"Virtual Locations" or what?

[admin]

Okay, I already hinted at the new upcoming killer hype "Virtual Locations". Here's a quick explanation. I currently plan 3 types of VLocs:

(1) Tags: Tags (or patterns matching tags) can be addressed as "locations" (and used for everything locations can be used to in XY!). Syntax:

Code: Select all

tag:red
tag:r*
tag:red; gr*; *x
tag:red?a* (= all items with tag red and beginning with "a"! :mrgreen: ... know what I mean...)
etc.

Files will be read directly from tag.dat in supersonic zero-time!

(2) Comments: Same story with Comments.

(3) Data Files: And again almost same story with any file containing a simple list of path/filenames. Syntax:

Code: Select all

dat:MyFiles.dat (default path <xydata>\vloc)
dat:C:\MyFiles.dat
dat:\\server\share\MyFiles.dat
etc.

(FYI, this is en passant 90% of Search Results caching!, hehe)

ABSOLUTELY REVOLUTIONARY AND TERRIBLY AWSOME.

Now I saw that the term "Virtual Locations" is already used in Windows 7 for something (not sure what). Arrgh! So, I'd like your opinion:

(a) So what, use "Virtual Locations" anyway!
(b) Here's better term: ______________ (careful, I'm almost convinced that "Virtual Locations" is hard to top! )

[jacky]

Oh yeah, that sounds awesome!!

So this is Drop Stacks basically, right? And we can eve have items listed in the order we want ! (And with the data files thingy, awesome BTW, cached SR is pretty much done indeed!)

Seriously cool, and yes Virtual Locations sounds good to me (no idea what it means in W7 either), or maybe Virtual Folders is a common term for such things I think. I think VL is better though (and not just cause VF means something else already )

Quick question: Will it be possible to add such locations on (Mini)Tree ? That would really be cool, too!

[admin]

Quick question: Will it be possible to add such locations on (Mini)Tree ? That would really be cool, too!

Well, if it's cool it can be done. (Rule #1 in XY development).

[TheQwerty]

I think "Virtual Locations" is very misleading as to the end result. These aren't new locations and I think this could be an eventually confusing name if it's being used in Windows for something else.

"Virtual Folders" is closer in that it leads the user to imaging that Tags/etc. can group files and you can see all items in the group.

Personally, "Collections" seems to best describe the function, and the name should probably contain some synonym of that. Also, going with that train of thought there is nothing Virtual about it, so I feel that could be dropped.

Some thoughts:
"Item Collections"
"User Collections"
"User Collected Items"
"User Item Groups"
hmmm...

[admin]

I think "Virtual Locations" is very misleading as to the end result. These aren't new locations and I think this could be an eventually confusing name if it's being used in Windows for something else.

"Virtual Folders" is closer in that it leads the user to imaging that Tags/etc. can group files and you can see all items in the group.

Personally, "Collections" seems to best describe the function, and the name should probably contain some synonym of that. Also, going with that train of thought there is nothing Virtual about it, so I feel that could be dropped.

Some thoughts:
"Item Collections"
"User Collections"
"User Collected Items"
"User Item Groups"
hmmm...

"Location" is a (XY-specific) functional term, let's say a role. Many things that are not locations in the common Windows sense work as locations in XY. You can browse to them, open tabs at them, point favorites to them, search them, drop files to them, etc. ... It's not a location on your harddisk or file system, that's why there's the "virtual". Maybe virtual is a good term for it, but "pseudo locations" sounds a bit negative...

With such important features, technical description has to blend with promotional flashiness. The result is often a term that you only understand after you have seen the thing (but then never forget) . "Item Collections" just does not sound like a killer feature to me...

[j_c_hallgren]

I'm still a little bit fuzzy on what this would refer to, so am wondering whether competing products have anything similar and what they call it?
Upd: Dir Opus calls it "File Collections" it seems.

Ideally, we need a term that shows up in Google as relatively unique, and "Virtual Locations" doesn't do that, with 440K results...

"Virtual Folders" as described by wikipedia seems generic enough and also eliminates the non-software (photos, etc) results that 'Locations' creates...however it has 573K Google hits.

Trying other variants, I see "Dynamic Virtual Folders" being used by a "FileBoss" file mgr product (unknown to me before just now), and that has 262K hits so getting better...looks similar to what we intend.

Also tried "Dynamic Folders" as quoted and got only 4K of hits..but unquoted, it's a whopping 3.8M hits...

Ok, so using the "Stack" idea...tried "Virtual Stack Folders" and only got ONE hit! At least when using a quoted string...unquoted gave 110K hits.
Thus maybe a variant would work: "Virtual Stack/Folders"?

That would also address the issue of when it's not really a folder but a collection of other items.

BTW, my Google search is limited to 7 major languages, so others may see more hits than I did above.

[serendipity]

After much searching and researching I also agree that Virtual location would be the best. Just that location can be replaced by something else, dont know what. Maybe items? content? files and folders? hmmm cant make my mind.

[admin]

I'm still a little bit fuzzy on what this would refer to, so am wondering whether competing products have anything similar and what they call it?
Upd: Dir Opus calls it "File Collections" it seems.

Ideally, we need a term that shows up in Google as relatively unique, and "Virtual Locations" doesn't do that, with 440K results...

"Virtual Folders" as described by wikipedia seems generic enough and also eliminates the non-software (photos, etc) results that 'Locations' creates...however it has 573K Google hits.

Trying other variants, I see "Dynamic Virtual Folders" being used by a "FileBoss" file mgr product (unknown to me before just now), and that has 262K hits so getting better...looks similar to what we intend.

Also tried "Dynamic Folders" as quoted and got only 4K of hits..but unquoted, it's a whopping 3.8M hits...

Ok, so using the "Stack" idea...tried "Virtual Stack Folders" and only got ONE hit! At least when using a quoted string...unquoted gave 110K hits.
Thus maybe a variant would work: "Virtual Stack/Folders"?

That would also address the issue of when it's not really a folder but a collection of other items.

BTW, my Google search is limited to 7 major languages, so others may see more hits than I did above.

Thanks for the research! But I don't like "Virtual Stack Folders" -- sounds obscure to me.

After a good night's sleep I must say that I can live very well with "Virtual Folders". It's a well established term that meets the thing in my mind quite perfectly:

"In computing, a virtual folder generally denotes an organizing principle for files that is not dependent on their physical location in a folder. Instead, they consist of scripts that coalesce results from a data store, which may be a database or a custom index, and presents them visually in the format in which folder views are presented."

The only PITA is: VF is already used by Visual Filters. So it would be probably VFO (looks a bit like UFO, okay for me). VFO is also a Variable-Frequency Oscillator which is quite a nice analogy...

[TheQwerty]

Upd: Dir Opus calls it "File Collections" it seems.

At least someone agrees with me that this would be better named Collections.. shame it's no one here!

Looks like Microsoft was calling an only slightly similar feature "Virtual Folders" in Vista and then realized it was a crappy name and changed it to "Libraries" for Windows 7.

[graham]

I can relate this feature with my email client TheBat as it seems very similar. Firstly yes its an email program but is a file manager of email as well. It call folders that are physically named as Virtual Folders but they do not physically reside on disc. There are no limit to the number of VF's. They can be coloured, have collection properties which actually relate well to tags in XY but also go a stage further to include other fields thus one can set up a VF to show all emails with (attachments > n & not parked) or even have many combined conditional tests. Selecting an email in a VF behaves exactly as in the real folder (well it is using links the real folder, I guess).

Ok for XY, VF seems appropriate but I would love to see the opportunity to exploit this to include other list column data fields. Yes it will be slow to process the folder initially if there are lots of test conditions but this is the price paid to get power and lets face it it should not unduly affect normal file processing unless required. I guess I may be leaping into the future, but why not?

[admin]

Ok for XY, VF seems appropriate but I would love to see the opportunity to exploit this to include other list column data fields. Yes it will be slow to process the folder initially if there are lots of test conditions but this is the price paid to get power and lets face it it should not unduly affect normal file processing unless required. I guess I may be leaping into the future, but why not?

I'm not sure what you mean. Sounds like search to me. If you mean cached searches, this will come soon.

[admin]

FYI: VLOC or VFO, whatever -- I decided to leave this to v7.90.0200.

Now I'm publishing v7.90.0100...

[graham]

admin wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean. Sounds like search to me. If you mean cached searches, this will come soon.

Clearly the VF thing has to evolve using tagged files as you are doing. Search - yes but a whole lot more!

Once VF's are working via tags it seemed to me that you could then provide (exploit) the ability for a user to create a new VF using the same concept of tags VF's but this time the VF is just a named space but would have properties. This creation is exactly like adding a new folder right now (ctrl+N) - lets call it (ctrl +VF). The VF properties could then be used to identify tags, fields, and relationships into which the files that matched would become the content of the VF. So yes I guess this is a search but more so in that the VF contains and maintains (auto updates) in a db the files that match the criteria with no further user intervention. As new files arrive on disk if they match the criteria then the VF db includes them or if they are deleted they are removed, plus of course db maintenance (check up?).


Sorry if this is not very clear - bad migraine!

[admin]

admin wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean. Sounds like search to me. If you mean cached searches, this will come soon.

Clearly the VF thing has to evolve using tagged files as you are doing. Search - yes but a whole lot more!

Once VF's are working via tags it seemed to me that you could then provide (exploit) the ability for a user to create a new VF using the same concept of tags VF's but this time the VF is just a named space but would have properties. This creation is exactly like adding a new folder right now (ctrl+N) - lets call it (ctrl +VF). The VF properties could then be used to identify tags, fields, and relationships into which the files that matched would become the content of the VF. So yes I guess this is a search but more so in that the VF contains and maintains (auto updates) in a db the files that match the criteria with no further user intervention. As new files arrive on disk if they match the criteria then the VF db includes them or if they are deleted they are removed, plus of course db maintenance (check up?).

Sorry if this is not very clear - bad migraine!

Auto-Tagging the whole file system? Now I get migraine too!

But if you want to hear crazy ideas, I got any number of them. What about this: A Scripted List Column! A new column "Script", and you can write and select a script used to fill it. E.g. show the first 40 characters of each file, image dimensions, bit-rates, etc... well, I said crazy...

[graham]

crazy - yes but only if taken literally - clever people make crazy work - who ever thought someone could design electronics based on uncertainty -