'Type Manager' The File Manager of Tomorrow?

IceFox writes "In the past few years many of us have been introduced to a new type of application, the Type Manager. Most of us are familiar with iTunes, but there are many other Type Managers out there that are gaining market share and a rabid fan base of users such as digiKam and amaroK. Type Managers seem to have that magic combinations of features that makes users love them. I have been taken a closer look at the Type Manager, what makes them so usefull, what they really provide for the user and came to some surprising results. After creating a list of all the traits of a Type Manager I was able to define exactly what a file manager should be and discovered that there are in fact many partial Type Managers out there now that implemented only half of what makes up a full Type Manager."

Comments

Move Along

[Lord Byron II]

Move along, nothing to see here. This is nothing but shameless self-promotion from a guy who can't even spell "useful" correctly.

Re:Move Along

[JabberWokky]

I couldn't use a "music type manager" for a chunk of my collection -- my music is mixed up with lyrics, performance notes and tablature for when I actually play it (as in pull out an instrument and use it). Amarok is great to kick back and listen to music with (Wikipedia and related song links are nifty), but the brutal truth is that 99% of the time I'm just listening it could just be any player that shuffles a playlist. When I'm actually *using* the files, I need more than just a single format app.

Same goes for images and text: I organize by project, and most have real world notebooks and folders associated with them. Even the directories full of source code and purely computer related items usually have a physical logbook associated with them and have a dozen file types in a few to over a hundred directories.

There are two major types of applications that handle multiple types of files and let you organize them by directory. They let you manipulate them with a wide variety of tools and other applications. They are called file managers and shells. I'm partial to Konqueror and bash, but YMMV.

--
Evan

Re:Move Along

[Gulthek]

Fun fact about iTunes is that it can store PDF files alongside tracks. Perfect for liner notes, tabs, etc. Also any quicktime file such as a music video. Both filetypes can be given the same metadata (artist, album, etc) that you give to the music files so everything stays very nicely organized and (and this is key for me) is easily re-organizable.

Last ten tabs added?

All tabs in such and such a genre?

All tabs with this part, that part, that instrument, chords or melody?

Good stuff.

Adobe was there first ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe Type Manager Light

Next time, check prior art before appropriating a phrase and giving it whatever meaning you feel like.

Not to mention, "Type Manager" is a terrible name for "application that manages files of some type".

Nothing to see here...

[Overzeetop]

A couple of pages of rambling is far from "news". This might be an interesting read for someone who has never thought of content or contextual organization before, but it's really old hat.

Now, if this goober had coded up a new manager which integrated all the functions he talked about, or had an extensble base manager to replace the native file system, with a defined api for plugins that would allow you to customize the environment, that would be news.

Re:type manager ? WTF ?

[Paradise Pete]

How do you think technical definitions are invented in the first place?

You don't just start using it as if it's already known. You have to first "propose" the definition at the beginning of the paper and explain why you're using it.

wrong

[idlake]

The only difference between a file path and, say, keywords is that the former is thinking in terms of the computer (sort of like C), whereas the latter is thinking in terms of the data (sort of like Java).

That's wrong. Paths are not just metadata, they have specific semantics associated with them that, say, tags don't. Furthermore, paths have semantics that users grasp easily and that they rely on.

Now, people have been attempting tag-based, non-hierarchical, database-based and other file management and navigation strategies since the 1960's. UNIX itself used to be graph-based, not path-based. All such attempts have been failures. Paths seem to combine power, usability, and correct semantics in a way that no other system has managed to do to date. There are specific applications (like MP3 jukeboxes) where other approaches are better, but for organizing all the stuff on a computer as a whole, sooner or later, you end up with paths and path semantics again.

Re:Type Manager

[Sigl]

This is article is idiotic and totally misses the reason why these types of applications are a success..... ...Microsoft Word is the "type manager" of doc files...

What applications are you talking about? Word wouldn't even qualify as defined by the article. In fact specifically lists Word as a different type of application called Content Creators. The article then lists ones that would apply: iTunes, iPhoto, Juk, Amarok, and digiKam. none of which I would say are used because of their ability to share with others (even though they can contain the ability).

...it's about ease of which you can share that data with other people who have the same interests.

Seriously what applications are you talking about. Certainly not the same applications as the article.