instead of "C:/Users/<user>/Documents/"), but if you tell Windows that the new folder is the "My Documents" folder, the Win32 functions return that as the filepath that applications spam files at.

(It's not just games that do that, but this is a relatively fresh install (3 months or so), and I've been careful to not install too many applications that I don't need. I make an exception for games, however)

So why bother? Let them spam there ("C:/Users/<user>/Documents/" or whereever), and I'll save my files elsewhere.

The worst offender for this that I've seen is some Microsoft runtimes. It seems anytime I install Visual Studio or DirectX or .NET runtimes, they choose a _random_ folder (or so it seems to me), and puke several hundred (sometimes over a thousand) files all over that directory to assist the installation... and then fails to clean them up afterward. Sometimes I can't delete the files even with admin privileges, until after a restart.

It's done this in my D:/ drive once, and I wasn't installing the runtime to the D:/ drive!

This kind of thing actually happened two nights ago when installing DirectX runtime on a laptop for coop gameplay. The installer left I think ~600 files after installing, woven inbetween files that are legitimately there. Gee, thanks alot guys!
(The easiest way to handle cleanup of interwoven files is to filter by date created, fyi)

My point was you don't have to use the designated Users Documents folder, but could still have the Libraries idea. Then you don't see the convoluted mess in your Libraries. I don't even store any file I create on my C: drive. I created another partition for my storage. (Still waiting on my other hard drive.)

And I just thought of something: the search option in the start menu works a bit like having labels, but not fully.

Just to clarify, there are 2 separate issues being discussed here:

1. Having a personal folder for one's personal files. The main criteria is that it's a folder whose contents do not change without user knowledge, but rather only upon explicit action.
2. Ability to apply labels to files/folders within a personal folder.

Problem 1 is easily solvable in any modern OS today by creating your own folder anywhere. Since it's a custom path, you're pretty much guaranteed no 3rd party app or OS will ever put/change/mess with files inside it.

Item 2 doesn't currently exist as far as I know, unless you're using some online storage site like Gmail or Google Docs.

One example (out of many) of where labels can be useful, imagine you download both an .exe and .dmg versions of the latest Photoshop beta. You want to put both of these files in the same folder "Photoshop CS6 Beta" within your "Software Sources" folder. However, you might want to have a "OS X Software" folder within your "Software Sources" folder where all *.dmg files go. This arrangement is not possible without labels.

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However, the biggest benefit of having labels IMO would be for personal photo/video/media storage. Labels would allow you to have _multiple different views_ on the same physical files.

For example, imagine you have a Photos/Category/Year/Event Name folder structure. It's very hardcoded and doesn't allow you to, for example, see all photos from year 2011. Or view both videos and photos from the same event (assuming videos are in Videos/Category/Year/Event Name folder). If you combine both photos & videos in one folder, then you lose the ability to deal with the two media types separately. Basically, it's all kinds of "can't do this due to fixed folder structure."

On the other hand, if you applied Year, Event Name, Category, Media Type labels to all your media files, you could easily do things like:

• view everything from the last 60 days, sorted by date
  
• view just the photos that were taken from my own camera (rather than other people's)
  
• view everything associated with a given event
  
• view just the photos from a certain category of photos (family/grad school)
  
  Better yet, within a given event, you could create multiple views on the same photos. Look at a week worth of photos a day at a time. Or location at a time. Or "background photos" only vs. "group photos" only. Or just the "top few photos".
  
  Labels afford a lot more flexibility in organizing stuff, IMO. Flexibility when you want it, and none when you don't (after all, they're optional). Folders feel very limited in comparison.
  
  "You should just use Picasa or iPhoto," you'll say. I haven't found a photo management app that was simple and flexible enough (I'm all ears for suggestions). But the main reason is they kinda lock you in specific software/computer, with import/export being hard to use and "lossy". I want to be able to change computers like gloves, instead of being tied down. Storing stuff on a general filesystem affords me that ability, and doesn't require 3rd party apps. I'd love an app for viewing/editing photos, but not for *keeping* them in some proprietary locked down format.

As for your two folders as one, a Linux symbolic link should satifisy that criteria.

The last part with the import/export means either using a networked external storage area (or online one, but that sometimes can be real slow) or using the Cloud.