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Since the dawn of graphical user interfaces, there has been almost no
change in now we manage and organize files and folders. The file
managers of today are fundamentally identical to the file managers 20
years ago. All of the file namagers of today - in any operating system,
including mobile - have severe limitations. Two of those limitations are
mention below. A concept for a new, radically different file manager,
free of those limitations is then presented.
1) Suppose you have some personal file or a file from work that you want
to save to your computer. However, you can't quite decide in which of
your folders to put the file. Perhaps you have three directories in
which that file would belong equally well. You have a couple of options.
A) you make a choice and put the file in one of those three folders, or
B) you really want that file to be in those other two folders as well,
so you place shortcuts in those other two folders. Suppose you choose
B). After a year you go back to that file. You find the folder that
contains the actual copy but you want to know in which other folder you
put a shortcut to that file. In some file managers and operating systems
you can do that (although it will take time), in others you cannot.
2) For many of us, one of the most annoying tasks is file management. Many of
us have external backup drives where at least a couple of times annually we
simply dump everthing important from our computers. Pehaps we just put
everthing in a single folder or two, or do some minimal organization, and put
it in the backup drive. We always think that once we find some free time we
will organize those files, but we never find that time. As a result, after a
couple of years our backup drives begin to resemble the contents of a garbage
truck in terms of how messy everything is. After a certain point, we might even
begin feeling that organizing the contents in the backup drive is simply a
hopeless task that would take weeks to accomplish.
Why is that? What makes file management such a difficult and time consuming
task? The answer I have come to is the following. The file managers of the
present force us to make one choice when there might be several equally valid
choice. Here is what I mean. Suppose you have a thousand files - of various
kinds - that you want to organize. There is probably tens of ways of organizing
those files. Let's give more specific examples. Suppose you are doing academic
research and those 1000 files are all related to your research - shortcuts of
websites, research papers, your papers, videos, pictures, algorithms, code,
etc. One way of organizing them is by type - you have a folder for each file
type. Another way is to separate the files by subtopic. Or maybe you want to
organize them by source - perhaps you want to put the research papers and
programs from different universities in different folders. Let's suppose you
overcome this challenge and decide to organize the files by topic - a folde
r for each topic. Then you come to a second problem. Some files - say some
research papers - belong to two or more topics (folders). The task of
organizing the files becomes very difficult, therefore. There are many equally
valid ways of organizing those 1000 files but the file managers force one to
make a single choice. What if we did not have this limitation. What if we were
able to make all of those choices simultaneously.
The aforementioned are two of many limitations that the file managers of
the present have. I came up with a concept of a file manager that is
free from the those and other limitation. A file manager that does not
force the user to make a single choice when organizing files but allows
the user to make all the possible choices. A file manager which would
transform the task of organizing our backup drives from being a dreadful
and impossible task to becoming a task that is enjoyable and quick.
The concept I am proposing is best explained with pictures but I will try my
best to explain it in words while relying on the reader's imagination.
I am proposing a file manager which displays files in two different ways
"Galactic View" and "Singular View". These are virtual views - I will explain
what I mean later.
Galactic View -
imagine a galaxy where each star is a file (this can be either 3D or 2D). You
have the ability to zoom in and out. The distance between two files represents
how closely related those files are according to the judgement of the user.
Suppose you have 1000 files that are unorganized. The picture you should be
having in your mind is that of the Andromeda Galaxy but with only 1000 stars or
files. The first step toward organizing those files would be to start moving
them around. Think of it as moving stars in a galaxy, or maybe creating
multiple galaxies from those stars. Say you make 5 galaxies from your files.
You can zoom in and out so you can see any number of files or groups depending
how far you zoomed. But suppose you have about a dozen files that you think
should belong to more than one group. No problem. This is a virtual
representation of the files. What you are seeing in this Galactic view is
simply 'shadows' of the files. Therefore, in this galactic view you can have as
many '
shadows' of a file as you want. Hence for your problem where you want to put
those files in more than one group, you can just make more shadows of those
files and put them into as many groups as you wich. OK, now that you have 5
galaxies, you go to the next step, You can start organizing each one of them
further. If you think that a file is closely related to another file, you put
those two files close to one another. If a third file is slightly less related
to those two, you put that file a little bit farther away but still slose to
them - think about it as moving stars in a galaxy. Suppose now you want to
isolate some files. Then you can simply put them inside a bubble and name the
bubble - a bubble would be the analogy of a folder - but think of that bubble
as being 50% transparent so you can see the files inside the bubble and some of
those outside it. Depending on your zoom level, you can be either inside or
outside the bubble. Imagine now you are seeing the bubble from outside
- and you can see the three files that you have in the bubble. But at the
same time, you are seeing some of the files that are close to the bubble. The
distances between the files still represent how closely related they are
according to your judgement. If you think that a file is closely related to the
files in the bubble but should not be in the bubble, you simply place that file
close to the bubble. You can also have bubbles inside other bubbles - analogous
to folders within folders.
You may also have lines that connect two files - think of those as lines
between stars in a galaxy. Maybe those lines would also represent relationships
between files. This would be just an additional way of expressing how related
certain files are. It would be to the user to decide whether to connect certain
files by lines and what purpose to ascribe to those lines.
Singular View -
Think in terms of the Galactic View still. Suppose you are looking at a certain
file. But as we said in the previous paragraph, you may have that file (or to
be more precise the 'shadow' of that file) in several different bubbles
(folders) simultaneously. Once you single-click on a file the following will
happen. Before clicking the file, you were seeing it as a star in a galaxy
(Galactic View). After single-clicking the file the view changes to "Singular
View" where the file you clicked is displayed at the center of the screen, and
to it are attached the bubbles (folders) in which it appears. Say for instance
your file is named "a" and it belongs to the bubbles (folders) "F1", "F2", and
"F3". And say Folder "F2" is insider a bigger folder named "BF1". What you
would see in the "Singular VIew" for file "a" is the following:
"a" would be at the center of the screen and three branches would be attached
to it - one branch leading to "F1", another one to "F2", and another to "F3".
But since "F2" is inside "BF1" then a branch will be attached to "F2" that
leads to "BF1". If you have trouble imagining what I just described, then do an
online image seach for "network digram" or "idea digram", and you will seee
immediately what I mean.
The aforementiond "Galactic View" and "Singular View" refer to how files
are displayed to the user. These views would only be showing vitrual
copies of the files - shadows of the files. Where the files are actually
located - in which directory - that is a different story. We might have
a third view "Directory Tree View". This would show where the files
physically sit - and it might or might not be related to how the files
are displayed in the "Galactic View". Organization of the ACTUAL files
may be as simple as having one folder for each file type. And maybe
inside those file-type folders there is a folder for each letter of the
alphabet. Or the files may be organized the same way as they are
organized in the Galactic View.
A name for such a file manager could be "Galactic File Manager".
Prior to posting the this idea, I spent some time searching whether
something like this already exists. I could not find anything even close
to what I have described. But if anyone knows of a file browser that
already has the aforementioned features, please share it. Please share
your comments.
Thank you for reading. It probably took you a while to read this, but to
make you fell better, imagine how long it took me to write it :) .
** Affects: nautilus (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: Opinion
** Tags: bot-comment directory enhancement file folder idea manager
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Revolutionizing File and Folder Management
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1286700
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