great software, some thoughts for improvement

[Joerg]

Hi!

I finally put my review on tag2find online on my blog japhy.at (http://www.japhy.at/usability/tagging-in-windows-xp-mit-tag2find-ein-erfahrungsbericht) today, so I won't repeat every part of it here, just some of the more important thoughts:

- Workflow

As other users already mentioned, it would be nice if tag2find could be integrated a little bit more into the standard save - dialogues. Otherwise the user has to do a seperat step to tag the files...

- Timeline

An additinal feature. Provide a timeline in the TagBrowser, so that users can (additionally to tags and file types) filter by date of creation.

- Editing Tags

Provide a function to edit tags: rename, delete, merge.
Case-sensitive tags (to me, at least ) are unnecessary ("Web2.0" vs "web2.0").

Otherwise a great app, especially for such a low version number  
Looking forward to new releases from you!

Greetings from Vienna,
Joerg

[martin]

Hi to our fellow Austrian

thank you very much for your input and your link to your blog. We really appreciate any feedback!

Regarding Workflow
It is very hard (if not impossible, I don't know yet, I have to confess) to hook in the standard default save dialog and extend it that way. If anybody got any pointers in that direction, I'd be very happy to get a hint.

Additionally, integrating in the standard dialog would for instance completely miss every Java-Swing application, as they implement their own dialogs (JFileChooser).

We decided to go a little different way and release a first preview of that with the upcoming 0.10, which will keep track of newly created files and offer the users easy possibilities to tag those new files. We are really looking forward to feedback to this approach once we release v0.10.

Regarding Timeline
Yes, we definitely plan to add such features and advanced search possibilities.

Regarding Editing Tags
You can easily manipulate tags in the "Edit Tags" pages. Renaming a tag will rename it for every file which is currently being displayed there. Of course we will work hard to make those things more powerful and more intuitive.

Regarding case-sensitive tags, this was (and still is) an issue of great debate within the team. We decided to go with case-sensitive tags first, but maybe we can make this a user-setting, so every user can decide for him/herself.

Again thanks for your feedback and thanks for the praise, we really appreciate to hear this

Best regards,
Martin

[indeterminatus]

Let me say beforehand sorry for derailing the topic.

Regarding case-sensitive tags, this was (and still is) an issue of great debate within the team. We decided to go with case-sensitive tags first, but maybe we can make this a user-setting, so every user can decide for him/herself.

Yes, please make this a user-setting. I, for one, know that I don't want to be bothered about the case of letters. Sure, one could enforce his own tagging conventions and stick to it, but this approach leaks in two respects:

1.) Human beings are prone to errors.
2.) Merging tags from other users (because files were copied) is potentially merging two different tagging conventions. The nomenclature alone will be a problem enough, so the things that could be easily avoided (like case sensitivity issues) should be. (Granted, this is future talk, but hey, I'm trying to sell a point here :-D)

[martin]

Good points.  Thanks

How would you suggest handling issues with the casing of tags? You have a tag "MyTag" and then tag something with "mytag", what should happen?

From my point of view, there are these possibilities:

1. I now have two tags, but if I search for either one of them, I get results of both... I think this is confusing...

2. The latter tag is renamed to "MyTag". What if I DO want a distinction?

3. The first tag is renamed to "mytag". What if I DO want a distinction?

This are the problems I see with case-insensitivity. I'm just trying to collect opinions here, so please don't feel attacked ;-)

Best regards,
Martin

[indeterminatus]

No worries, I'm not feeling attacked by a perfectly reasonable argument :-).

Personally, I consider tagging a level of abstraction (if it weren't, why wouldn't I use plain NTFS in the first place?), and as such, a tag represents an idea (as opposed to a physical entity like a file or a directory does). As a result, the casing (whether it's "MyTag" or "mytag" or "myTag" or ...) has no influence whatsoever on a tag's identity - it's "mytag" and not "yourtag". On a similar note, I also dislike case-sensitivity in programming languages for the same reasons.

I realize some people want the distinction between "MyTag" and "mytag". Depriving them of their possibility to do so certainly won't be applauded by them, so I guess giving the user a choice would be the most sensible approach to please both worlds. :-)

[martin]

I totally agree with you that we'll let the user decide how he'd like to handle this... The only thing I am still worried about is how to handle existing different-cased tags in the UI.

Best regards,
Martin

[indeterminatus]

Whoops, I seem to have missed your point. You can disregard my previous post. I see the problem now, but I cannot offer any ideas.

[lyle]

Hi, just want to weigh in on the case sensitive option.  I would far rather have it as a user defined setting.  I am of the same school of thought, that Mytag, MYTAG mytag all mean the same thing.  But I would sat that mytag and my tag should be seen as different tags...

[martin]

Thanks for your vote

How would you treat the display of the tag in auto-suggestion? Should it be written like the first time it was used, or the way the last time it was used? This is one of the issues I am currently undecided about.

Best regards,
martin

[lyle]

Is it not possible to force lower case?   That would resolve the issue entirely.  Or reformat to Title Case?

[martin]

Hmm, I'm not a friend a forcing users to do something. It is, however, a valid option to consider.

Thanks for the input!

Best regards,
martin

PS: you are writing faster than I can answer I think the suggestion to provide a chat will be considered shortly!

[lyle]

Heh, Just had Coffee.
I agree on not forcing users.  But if you have selected to not have case sensitive tags, then surely implementing Title Case here is fine?

[martin]

Hi,

yes, I suppose it would be fine.

Best regards,
Martin

PS: hmm, coffee.... A nice idea....

[Matt]

I would also like to get rid of case sensitivity. MyTag for me should equal mytag, Mytag, myTag, etc. I think its fine to store everything in all lowercase.

[martin]

Yes, I agree with you. We have already discussed the issues of this topic http://forum.tag2find.com/viewtopic.php?t=62, you might have a look there too. Maybe you got some new ideas how to solve the issues mentioned there.

Looking forward to your ideas!

Best regards,
Martin