Here's a part of my photo storage mess that I have to deal with atm. Its advantages include easy to access/modify/update from any computer, no software install required. Easy to backup and keep for 5-10+ years (across various computers/OS reinstalls). Disadvantages are a lack of ability to browse/view in any other way other than on a per-event basis, no "categories".

Im storing a lot of my data in hdf5 files nowadays. Platform independent, symbolic links, and most importantly, you can add metadata whereever you want.

I dont see any OS being so forward looking to start using such an open and nice standard, so its not going to be a general solution anytime soon, but its a great replacement for many specific data storage tasks

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.

What's unfortunate is that Microsoft kinda implements it, but in a half-hearted "meh" sortof way.



Some image formats (jpgs but not pngs, for example) and audio formats are taggable and searchable by tag. It seems to me that different file types have their own ways of storing metadata, and there are some built-in shell extensions for altering that metadata but no consistent OS-wide metadata methods for functions and files, and no consistent way to search/filter by that metadata.

There's a little bit of consistent metadata, like "Date created", "Last modified", "File size", "Owner", "Hidden", "Protected", etc... but not near enough. Cameras have been adding special metadata to pictures taken (geolocation for instance, which I'm not particularly fond of, but hey it's a nice feature), but it's file-type dependent. Likewise Microsoft Office documents have their own metadata types ("Original author", "Licensee", "Last author to edit", etc...).

It's a great system, tagging, it just needs to be consistent across the OS (and preferably, across all modern OSes, for internet and email exchange preserving the filedata.

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:

• [s]view everything from the last 60 days, sorted by date[/s] [color=#ff0000](Date metadata is one of the few types that IS consistent and easy to filter)
  
• 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)
  
  [/quote]
  
  Yea, that'd be really cool. For myself, I recently started a directory of photos of my family, since all our photos are just in a huge mess. It'd be nice to be able to tag things, "Dad", "Mom", "dog", "brother", as well as I have some loose acquaintances from several extremely different social groups, with some minor overlaps. It'd be nice to tag events "BobsBibleStudy", "HaloParty", "Thanksgiving" (with date: 2009), etc...
  
  

  
  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.

  
  
  If only, if only. Stumbled on that 20 minutes ago - probably from installing a game. Notice the directory, however. "D:/". I certainly didn't install the game in the D:/ partion, nor was the installer ran from the D:/ partition.

What's unfortunate is that Microsoft kinda implements it, but in a half-hearted "meh" sortof way.

Some image formats (jpgs but not pngs, for example) and audio formats are taggable and searchable by tag. It seems to me that different file types have their own ways of storing metadata, and there are some built-in shell extensions for altering that metadata but no consistent OS-wide metadata methods for functions and files, and no consistent way to search/filter by that metadata.

You should install Windows Live Photo Gallery. It's free, it's lightweight, and it's vastly under-promoted. It's actually one of the reasons I switched back from Ubuntu for my day-to-day machine. It makes it easy to tag, rate, people-tag, batch people-tag, automatically find faces, etc etc etc., and the data you enter there then shows up in Windows Explorer (though again, it's easiest to just open WLPG if you're going to be searching/browsing around your photos).

What's unfortunate is that Microsoft kinda implements it, but in a half-hearted "meh" sortof way.[/quote]

The next step beyond folders and meta tags is auto classification.

We're not quite there yet, but Facebook goes a long way. For now, image identification needs to be edited by other users and is only partially matched automatically with image tags and such.

Difference here is same as Lycos and Altavista vs. Google. First two offered different tagging and folders, while Google simply returned relevant results. One took over the world, others vanished to never be heard again.


Tags, especially manually entered ones are... quaint, but more importantly, they don't scale. Mostly they don't allow for soft classification, very few things in human life are absolute, accurate and constant. Web/social systems will offer considerably better classifications, but at expense of privacy.

Another area which isn't explored sufficiently yet are recommendation systems. If you take a bunch of users, each with various usage/view statistics, then mash all of that together, one can apply classifications from one to another. The more data you have, the better it works.


As for applications, that problem will be solved from Win8 onward. Applications will be sandboxed and signed in neat little packages. Downside is - user no longer needs file system or OS access. But power users aren't a priority anymore, so not many will mourn that loss.

You should install Windows Live Photo Gallery. It's free, it's lightweight, and it's vastly under-promoted. It's actually one of the reasons I switched

Thanks, I'll try it out.

I believe the correct place for applications to put their data on Windows is into %APPDATA% (as you say). Seems surprising you've got so many going into the Documents level - I'll have to check mine when I'm at home.

I would note though that it's not clear to me you can cleanly distinguish between "my" files and "application's" files. Okay, so music and photos are yours, but why aren't save game files yours? What if I use a graphics program to create an image? If you wanted to backup or transfer your files, wouldn't you want the personal application/game data too? Even if you uninstall, I wouldn't want the save game files to be lost.

Also AFAICT, the majority of files you have there are for saved games? Non-game applications will usually let you choose where to save a file you create, but games tend to keep things simpler (often due to the difficulties of writing a file explorer within their custom UI), so that's why they automatically create a folder somewhere.

I'd also add that whilst the Documents/ level might be used by applications, this doesn't mean that the sub-folders like Music/ etc are filled by applications?

I do agree with you about the annoyance of mobile OSs not letting you have much control over how the files are organised. This seems to have been the trend there always, from BREW to Android. Perhaps there are some arguments for doing so, but I dislike the lack of control. (Thankfully it's not so bad, at least on Symbian and Android, in that you can still use another computer to transfer files, and when doing so you can organise the files/folders how you like.)

Similarly for things like media players on desktop OSs - there are good arguments for saying for media files, it's better to have different "views" onto the data, but I'd still like some structure to the way the data is organised on the filesystem. As you say, this kind of thing can already be done for photos and music with specialised software, but I agree they tend to lock you in. A file structure can be read by me, using whatever software I choose, or just using plain Windows, and even if I transfer and read on a different computer or even another OS. But when things like Itunes scramble the files into their own data - it's a pain, if not impossible, to read that in another application. And when I've wanted to play video files on someone's Ipod, on my computer, all I can see is a scrambled bunch of filenames (even if I was willing to use Itunes, we weren't sure if it would try to "sync" to my computer, and mess up their data). On my Sansa, this would just work, as I'd be able to read the files untampered.

If and when we ever get a standard for this kind of thing - e.g., a filesystem with built in support for different views on the same data - then that would be much better.

Having said that, surely there must be some photo/music software that lets you have different views, without messing with the data? That's how all the mobile devices have worked - my Sansa mp3 player, my Nokia 5800 and Galaxy Nexus smartphones, all let me store the data on the drive how I like, and the music software will automatically scan the tags and import them into the library (my Sansa even lets me browse by folder as well, though sadly that seems to be a rare feature...) Or has no one done this for desktop OSs?

I would note though that it's not clear to me you can cleanly distinguish between "my" files and "application's" files. Okay, so music and photos are yours, but why aren't save game files yours?

I'd personally prefer an 'Export'/'Import' button in the game, or else Windows having a 'My Game Files' folder. When I want a game backed up, then I can do so myself.
However, you got a point that many gamers like to permanently keep their save files, so it's a matter of preference I suppose.

What if I use a graphics program to create an image? If you wanted to backup or transfer your files, wouldn't you want the personal application/game data too? Even if you uninstall, I wouldn't want the save game files to be lost.[/quote]
If I use a graphics program to create an image, I want it to let me choose where to place the image, and I want the default location to be able to be set (or to at least remember where I last saved to). Most graphics applications do this. They don't force you to save in My Pictures without asking.

If I uninstall a game, most prompt for, "Do you wish to keep the save files?", unfortunately, most used to keep the save files buried in "Program Files" somewhere.
Also unfortunately, now alot just save in My Documents.

I believe Microsoft's intent is for them to save in %APPDATA%, and for backups to backup the entire 'C:/User/<user>' folder, which includes %APPDATA%, which should contain only the application data that is user specific (so you're not accidentally backing up things that can be re-created by the install anyway).

Also AFAICT, the majority of files you have there are for saved games?[/quote]
Saved games, game profiles, and game screenshots... most from games I uninstalled. However, this is after a recent OS re-install around Christmas, and I've been very careful about what applications I install and don't install (Games being an exception, since I install them through Steam, and it doesn't mentally feel like the "Download setup.exe and run it" method), so normally there are even more junk then that. And on non-computer-savy user computers, I'm sure it'd be way worse.

I'd also add that whilst the Documents/ level might be used by applications, this doesn't mean that the sub-folders like Music/ etc are filled by applications?[/quote]
'Documents' is generic, 'Music' is specific. It's like saying, 'Music', 'Pictures', and 'Everything else' with My Documents being the 'everything else' category. Even 'music' gets things like album art, playlists, preferences, and other minor files that applications sometimes put in there.

[color=#ff0000][Warning: Rant]

I feel like I'm continually waging a war against doing things the way I want to do things, and do things the way applications want me to do things. I'd be happy to allow the applications to do it their way... if they were consistent. As it is, iTunes wants to take control of all my music and organize it their way, Windows Media Player wants to do it another way, other players like it different ways, etc... So I downloaded a use a music player that just searches by directory instead - and only the directory you point it at (foobar2000). Music players (and other applications) each want to be the sole authority over the type of files it handles, and to 'manage' it for you, building application-specific indexes of what music you have available... instead of just looking at the directory.

So anytime I rename a file, or organize something, or add something, if I do so through Windows Explorer instead of that application's interface, then you get messages like, "fileX can't be found!", "fileY was moved or deleted!", "Rescanning your entire music directory, please wait while we take control of how you organize your data!".
Or what I hate, duplicates and duplicates entries of the same file in the media player, half of which are invalid/outdated entries that you can't remove.

If it's my data, my files, let me organize them how I want to using the standardized folder/file system of the OS I'm on, and let the applications use that same folder/file system, so regardless of how I choose to organize my files, they can use them and find them and display them to me. This way, two or more applications can, you know, share the files (which is the point of a file directory). Add tagging to files, and now you can filter your files even better using applications. But don't give me application-specific, or filetype-specific tag systems or I won't use them, because it's not consistent across all the different applications I use. Make it be at an OS level, and make it standard, and let all the applications adapt.
Oh, and stop indexing my files. Let my files be tagged, not indexed. You can index the tags if you like, but you better be prepared for them to change outside of the application.

Everything treats the user as a moron, with two problems: Everyone handles the moron issue in a different way, confusing users more, and creating a cycle of, "See? They're confused so we need to sugercoat and manage everything in even more simple (application specific) ways!", and the other problem is for the users that do know what they are doing, more and more things are 'managed' for them (in contrary application-specific ways), so our efforts to organize our own files get harder and harder to do, as now applications have expectancies that things will be done in the application-specific way they ordain it to be done.

Standardize the base problem: Storing files and sharing them across applications, and across installs, and across networks, and across computers. This is called a filesystem.
Standardize the base problem: Searching for files in the filesystem when they might be belong in multiple different categories. The best solution we currently have (that I'm aware of) is a tagging system... so standardize that base problem.

Then, let everyone innovate off of that base level. Everyone has been innovating, a good solution has emerged, so standardize it and raise let them innovate on the next set of problems (we have plenty more areas that are being innovated and experimented in), so let's implement a standardized generic tagging system and call that area solved, and move on. It will actually simplify things by making everything more consistent and compatible across applications, and reduce end-user confusion with each application and each filetype handling things differently.

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.

I'm confused here. You mention the libraries briefly and then mention something totally unrelated to the nature of the library that doesn't do what you'd like. Why would you change the My Documents to a different filepath instead of just using the Documents library?

Because I misunderstood what Dragonjsoul was saying. (He corrected my misunderstanding in the post after the one you quoted).

When he said, "change the default save folder if you want", I thought incorrectly that he was talking about changing the My Documents folder location, which doesn't help the problem since applications would just save files to the new My Documents location.