[UFO Chicago] alternative ways of locating files

[Brian Sobolak]

On Wed, February 3, 2010 12:24 am, Jordan Bettis wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 09:07:21PM -0600, Brian Sobolak wrote:
>>
>> I've found that I have various techniques for reasonably organizing my
>> files so that I can quickly find what I need.  But sometimes I forget,
>> especially for older things.
>>
>> Usually though I can remember this either by location or *when* I worked
>> on it.  Yet short of using `find` and searching, I wonder if there is
>> tool
>> that organizes your filesystem into a view sorted by last modified time?
>
> You can do 'find . -mtime 1 -mtime +5'

True, but it's rarely something I worked on in the last five days that is
the issue.  it's more like 200 days ago.

>> I recall that OLPC allowed people to find files by tag (instead of by
>> filesystem location).  Does it offer other UI improvements?
>
> I believe Nautilus lets you 'tag' files. Like most things in Gnome, it
> works by storing your tags in some XML blob that's an affront to all
> that knows joy in this world.
>

I don't really mind how it does it -- it might as well be a BDB blob too
for all it matters to me.  The bigger issue (that I recall) is Nautilus is
incredibly inefficient.  Unless it's really improved, it used to be a
massive hog of resources.

(remember in 2000 when XML was going to save the world? You can READ it!!!)

I looked last night at some of the pieces for OLPC.  It looks like it
would do what I'm looking for, but works at a pretty low-level and not as
a stand-alone app.

It continues to amaze me that there are more nuanced tools for finding
files besides navigating a file tree.  When you look at people's
computers, and how much frustration it causes for most, it surprises me
that more isn't done.  I often think people email files in corporations
just so they can find them later.

brian


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