newdocms: Beyond the Hierarchical File System

Manuel Arriaga writes "After two years of hard work (and many scrapped versions), I have just released a (ugly, but working!) preview version of newdocms, a completely new document management system. newdocms isn't a file browser: it is a layer between the hierarchical file system (HFS) and the user, which provides a radically new way to store and retrieve documents. No longer will you browse complex directory trees or directly interact with the HFS; instead, you define any number of document attributes when saving a document and then query a database of those attributes when trying to retrieve it later on. For the first time you have a true alternative to the hierarchical file system at the OS level. Through the modification of the KDE shared libraries, newdocms currently works with all KDE apps! (I am looking for volunteers to add support for GNOME and OpenOffice.org!) This is a testament to the power of free software: this sort of innovation could never happen if it weren't for the free software nature of the underlying systems."

Comments

I already use a different one:

[NineNine]

I'm already using The Brain. It's *really* unique, and it works. It works very well. And, in addition to organizing files the way YOU want them organized, it also connects random thoughts, web sites, emails, etc. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It's pretty damn incredible.

Remind anyone of something?

[chrisseaton]

What Microsoft suggested something like this, everyone went mental, and I got bitch slapped for saying I thought it was a good idea.

Re:What's wrong with hierachical systems anyway?

[Mononoke]

They work fine for me

What's wrong with HFS?

1. Not confusing enough.
2. No possibility of new patents.
3. Lack of ability to lock users into your proprietary file system.

I didn't know HFS was broken.

Re:Interesting...

[Obiwan Kenobi]

Maybe I'm just used to a HFS, but I find it simple to open up a command prompt and type "pico /documents/foo/bar/fubar.txt"

That's the whole reason for the program -- you shouldn't have to remember long, detailed folder structures and filenames in order to retrieve a file you were looking for.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to help users find some file, shortcut, document or spreadsheet that they've "lost" because they forgot the correct path. But they do remember it involved a loan, or it involved a party announcement, or something similar. I swear, just the other day I spent an hour waiting on another employee to get off the phone so I could find a folder shortcut another employee had lost. She wasn't sure what folder the shortcut referred to, but she knew it contained documents of a certain type.

Do you see a pattern here? To me, this sounds just like what Microsoft is trying to do with Longhorn, and potentially Office 11. People are tired of searching and hunting through folders and heirarchies full of oddly named files and temp folders that can confuse Joe User.

This is awesome software and definitely a step forward. It might not change the geek community, but it will certainly help out system admins of the world. While your method still works (and hopefully, in the future, these two systems should work hand-in-hand, but that's another project I suppose), this is a damn fine alternative.

Not sure it's any better...

[ArthurDent]

I agree. Basically the only way this is different from your HFS is that it encapsulates the meta-data (that is currently in the path name) differently. I'm not sure that's any better or worse. In fact, I myself like to be able to see at a glance what all the categories of documents that I have are which is quite easy with HFS, but doesn't sound so easy here. Perhaps that's more because this is a new idea and not mature yet.

Everyone seems hot to SQL the file system, and while I think that will be the way of the future, I don't think that there is a clear view of how that works from the user's perspective yet. Remember that this is a rather large paradigm shift from what everyone is used to. It's going to take a while for this to mature to the point that Joe User is going to be able to hack it. I mean, I looked at the Save As dialog on that page, and while it looks cool it also looks counter-intuitive to me and I'm a developer! How much more will a user get confused?

All in all we're going in the right direction, but by no means are we anywhere near the goal yet.

Ben

Re:What's wrong with hierachical systems anyway?

[OneEyedApe]

I've noticed about three main types of people in the world of open source: those who fix things, those who try to improve existings things (i.e., make it run faster, smaller, etc.) and those who like to tinker and make new stuff. This person seems to fit in the third category. As far as I can tell, this person is not so much trying to "fix" the file system, but to make a new and different version and/or approach to it. This may be a good thing. But if you don't like it, don't use it.