[Owncloud] Mounting External Storage

[Michael Gapczynski]

On Tuesday, February 21, 2012 12:10:42 PM Frank Karlitschek wrote:
> On 21.02.2012, at 10:16, Arthur Schiwon <blizzz at owncloud.com> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 February 2012 10:04:49 Klaas Freitag wrote:
> >> On 20.02.2012 23:21, Tom Needham wrote:
> >>>> On 20.02.2012, at 22:11, Michael Gapczynski<mtgap at owncloud.com>  wrote:
> >>>> 
> >>>> However, I can also
> >>>> invision having the files from Dropbox and Google Docs showing up in
> >>>> the
> >>>> root of the filesystem with an indicator of their respective external
> >>>> locations. During the upload or file creation process the user would be
> >>>> presented with a choice of where to store the file. This feels more
> >>>> natural to me than a directory system and could prevent problems with
> >>>> locating files.
> >>> 
> >>> I think that mounting all of the storage backends into the root folder
> >>> might even be easier for the end user, if we can make the ui work well.
> >>> If everything was mounted in folders /dropbox /google /ftp I think end
> >>> users would get confused where their files were actually being stored
> >>> and
> >>> could loose track of things.
> >> 
> >> Thats right, unexperienced  users which we also like to see in ownCloud
> >> often do not understand the directory concept, especially not if they
> >> did not create the directory nor understand their name: One will
> >> understand a "Letters to Tina" folder way better than a suddenly
> >> appearing "FTP" directory.
> > 
> > Agree
> 
> Sure. But keep in mind that not everybody is using the webinterface. If a
> user using WebDAV, the Mobile Client or the Desktop Syncing Client the user
> has no idea where a file comes from or where it is physically stored. There
> is also no obvious way to move it around between different locations. If I
> mount my work ownCloud into my private ownCloud I would prefer to have this
> clearly separated and not mixed together. But perhaps thats only me :-)
> 
> >> Most users today have search centric behaviour, driven by google. Google
> >> does not have directories, you just searhch and find. Even if we store
> >> data in dirs and mount into directories (which we need for tech reasons
> >> I think) maybe we should think more in the direction of creating various
> >> views on the files structure. For example, an alternative to the current
> >> file-page of ownCloud could be a page with just a search field. If one
> >> enters "Tina" all files from the "Letters to Tina" dir are presented.
> > 
> > I like this idea. In the end, wouldn't we follow the ideas of Nepomuk in a
> > certain way?
> 
> Absolutely. Thats definitely the goal but we probably need a few more month
> for that :-)
> >>> Perhaps we could also enhance the idea of 'labelling' (or maybe better
> >>> 'tagging') of files to make it easier to search for files (much like
> >>> bookmarks). This would make it easy for example to show everything
> >>> stored
> >>> on dropbox, or everything that you are sharing...
> >> 
> >> Yes, tags are one of the search criteria often used.
> >> 
> >>> It's certainly an interesting topic :)
> >> 
> >> Yes, and one which is technically hard to tackle but one that really can
> >> make ownCloud even more exciting.
> >> 
> >> Klaas
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Owncloud mailing list
> >> Owncloud at kde.org
> >> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Owncloud mailing list
> > Owncloud at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud
> 
> Frank Karlitschek
> karlitschek at kde.org
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Owncloud mailing list
> Owncloud at kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud

I like the concept of Nepomuk and I've started to use it more often on my 
ownnd desktop. I don't think we should follow the ideas, but rather try to 
work with Nepomuk in the future.

WebDAV of course does get in the way with these ideas, but it already presents 
an issue with sharing, which is limited to the web interface. I don't think 
we're stuck though because there is the possibility to add service menus to 
many file managers; Dropbox already does this for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I 
think that something like this could be bundled with the sync client. 

I'll start off with just mounting at a folder. 


Michael