[ge-talk] Search, Don't Browse

[Niklas Nisbeth]

Dear List.

I think we should completely change the Tracker for R2. Maybe not  
scrap it all, but change it fundamentally. Change it so it doesn't  
browse the file system (or only does so if you force it), but  
searches it. Every displayed Tracker window should be a search query  
- perhaps, if you're conservative it could be a search for just  
"location is /home/documents/", but obviously you could do something  
like "show me all my Leonard Cohen songs" or "show me all documents  
associated with this project" (see section below on tagging). Why?  
Because as I've stated several times on the Haiku forums (and other  
places where I've been given/stolen the chance), I want to organise  
everything (*everything*) in the Tracker. Ideally, I wouldn't even  
have MP3 playlists, I'd just have a saved search of files tagged in  
the same manner and an app that would play all the songs found in  
this search. Dynamic, intuitive, and IMHO the logical conclusion of  
having a database for a file system.
I also think the way the Tracker displays its list of items could be  
changed a little, at least give me the option of grouping things  
together according to type - like Spotlight or Beagle does. See here:  
http://www.beagle-project.org/images/5/54/Beagle-search.png. OS X  
even lets me easily preview files from directly in that window, even  
though that may be a little cluttered.
Obviously (I hope it's obvious, at least), we should include full  
indexing so I can search inside files. There's a programme on BeBits  
that does this, BeIndexed (http://bebits.com/app/3637l), which is BSD  
licensed. I think this should be merged into the queries system as  
soon as possible.

There's another change that I want to see implemented to facilitate  
this change: flickr.com-esque tagging for all files*, ie. custom file  
attributes that I can just put in one field and use for searching.  
And more apps need to do things like, when I copy photos from my  
camera to my harddrive, I want them to be tagged with 'imported on  
date' automatically, and I want to be able to select them, right  
click on one of them (or whatever) and easily tag them a few  
keywords, flickr style. Now I can make photo albums with a smart  
query easy as pie, no need for iPhoto. If my small, simple photo  
viewer app is accepts a saved query via drag and drop, well, there  
really is no need for monster iApplications with their own bespoke  
library format. Likewise, something like an IDE could tag all files  
in a project with a project name and save projects as a query for  
less of a missing files hell.

(*Can I already do this? I probably can. My BeOS box is a few hours  
away, and I don't get to use it much these days, due to emergent  
pseudo-matrimony.)

At least, that's how I'd like my OS to work. It's a little late/early  
and I'm quite possibly not making complete 100% sense, but I wanted  
to finish this posting and send it this morning as I tend to not  
finish things. What you think?

-Niklas Nisbeth (noisetonepause)

PS: I urge all the Mac OSX users among you to check out Quicksilver  
(http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/). It can best be described as a  
graphical command line. I've been thinking about how great it would  
be to integrate something like that right in the deskbar, and have  
whatever files you've selected in the Tracker be the basis for an  
operation... Expect a post on this soon!