Appeal to save Tag Folders
Björn Küstner
Plenty exist, but none of them fared well regarding my two main
criteria:
(1) seamlessly integrate into my current organisation workflow:
hierarchical, drag'n'drop stuff into folders
(2) assist with transition from hierarchical folders to tag-based
organisation
And then I found Tag Folders.
Dear Jon Stovell. You have created a game-changer.
Translating "old world" folders to the "new world" tags: tagging,
searching, nesting.
The simplicity of it gets me excited.
Next to Tag Folders the alternatives look clumsy despite all their
bells and whistles.
Like an iPhone next to an old-school Blackberry.
The fact that Tag Folders co-writes Spotlight comments and is GPLed
earns extra credits.
Organising information, making it findable and thus usable, is so at
the core of everything I do with my documents, images, movies, ... So
the small size of Tag Folders says little about its value.
And then I found that Tag Folders is not compatible with Lion.
Jon, after reading your message in <http://groups.google.com/group/tag-
folders/browse_thread/thread/6a897fd491c6614c>, I wondered what could
be done to breathe new life into Tag Folders.
(1) Jon, would the workload be acceptable if Tag Folders 2.6 is end-of-
life for Snow Leopard and before, and version 3.0 is only for Lion?
(2) Would it make a difference if the Lion-version 3.0 offers just
"feature parity for the basics" but omits trickier stuff that cause
extra dev headaches?
(3) Would you consider "sponsored changes", i. e obviously with GPL,
you cannot sell the software, but you are (afaik) free to accept
voluntary donations.
(4) If you are decidedly not available for further dev work, could you
please provide a to-do list of tasks that need to be done to get Tag
Folders working under Lion? This could kick-start other developers to
progress the work you have started.
Thanks for the work you have put into Tag folders.
Jamescat
I can't speak to some of your questions, such as his willingness to
work on "sponsored changes" of course.
However, I had a private discussion with Jon not long after his
announcement, concerning the details of doing further work and
problems in Lion. I kept it private mostly because I didn't want to
get users' hopes up that someone might be taking over... because I
just don't know that I will have the time / dedication to do so, and
so far I haven't. -- However, to keep Jon from having to rehash at
length what he told me about the problems and background of TF, I'll
post a copy below.
There is a lot of background information on how TF works, some of
which people may already know from documentation and/or their own
investigations, but some of which is possibly new even to those types
of more "inquisitive" users. =)
And the list of problems in Lion is of course bound to be essential
information for anyone wishing to do any work on TF in the future.
Naturally, I am merely working under the assumption that Jon won't
mind me making our exchange public for this purpose, as I don't think
either of us said anything that shouldn't be public... just that it
hadn't been deemed necessary to push our conversation into the whole
lists' worth of inboxes. ;-)
-James
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jon Stovell <jon...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 15:11
Subject: Re: Lion and Tag Folders
To: Jamescat <jab...@gmail.com>
Hi James,
Tag Folders is written entirely in Applescript, save for a few do
shell script calls to command line tools, so it should be pretty easy
for you to pick up.
It might be helpful to give you a bit of orientation to the software.
First we have the Tag Folders applets themselves. The code in each one
is identical to all the others. Each applet contains a .savedSearch
file within its resources. The contents of this .savedSearch are what
differentiate one Tag Folder from another. When a Tag Folder is
opened, it simply tells Finder to open its .savedSearch in a new
window. When a file is dropped onto a Tag Folder, the code parses
the .savedSearch to determine what tags and/or Spotlight comments are
to be added (or removed), and also checks to see whether the file
matches the remaining criteria specified in the .savedSearch (if any).
Assuming the file passes this test, a shell script call is made to
tell the openmeta command line tool to apply the necessary tags to the
file.
There are three special Tag Folders name New Tag (located in the
default Tag Folders directory), Tag Folders (located in the
Applications directory), and Tag Selected Files (located in ~/Library/
Application Support/Tag Folders). The code contained in these three
special instances is identical to any other Tag Folder, but they
behave differently than the others merely because they check their own
names and see that they are supposed to carry out special instructions
on that basis.
New Tag gathers a list of tags from the user, duplicates itself,
renames the duplicate according to the list of tags, and then modifies
the .savedSearch within the duplicate to use the list of tags as its
search criteria. Alternatively, if files are dropped onto New Tag, it
goes through the same process but with the additional step of using
the openmeta cli to tag the files to match the newly created Tag
Folder. The tricky part in all of this is configuring the .savedSearch
file properly. It is necessary to do a lot of recursive parsing and
analysis in order to do it all correctly while taking into account the
various user preferences.
Tag Selected Files simply asks Finder for its current selection, then
pops up a dialog asking what existing Tag Folder to process the files
with. Once the user make a selection, the files are processed as if
they had been dropped on the selected Tag Folder.
The Tag Folders applet stored in the Applications folder prompts the
user with several options when launched. They are all quite
straightforward, mostly just initiating other functions.
One of the cool functions I built into the Tag Folders applets is the
ability to repair certain sorts of damage to the Tag Folders
application support folder. For example, if the preferences file is
missing, or the alias to the default directory, the user will be
prompted to recreate whatever is missing. Another cool function is
that any Tag Folder stored in a directory outside of the default
directory will make an alias to itself in the default directory when
run. Additionally, when run a Tag Folder will write a copy of
its .savedSearch to the ~/Library/SavedSearches so that it is is
available to the user as a regular Smart Folder.
The next major component of Tag Folders is Tag Prompter. Tag
Prompter.app has two AppleScripts in its resources. First there is
main.scpt, which sets up and configures Tag Prompter.
TagPrompterScript.scpt is the one that actually processes files and
prompts the user to tag them when necessary. The main script installs
and configures a launch agent that watches the selected folders for
new or modified files. When a file is created or modified, the launch
agent runs TagPrompterScript.scpt to analyze whether the file needs to
be tagged. If so, the user is prompted. Once the file has been
processed, it is added to an ignore list in order to prevent the user
from being constantly re-prompted about it.
The Comment to Tag Importer mostly just does its best to parse
Spotlight Comments in order to turn them into OpenMeta tags.
Finally, the installer does just what you would expect. It is also
written entirely in AppleScript.
----
The problems that I've found so far on Lion are:
Attempting to manually edit a Smart Folder in Finder causes its search
criteria to be wiped out. This is almost certainly a bug rather than
an intentional change in Lion, but it means that if the user opens a
Tag Folder and tries to edit it, it will be immediately rendered
useless.
Dragging a file onto a Tag Folder fails to tag it.
Double-clicking a Tag Folder does not open its Smart Folder.
I suspect that 2 and 3 are related and due to some sort of problem
executing the applets themselves. Perhaps there is an error in the
code, or perhaps launching applets in Lion is buggy. Interestingly, if
I open a Tag Folder applet using AppleScript Editor and hit the run
button, the Tag Folder's corresponding Smart Folder does open as it
should. This suggests to me that the problem is not with the Tag
Folders code.
Problem number 1 is the big one, though. At first I thought that the
format for .savedSearches had been altered in Lion, though now it
appears to me that it actually has not. If I am correct about the
cause of the problem, it may only be a bug-fix by Apple that will be
able to address it.
Finally, I thank you for your kind offer of web hosting. However, I
already have a free and permanent host. The official site for Tag
Folders is tagfolders.vndv.com, which I simply set to redirect to the
me.com site for my own convenience. I merely need to republish the
site from iWeb to there and remove the redirection.
Jon
On 2011-09-06, at 4:10 AM, Jamescat wrote:
Jon,
I'm so sorry to hear that you can't continue your amazing work on Tag
Folders. However, I totally understand your situation... Labors of
love can only go on so long before the effort behind them sometimes
becomes too much to continue putting forth to overcome every new
obstacle.
However, I'd like to know some more about what you discovered to be
the problem. I am not at all sure at this juncture that I'd even be
interested in working on solving or getting around the problem
myself.... But I'd like have an idea where exactly the problem lies if
I ever did finally decide that I wanted to play with the software at
some point.
Can you explain the specifics of the issue which Lion introduced that
caused you to make this decision? -- FYI, I have experience coding
software (incl. on-again-off-again AppleScript development as needed
over the years), so feel free to be as technical as you like in your
explanation. I don't know all the details of each language I work with
necessarily, but I am more than capable of translating concepts from
my experience in one language to their implementation in another
language / environment whenever required.
[...snip...] (The remainder had to do with the hosting offer Jon
didn't need.)
---------- End of Forwarded message ----------
bjk
thank you for posting from your correspondence with Jon.
As far as I, a non-developer, can tell, this answers question (4), so
I hope this increases chances of somebody with the right skills and
who also has the will and time can take Tag Folders forward on Lion.
Again, thank you very much.
Regards,
Björn
> ...
>
> Erfahren Sie mehr »
Jon Stovell
Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the source of all the trouble is a bug in Finder that only Apple can fix. If and when they do, Tag Folders should become fully functional just as it is. Until they do, there isn't anything that anyone can do.
That said, Tag Folders does still provide its basic functionality, in that you can use New Tag to create new Tag Folders that will function correctly. But if you try to edit a Tag Folder, it will become non-functional. So as long as your needs are simple (e.g. you don't need to remove tags via drag-and-drop, filter by file properties, or anything else described in the "Modifying a Tag Folder" section of the user guide), it should still work for you. … Of course, that statement is given under the provisions of the GPL, which in summary form says that I promise you nothing and if using the software ruins your data, happiness, livelihood, or ontological status, it is not my problem.
Jon
P.S. Just to clear up some confusion, the GPL does allow people to sell software licensed under it, so long as the source code is provided. In the case of Tag Folders, of course, only a moron would pay for it, since the code is trivial to compile into a working application.
Björn Küstner
thanks for your input.
> Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the source of all the trouble is a bug in Finder that only Apple can fix. If and when they do, Tag Folders should become fully functional just as it is. Until they do, there isn't anything that anyone can do.
>
> That said, Tag Folders does still provide its basic functionality, in that you can use New Tag to create new Tag Folders that will function correctly. But if you try to edit a Tag Folder, it will become non-functional. So as long as your needs are simple (e.g. you don't need to remove tags via drag-and-drop, filter by file properties, or anything else described in the "Modifying a Tag Folder" section of the user guide),
In your mail to James the Finder bug was described like this:
>> Attempting to manually edit a Smart Folder in Finder causes its search
>> criteria to be wiped out. This is almost certainly a bug rather than
>> an intentional change in Lion, but it means that if the user opens a
>> Tag Folder and tries to edit it, it will be immediately rendered
>> useless.
I have tried to replicate the underlying problem in Lion 10.7.2 and manually edit a Smart Folder in Finder:
1- create a search folder with two criteria (name and file size)
2- test search folder => works
3- right-click on the search folder => show search criteria => criteria are shown in Finder
4- edit criteria (different name, different file size limit), save
5- test search folder => works
Am I doing something other than you? Or has Apple fixed the problem? At which step did you see the problem. Was it #3 that search criteria were not shown but wiped?
Björn