[Appeal] tag-based desktop

[Kai Becker]

Hi Appeal team,

the following is just an idea I had in my mind for the last few weeks. So I
finally sat down and refined the strong points of it. I don't know if my ideas
are doable from a technical view, so please feel free to tell me.

Motivation
----------
My motivation comes from the fact that I'm rather poor at organising files while
creating them and I have to spend a lot of time organising them afterwards. One
reason is of course my laziness, others are the missing flexbility of a
directory hierarchy and the huge number of files that just come from
everywhere.
Instead of creating revolutionary ideas myself, I wondered where else do we have
to cope with large amount of "files/data/whatever".
Emails came to my mind. The traditional email client has folders, too, but it
also has filters (we come to those later).  Google went a step further with
their labels, making it possible to have one message in multiple contexts.
Search folders/virtual folders in desktop mail clients serve the same purpose.
You could still use folders, but actually I don't see a point in that anymore.
Tags (Google calls them labels) replace them.

Interface
---------
I don't know if I want to keep folders or not, but at first folders and tags
could live side by side. But the access to the tags would be different. I
imagine a hierarchical "tag bar" on the right side of the screen showing all
top level tags by name (they could also have a specific colour/icon/etc).
Example:
-holiday
  - by date
	- 2004
	- 2005
  - by location
	- europe
	- asia
	- america
and so on.
Single Click opens the list for that tag.
Right Click gives you edit options.
If you hover over a tag it shows you a different button which opens a window
with all items carrying that tag.

How to tag items:
-----------------

Method A
Probably technically impossible:
Every KDE app features a "TagIt menu" where you can enable or disable the tags.
Pro:
You can tag right out of the application
Contra:
Probably impossible
I like Method B better (don't know why)

Method B
Drag'n'Drop
* Drag the Tag from the TagBar on any item
* Drag an item into an open tag window
* Drag an item onto the TagBar
When you single click on a Tag on the TagBar, the cursor should change and you
can draw a "select rectangle" around items which are then tagged. You can also
drop the tag onto an application. The file that is open right now in that
application is tagged.


Advanced Ideas
--------------
Remember the filters? It would be nice if there could be some autotagging.
Examples:
*Received files via different communication channels (email, im, irc) could be
tagged (tags based on file extension, name of the sender in the adressbook,
date, ...)
*Manual defined filters: All files downloaded from kde-apps.org are tagged as
"source code". You might even add certain actions to it (unpack, change into
the directory, ./configure && make). This could become a powerful feature!


Taggable (what a word ..) should be everything:
kio-slave adresses (files, urls, ..), applications, settings
You could have task centered desktops, for example you activate the tag
projects/foobar for your virtual desktop and you have the needed apps for that
project in your kicker and other settings are activated (close im app, change
network settings, whatever you can think of).


This are just the thoughts of a plain vanilla user, maybe you find something
useful/inspiring in it.

Kai Becker
(i'm german, so I hope you had at least some fun reading my english *G*)


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