[OS X] Re: MacFuse

[Andy Jacobson]

Hi Karl,

Thanks for the pointer!  Coincidentally, I just watched Amit Singh's  
"google tech talk" where he presents his MacFUSE work.  I'm  
definitely going to check out macfusion, because the very idea of an  
sshfs lights up all kinds of ideas in my head.

Allow me to digress about another potential use of MacFUSE.  I've  
been thinking a lot about "tagging" recently; that's the idea of  
associating keywords with files so spotlight can use them.  These  
tags get stored in the metadata that each file has on OS X, and  
spotlight indexes that metadata...so if you can find a way to  
conveniently add tags to files then you can use the tags as search  
parameters for spotlight.  Importantly, a given file can have any  
number of tags, so this goes a long ways towards ridding us of the  
hierarchical system of putting files in project-specific folders.   
The problem with this, of course, is that a given file could  
reasonably belong to many such folders.

The same problem exists with organizing mail messages.  Do you sort  
them by project?  By recipient?  I've decided that I'm just going to  
keep annual folders and let spotlight do the heavy lifting.  This  
works great to search for sender/recipient or known free-text, but  
could be made much more useful if my messages had tags.  In fact  
third-party solutions for this do exist, but I'm loathe to add a  
dependency on somebody else; it's enough work already to keep up with  
Apple's constant changes.

I'd like to have drop-dead simple way of tagging mail messages, files  
that already exist on disk, and files that I'm just now creating.   
I've looked at the Mail.app plugin "Mailtags", the stand-alone file  
tagging app "tagbot", and now with MacFUSE I'm thinking about  
"TagFS" (http://www.tagsistant.net/).  TagFS would allow you to copy  
files to some virtual directory on a /tag filesystem.  You could make  
directories for each colleague/author/correspondent and copy their  
articles, presentations, or perhaps even mail messages to that  
directory.  Of course there would be no real copying, so space would  
not be an issue.

Apple's already provided all the infrastructure with spotlight and  
file metadata.  We just need a simple interface to make tagging easy  
to use.  I'm quite ready to stop spending so much of my time looking  
for files whose names and locations I've forgotten.

Cheers,

Andy

On May 5, 2008, at 1:41 AM, Karl Stein wrote:

> You might want to include a mention of macfuse on your website.  
> (http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/)
>
> I've found that macfusion is a significantly better gui front end  
> than sshfs, which is listed on the above site. (http:// 
> www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/mgorbach/MacFusionWeb/)
>
> Also, your site was extremely helpful for me when I was setting up  
> my new mac.  Thanks!
>
> Karl
>
> ______________________
> Karl J. Stein
> University of Hawaii, SOEST
> Dept. of Oceanography
> 1000 Pope Road
> Honolulu, HI 96822
> (808) 956-2018
>
>
> There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former  
> begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
> --Hippocrates
>
>

--
Andy Jacobson
andy.jacobson at noaa.gov

NOAA Earth System Research Lab
Global Monitoring Division
325 Broadway
Boulder CO 80305

303/497-4916