FYI

[s.lepine]

Hi All

I would like to start by saying Tag2Find is great. I have been specifically looking for a program like this and I only found one other but it sucked. I like how fast it is in finding files, how intuitive it is, and that it has a small non-obtrusive input box on the screen.

I do have some thoughts:

1. NTFS File System:
Until now I thought FAT32 was preferable over NTFS. Due to the wording Microsoft has put on the install cd's it sounds like NTFS can only handle a 2G drive and that FAT32 is the newer technology. Stupid me, I never questioned what MS was telling me. I did some searching on this forum and found no info so then searched online and found this info:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/russel_october01.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881
Hopefully that information is helpful to others who think they will have to reformat thier hard drive and it's not worth the time or energy.

2. Caps vs. no caps:
I found a debate on here about caps used in tags. I agree with what most people said. I would like to see My Tag and my tag treated as two seperate tags. With caps on My Tag would only find the one, with caps off the search would find both. I would also say though, that with the tag suggestions it's not a huge issue becuase you can see what tags have been used in the past.

3. Run on startup:
I would like the option of running the program at statup. Unfortunately my computer is running too many programs and startup is slow and doesn't always go as planned. I have taken to disabling as many startup programs as possible and starting them myself when the computer has booted.

4. Autoupdate:
I'm not sure if I saw an autoupdate. It's something I like to see in all programs becuase I never remember to check for updates.

5. Enhanced searches:
Not sure if this is possible because I havn't tried it yet. I would like to see the ability to use the "-" sign. So I could search for "high camp, -business" and I would find all files tagged "high camp" that are not tagged "business".

6. Default tag:
Right now what I'm doing is adding all files to the database and attaching the tag "untagged" then in the future as a work with files I can go and change the tag approprietly. I would love to be able to asign a default tag or be able to search for "untagged" and find all files with no tags.

7. File name search:
It would also be nice (I have a lot of requests) to be able to search within the results. For example if I search for the tag "website" I would like to search within those result for a file named "something.php". This would help if you have too many files with the same tag and also replace the current MS search funcation.

Other than those thoughts I think this is a great program with a huge market potential. Thanks very much for your hard work.

[martin]

Hi,

thanks for your very long feedback. Please allow me to go into some of your points.

Regarding NTFS / FAT32, you just got the wording of Microsoft mixed up. They see NTFS as superior to NTFS and claim that FAT32 can only handle 2GB files (which for Windows is true). FAT32 partition size is artificially limited to 32GB by Microsoft (on Linux, you can create FAT32 partitions a lot longer). The main reason we are sticking with NTFS at the moment is that it offers several technologies we require for file tracking, which include additional metadata per file, for instance.

CAPS vs no-caps: thank you for your input. It sounds like an intuitive approach.

Auto-Startup: using or not using auto-startup of tag2finds frontend application is a matter of taste, if you like it or if you do not like it. It has no negative impact on the functionality to start tag2find on demand. It is, however, vitally important that the tag2find service is set to auto-start, as without this service file tracking will be basically disabled and tags might be lost. The service is able to compensate a certain down-time (which is as long as the NTFS Change Journal can keep records), but it will try to catch up as soon as started which might take considerable time with high CPU usage if it was not consistently running, or, if entries from the NTFS Change Journal have already expired, it might even cause lost tags or our database and the filesystem to be out-of-sync.

Auto-Update: we have an new-version notification which is enabled by default. It will tell you in a so-called "Balloon Tool Tip" on the notify icon (next to your clock) that a new version is available once per day. It will also tell you that there is an update available in the TagBrowser status bar. We want to introduce a more-featured auto-update later, which will automatically download and update your version of tag2find if required.

Extended Searches: we are already working on this, especially the mentioned "-" operator for excluded tags. There are a lot of use-cases which require this and we are sure to provide this.

"Untagged": this is a great idea, it has some minor implementation consequeneces though, as we'd need to maintain an index of all files, not just the ones tagged on the file system. But you are definitely right, this would be very useful and we will try to find an efficient way of handling this.

File-Search: again I just can tell you we are working on something similar like this already. I'm really happy that you show us that we are thinking along the same lines as you, our users, for whom we are working in the end. Thanks.

Again, thanks for taking the time to write such a long post. We really appreciate any feedback! Hope to hear from you again.

Best regards,
Martin

[s.lepine]

Hey Martin

No worries about the feedback. In my opinion consumers give feedback far too little. They need to either give feedback, shut up, or start a business based a market need not being met. I also do a small amount of programming on the side for sh!ts and giggles and I have actually developed a program similiar to this.

I realized after I did some reading on NTFS that it is pretty much required for a tag based system. That's why the other program I tried sucked, becuase it was able to run on FAT32.

Here's a long term goal/idea for you. You can make your tagging system a standard or integrate with the Vista tagging system (I hear it has one that sucks). When it becomes a startard then other developers could set tags for files and programs when they're installed. For example I have tagged all my start menu programs with the name of the program and "start menu" and I would love to see all .doc tagged with "word" and all .xls tagged with "excel".

Thanks again for your hard work.