Re: SV: [Usability] User problems and practices with modern desktopsystems

[Lutz Mueller <lutz muellerrs de>]

Maybe sometime I write a bit confusing, sorry. My interests are:
is there a possibility to get a more convenient "desktop" than today.

my mental model is invented by my own impossibility to handle my data
well. These are adresses, bookmarks, email, written texts, downloaded
texts and binaries like pictures, mp3 etc. These data are spread at my
apple and my linux pc at work and my linux pc at home. And I often get
into to trouble finding files, finding an appropriate place for saving
data, getting rid of identical data or finding out on what file I made
some special changes.
Beside that I'm observing some people handling their data.

My conclusion is that the current model of files and folders, specially
for user data, could or should be replaced.
My idea is to save the same information that is implicit stored in the
name of the folder may stored as metadata and used as a select
criteria. Thats what I would like to show here:
http://wkm.kunst.uni-wuppertal.de/~mueller/file.gif
http://wkm.kunst.uni-wuppertal.de/~mueller/browser.gif

The second thing is to have more information about the data, as it is
partially possible for images or mp3. For example: why don't save the
text typed in a gimp image also in his metadata, Or the name after
"dear Mr/Mrs ....". There are thousands of possibilities.



> I'm not quite sure but it seems like I'm focus on the retrieval
> situation and how to find specific stuff while you focus on how to add
> such meta information? Could be we argue from different mental models.

I would say that I'm focus on how to manage private data.

> Index			- list of descriptive words
> Categories		- actual words (indices) in an index (metadata)

In my mail categories are defined by the user as a sort criteria.

> Classification	- assigning categories to an item (file, article, photo)
>
> > the metadata information must be stored in the "filesystem" because it
> > should be copied or moved with your file.
> > try to move data with an emblem in nautilus, the emblem is lost. i
> > would expect that such information even belongs to a file if its moved
> > by shell command, or copied via rsync for backup reason.
> > With a flexible kind of metadata it may also be possible add
> > information if the file was changed after copied. i often got the
> > problem to find out what is never, the file at home or at work. the
> > same problems appear with bookmarks, (yellow) notes, adresses etc.
> > There are lots of solutions, but they individually depend on your
> > software.
>
> What I was thinking of was to use the existing metadata solution which
> is an integral part of several file systems.

?-)
I don't know which file system supports other metadata than rights,
owner and timestamp. only mac hpfs supports some more.

>  This could be used as the
> data storage mechanism while actual indexing could reside in any kind 
> of
> database, but still the original classification data is an integral 
> part
> of the file itself.
>
> If the underlaying system supports copying files *with* metadata, then
> they will not get lost. This way you could copy across systems as long
> as the metadata is copied together with the file itself.
>
> Such metadata should be fairly easy to index by most of the existing or
> upcoming desktop search engines.

thats what I want to have.

> I guess this was an example of how you could use metaphores the user 
> are
> familiar with,.. Still I'm very aware that the current spatial nautilus
> sucks for navigating unknown areas of the file system.

The problem isn't spatial vs. tree view. But have a look how mac users
organize their folders and how windows user do. (exept of me and my
wife, who doesn't use folders, I don't know how other linux users
organize their data)
mac users used to live with spatial finder from os7 to os9 and the
folder structure is often more flat.

i believe the problem is that "tree view users" folder model isn't
useful for spatial mode and vice versa.


> An alternate mental model is to have a special device which lists all
> files available to the user, then you limits this complete set by
> criterias on the metadata.

Yes, thats what I want to have. Don't list all files, only the one I
used the last days.

> Now, you *should* be able to limit this set by adding free text search
> or other kind of additional select criteria.

Mainly select criteria, those the user defined. Most user may live with
a hand full of them.
equally they now use a hand full of folders.
It is bit like the search criteria replace the names of the folders,
but more flexible.

just as the files, the criteria will be ordered by the date they or the
associated files were used.

> There was a system which had some kind of extension framework some time
> ago. I belive the frontend was called snake charmer but can't recollect
> any more about this system.

it's a pity, would be interesting :-)