I yearn for Windows Explorer...

2

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  • Reply 21 of 49
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    Open terminal.

    Type "rsync --verbose -n -u -r ./test1/* ./test2" (without the quotes), hit enter.



    Yeah this seems like a pretty easy way to do the sync. You can even drag in the folders you need so you don't have to type them.



    You might want to be careful if you merge folders with applications in them. I don't think rsync supports metadata and resource forks unless Apple has changed it - it's not as important as it used to be but it might break some apps. This is why rsyncx was made:



    http://archive.macosxlabs.org/rsyncx/rsyncx.html



    If it's just documents then it should be fine and it's pretty fast. There's a GUI front end here:



    http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/arRsync.shtml



    It still leaves you with the issue of deleting the original though so it's still slightly lacking but you could always add a command to the automator script to remove the original folder.
  • Reply 22 of 49
    The Mac OS X Finder is a piece of shit.



    Then again so is Windows Explorer. Man I hate how Explorer doesn't tell you if there's enough space to copy all the files to another storage media.



    OS X and Windows have different file management philosophies...that's all I have to say. You're free to chose which philosophy you like best.



    The best file management system, you say? One that sheds any notion of hierarchies to put more emphasis on metadata as away to browse and manage files and one that handles versioning and snapshots to remove any problem with overwriting files.



    The only time I ever move files around in Mac OS X is when I'm dumping them onto a backup drive or when I'm putting them onto a CD or DVD. Every file goes into Documents now and they stay there...there's no organization down to them, I use Spotlight to find my files...the only thing missing for me is versioning. Files that remember changes made and automatically create versions. Time Machine is getting pretty close to what I need. Close but not good enough. It's only a backup system that lets you restore different versions.
  • Reply 23 of 49
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kim kap sol View Post


    The best file management system, you say? One that sheds any notion of hierarchies to put more emphasis on metadata as away to browse and manage files and one that handles versioning and snapshots to remove any problem with overwriting files.



    I wouldn't say that's the best system. If you have a project and want to keep all the files together, how does a metadata system let you do that? You may say add a custom metadata tag that assigns those files to a project. How do you then find one or more of those files to use in another project?



    What if you can't remember what all your project tags are?



    A metadata system makes it easy to lose track of things, especially when metadata indexes can have flaws. The single advantage it has is that you can do a quick lookup but you have to know what you're looking for and a clean, ordered hierarchical filesystem is the best way to help you remember so I don't see it ever going away.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gon


    In addition to cut and paste, I'd love a dead simple classic view with intelligent, adaptive icon spacing and springloaded breadcrumbs.



    Spring-loaded breadcrumbs are coming in Leopard in case you hadn't heard that already:



    http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2647/...path_in_finder
  • Reply 24 of 49
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    I wouldn't say that's the best system. If you have a project and want to keep all the files together, how does a metadata system let you do that? You may say add a custom metadata tag that assigns those files to a project.



    Yep.
    Quote:

    How do you then find one or more of those files to use in another project?



    Dig up the file, add another tag that indicates it belongs to another project.
    Quote:

    What if you can't remember what all your project tags are?



    You make a search for it, the same you make a search on the Internet for something you don't quite know. In the near future you'll have better fuzzy searching to find things by typing words that are only somehow related to the thing you're looking for. When all else fails, you do exactly what you'd do in a folder system: you scan all your project tags or a subgroup of project tags sequentially.
    Quote:

    A metadata system makes it easy to lose track of things, especially when metadata indexes can have flaws. The single advantage it has is that you can do a quick lookup but you have to know what you're looking for and a clean, ordered hierarchical filesystem is the best way to help you remember



    ... no, not really. The best way to remember something by yourself is association, as many powerful associations as possible. On the computer it's all about assisted recall. We recall something related to what we're looking for, tell the computer what it is, and the computer should complete it to the best of its ability as well as show us related things that are likely to help us remember and locate the thing.



    I dig a good hierarchical structure too, am quite attached to the one I use and can find stuff very quickly in it, but there is a lot of mental overhead associated with the filing we don't consciously notice because we're so used to it.



    edit: not to mention the immense limitations, many of which we don't notice simply because our computing and data storage isn't so advanced yet. We are tying ourselves down to something as crude as disk drives. RAID and similar designs can get us over that, but that still leaves us tied down to individual computers. We can take a huge RAID, stick it in a server, and connect to that server from basically everywhere but it is not yet easy nor is it transparent. You just can't launch into a search on your cellphone that scours your personal data storage for best video matches related to bunnies and pancakes, and act on the results as if you had that media right at your fingertips. We are forced to care about where exactly these files lie in, even when we have no interest in that at the time.
    Quote:

    so I don't see it ever going away.



    You can have an app (let's call it Finder) to manipulate the "PATH" and "NAME" tags graphically. But there's no reason to force you to give any file a location if you don't feel a need to. They could be auto-assigned PATH=~/Documents/Unfiled and NAME=(a good guess for best possible name, or failing that, next free number), to be arranged as you see fit.
    Quote:

    Spring-loaded breadcrumbs are coming in Leopard in case you hadn't heard that already:



    http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2647/...path_in_finder



    w00000t!

    Pure awesome. I'll never have a toolbar in my Finder again.
  • Reply 25 of 49
    Gon, you explain things so eloquently.



    Anyways...another point I want to make is that hierarchies (or file paths) are a form of metadata. The problem is that it's static. People that tell me they prefer file paths to organize their files are unknowingly telling me they love metadata (and are probably also unknowingly telling me they have no clue how metadata can help them.)



    If I store my dog photos in /Users/kimkapsol/Pictures/Family/Fido, I'm essentially 'tagging' this photo as a picture file that belongs to kimkapsol, one that relates to a family picture, and is of my dog Fido.



    This photo could alternatively be tagged: dog, Fido, family (and of course all the freebies such as the OS knowing the file type, the size, the date the picture was taken, etc.) and it would be the same as storing this picture in /Users/kimkapsol/Pictures/Family/Fido except that it now has an extra piece of data associated with it: 'dog'.



    If I want my picture to be in both /Users/kimkapsol/Pictures/Dogs and /Users/kimkapsol/Pictures/Family/Fido there's no way to do this without having an alias pointing to the original photo or having a duplicate, redundant file in the other folder.



    Of course, no sane person would do this...and most people combine the idea of static hierarchical organization with a search engine such as Spotlight to get the best of both worlds...



    Like Gon said, you can find files by associations. But sometimes, when you're not looking for something in particular, it's nice to browse. What if the Finder stopped sucking ass and actually let people browse by tags (you guys can see it as a dynamic file path if you will) allowing people to look under kimkapsol -> Pictures -> Dogs or kimkapsol -> Pictures -> Family -> Fido or Pictures -> Dogs (pictures of all dogs on the computer and network not necessarily associated to kimkapsol)...lots of possibilities exist. No only do lots of possibilities exist, but the one you would have created with folders (as a static file path) exists within the dynamic file paths that you can browse.



    Dynamic paths would be a fall back (and could totally replace the static hierarchies we use today) to simply filtering by keywords that come to your mind as you look for a file. Granted, OSes still need backwards compatibility with previous OS versions and foreign OSes (networking OS X with Windows or Linux for example) so this dream won't become reality for decades.



    edit: another cute observation...I know some people that vehemently support file paths that love iTunes. iTunes automatically organizes music by tags: the main ones being Genre, Artist and Album. This type of browsing would be hard to achieve with folders. You'd be locked into a single static organization.



    If the Finder doesn't allow easy tag browsing like iTunes does, I think Apple should redesign the Open dialog so that every app could benefit from a customized iTunes-like tag browsing. In general, all it takes is 2-3 tags to really narrow down a search...then Cover Flow and Quick Look would definitely allow people to find the right file rapidly.



    iTunes has 3 main tags to search with: genre, artist, album. But what if Word or Pages had 3 tags to search with: project, author, keywords. It's not currently possible to tag a Pages document with a project name but I would imagine Apple would allow this if they ever woke up and made metadata more usable. Of course, you could put your project name in the "keyword" field and it would give you results that were close to what I'm thinking about.



    You guys can probably sit down and think about 3 tags for every document type and imagine an iTunes-like Open dialog sheet giving users a fast way to find files without ever thinking about file paths.
  • Reply 26 of 49
    dacloodacloo Posts: 890member
    AND A GOOD RANT IT IS!

    Really, you explained it very well. I completely lost a project because of this unexpected behaviour.

    One of the many Finder gripes.



    ps: Explorer on Vista got worse compared to XP...too much buttons and crap going on...but besides that, I like it. Also being able to cut/paste files (but let's not start this discussion again)...
  • Reply 27 of 49
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    This isn't what you guys have been discussing, but the mention of paths reminded me. There have been times (many) when I have saved a file and failed to check where it was to be saved, thinking it was headed to DeskTop. When I checked DeskTop - no file.



    Someone (probably an AI member) touted me to click on the file name on the top bar and press 'command' and - voila - the path. I don't recall anything like that on Windows, but maybe I just never learned it.
  • Reply 28 of 49
    I'm more of a MetaData is Good But *within Static Paths*.



    I'm just too used to having my stuff in hierachical static paths.



    I love flexible metadata, for example in iTunes and iPhoto. I don't give a rat's ass about where the pictures are, how big they really are exactly (as long as inspector shows me the folder size)...



    There could be 5000 files named "cool music.mp3" (extreme example) in the iTunes folder, generally I trust OS X enough by now.



    I just need /Music and /Users/nVidia2008/Pictures.



    All my downloads, I just dump it to /Temp/Stuff



    If you are wondering why I am using root directories, (a) bad habit from Windows days, (b) I don't want it to be FileVaulted, my FileVault is very important but only for ~/Documents
  • Reply 29 of 49
    Time Machine should be excellent, I will just Time Machine my FileVaulted Home Folder.



    BTW, FileFault has messed me up on ocassion, but that is usually when Parallels or VMWare was running. I took Parallels/WinXP2/VMWare off my MacBook, Windows only for gaming! on my PC.
  • Reply 30 of 49
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    I'm more of a MetaData is Good But *within Static Paths*.



    I'm just too used to having my stuff in hierachical static paths.



    See my last post. It's easy to retain static paths inside a metadata system, because the metadata system is strictly more powerful. With a folder system with metadata tagged on, you get problems.
    Quote:

    I just need /Music and /Users/nVidia2008/Pictures.



    All my downloads, I just dump it to /Temp/Stuff



    If you are wondering why I am using root directories, (a) bad habit from Windows days, (b) I don't want it to be FileVaulted, my FileVault is very important but only for ~/Documents



    I actually had it in my "to do" list to reorganize my stuff according to subject or project instead of the media type. But I don't really need to do it just yet, and the results will be much better with metadata, so I'm waiting for a proper implementation.
  • Reply 31 of 49
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gon View Post


    See my last post. It's easy to retain static paths inside a metadata system, because the metadata system is strictly more powerful. With a folder system with metadata tagged on, you get problems.....



    WHOA That makes sense....! metadata in static paths, I can see it be *bad*. but paths within a metadata, is good.
  • Reply 32 of 49
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kim kap sol View Post


    another point I want to make is that hierarchies (or file paths) are a form of metadata. The problem is that it's static. People that tell me they prefer file paths to organize their files are unknowingly telling me they love metadata (and are probably also unknowingly telling me they have no clue how metadata can help them.)



    I think my problem with metadata systems is not so much the concept. You and Gon are right in that they are more flexible conceptually, it's just that I've never yet come across an implementation (with the possible exception of itunes but that setup works for music) that is better than using a standard filesystem structure (ignoring the fact that such a filesystem is using a form of metadata as you said).



    Mainly I'm referring to Spotlight, which I have hardly used since it was introduced. Perhaps Leopard will change this I don't know. As long as there was a powerful metadata browser then I'm sure I could adjust to it.



    I'm still not sure the static paths need to go away though because you only need a way to non-physically order items by metadata tags. In other words, you only need to change the way the metadata manipulation is visualized. So rather than have a whole new way of working, a more powerful version of Spotlight should suffice - one that let you browse path hierarchies and edit things to the extent the Finder allows. Of course you could question why you'd then need the Finder but the static paths would maintain compatibility with other systems and external discs that won't support the metadata and the system could be implemented immediately.
  • Reply 33 of 49
    Post deleted
  • Reply 34 of 49
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    Use Automator and make this first:



    Wow, this is all so cool, thanks for your effort and time! Unfortunately I fell at the first hurdle because I opened Automator and could find no way of creating the windows as you show in that screenshot. I think I might have to pm you.
  • Reply 35 of 49
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jowie74 View Post


    Wow, this is all so cool, thanks for your effort and time! Unfortunately I fell at the first hurdle because I opened Automator and could find no way of creating the windows as you show in that screenshot. I think I might have to pm you.



    Heh. I will post here in a few hours.
  • Reply 36 of 49
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Okay, the trick is to search for the different "modules" (actions) on the left, then drag it to the main area to set up the "workflow"...



    Images in sequence here:











  • Reply 37 of 49
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gon View Post


    Cut-paste worked just great for me on Windows. I don't remember ever, not once, causing damage with an accidental Paste in ten years of use. Dragging stuff around is fine if it's made easy enough, and on OS X it works much better than on Windows of course, but I still don't think it's as good for a seasoned user as cut-paste.



    There are lots of people out there who want cut/paste in the Finder, and the main objectors don't agree with the Windows method because it's not 'true' cut/paste - the file remains, greyed out, until you paste it.



    For an OS X version, that doesn't contradict the cut/paste philosophy, how about having a 'Move to...' option in the contextual menu, next to Move to Trash. You could then browse to the destination, and the option could have changed to 'Move file.abc here' or something like that.



    Could a solution like that appease both parties, and give us another option for moving files?
  • Reply 38 of 49
    dacloodacloo Posts: 890member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by The Man with the Iron Mac View Post


    There are lots of people out there who want cut/paste in the Finder, and the main objectors don't agree with the Windows method because it's not 'true' cut/paste - the file remains, greyed out, until you paste it.



    For an OS X version, that doesn't contradict the cut/paste philosophy, how about having a 'Move to...' option in the contextual menu, next to Move to Trash. You could then browse to the destination, and the option could have changed to 'Move file.abc here' or something like that.



    Could a solution like that appease both parties, and give us another option for moving files?





    Exactly. That would be awesome. I have recreated what you suggested earlier with an Automator plugin. Works great. Downside is that it still doesn't give you the option to use a shortcut.

    True cut/paste (move/drop) would still be nice as an addition to the BeOS style "move to".
  • Reply 39 of 49
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    Okay, the trick is to search for the different "modules" (actions) on the left, then drag it to the main area to set up the "workflow"...



    Got it now, thanks. I couldn't work out how to find all the modules you had added... I had to deselect everything on the left and then I could do a proper Spotlight search for them.



    So great... so far! I've noticed you can do "Ask for Finder Items" and was toying with having it go "Please select a folder to merge FROM", followed by "Please select a folder to merge TO"... Then somehow take those names and feed them into the script...?



    Also, would it be possible to remove the original files as they are merged with the new folder, so I am left with just one merged folder?



    Here's a couple of ideas to perhaps make it even better:



    1. Drop a folder onto the app (the one you want to merge FROM) and then browse the folder you wish to merge TO)



    or, the ultimate:



    2. A Plugin for the Finder that allowed you to, say, shift-option drag a folder to another and that would automatically do a merge
  • Reply 40 of 49
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jowie74 View Post


    Got it now, thanks. I couldn't work out how to find all the modules you had added... I had to deselect everything on the left and then I could do a proper Spotlight search for them.



    So great... so far! I've noticed you can do "Ask for Finder Items" and was toying with having it go "Please select a folder to merge FROM", followed by "Please select a folder to merge TO"... Then somehow take those names and feed them into the script...?



    Also, would it be possible to remove the original files as they are merged with the new folder, so I am left with just one merged folder?



    Here's a couple of ideas to perhaps make it even better:



    1. Drop a folder onto the app (the one you want to merge FROM) and then browse the folder you wish to merge TO)



    or, the ultimate:



    2. A Plugin for the Finder that allowed you to, say, shift-option drag a folder to another and that would automatically do a merge



    Yes, as such it is beyond my skillz.... But you could do it in XCode, it would be a sweet plug-in/ utility thing.
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