tag2find integration

[Armando]

There is already a pretty good integration of tag2find with the desktop (the popup window, the file detection, the context menu entries, etc.). But it seems to me that it could benefit from even a <b>tighter explorer integration</b>.

To be more precise, aside from portability, one thing that "bothers" me is that I <b>can't see the tags while I'm in explorer or any other desktop search tools or file manager</b> :  tags are pretty much invisible unless the tag2find explorer is opened. That makes the tags and the tagging endeavor a pretty abstract thing... (That is, if you're not using tag2find.)

I think you should probably take even more into account that people (maybe the more advanced users, I don’t know), will probably not be using only tag2find to organize their data and so they might wish for tighter "interoperability" with there other organizing and searching tools (especially the most basic applications like explorer).

Let me illustrate my suggestions by adding this : one thing that I love about appending tags directly to my filenames (my current strategy) is that they’re always there and <b>visible</b>, and not that cumbersome to manipulate (change, add, remove) with a good renaming utility (BRU, Flash Renamer) and sufficient RegEx knowledge. My "filename tags" are very tangible: I can see them all the time, in explorer and any other desktop search tool, and they’re available in any other modern OS. Of course, I would very very much prefer to tag stuff, edit tags, remove, rename, add, etc., with tag2find. It’s so much more user friendly and elegant.

So… one step towards to an even better integration could be to create plug-in (for explorer and other applications) to have a column displaying the tags. Another step could be to make some kind of "tag2find plug-in SDK" which could be used to independently create plugins to search tags directly from any other applications (like Find and Run Robot, Locate 32, etc.), so that even more powerful searches could be achieved…

These are only suggestions for an already very good product, and you might already have thought about all that… and more.*

All the best,

M.

* I saw his thread include full text search in tag browser (http://forum.tag2find.com/ftopic96.html) where you mention some related ideas...external search tools, and using the tag2find entry bar to do other types of searches...

[martin]

Hi Armando,

thank you very much for your contribution. Tighter explorer integration is something we want to achieve. We are thinking in the direction of providing a details column for explorer (in Windows XP) where you can see all your attached tags, and/or a tooltip together with an overlay icon to show you tagged files.

Regarding the SDK, yes, we want to provide it in the future once we are settled with the basic features and leave "Technical Preview" stage behind. At the moment, too many things are subject to change so we do not want to release an SDK now, on the one hand because we have hardly the development resources to do so, on the other hand because things would change and we do not want other developers to "waste" their time on writting add-ins which maybe would not work in the final versions of tag2find. But in general, I really love the idea of an SDK and we are eager to provide one once the time is right.

If you pay attention to our blog at http://blog.tag2find.com this week, we are going to publish how we are going on with development and whats about to come.

Thanks again for your support and ideas. Hope you'll stay with us until the next versions are our and provide us with you good feedback again!

Best regards,
Martin

[Armando]

Thanks for the details!

I like your ideas and aims for tag2find, and I will of course closely follow the project's progress as it enfolds.

Regards,

M.