Getting books onto the iPad

[Trubu]

Originally Posted by scottjl

my only complaint is that there is going to have to be some better way for scrolling through a huge list, even left-to-right swipes to find one document out of the 20 or so I loaded into Numbers is a bit of a pain. so we still need some sort of folder metaphor.

Some smart list functionality would go a long way.

Yeah, I hope that flounders.

The traditional folder and file management systems are 100% fine.

I used to think that way, but once you get comfortable with smartlist-type management (essentially just database queries wrapped in an easy-to-use interface), trying to manually manage a rat's nest of folders full of thousands of photos or mp3s or whatever starts to seem pretty clunky - after all, computers are supposed to free us from busy work, not create more of it.

It does require a fairly major shift in thinking, though. The old file/folder metaphor is hard to let go of completely.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Trubu

It does require a fairly major shift in thinking, though. The old file/folder metaphor is hard to let go of completely.

Kovid talked a bit about this when he discussed how he structured Calibre.
I'm an old computer guy, so the file/folder metaphor is comfortable to me, so it is difficult to adjust.

My son started using computers thru websites like Flickr, and he tags everything. On the Mac, he never uses the Finder, and doesn't file stuff. Everything is tagged and searched for using Spotlight. It is just a different approach to getting stuff done-he also adjusted to the iPhone and iPad with zero difficulties.

[scottjl]

i'm an old directory guy myself, but as i collect more and more and more data, tagging and searching just becomes easier. mlocate, grep, spotlight all are handy tools.. but since we still have to put our files somewhere i do try and organize them loosely by folders by date.. my photos are all in yearly sub directories (2010, 2009, 2008) in a photos folder. at least then i can burn backup dvd's loosely organized. folder structures, for me, are great until you have 60,000+ photos you're trying to organize. i just can't worry about navigating a directory structure. throwing them all into aperture and organizing by tags, date stamps and geolocation is far faster, accurate and automated.

the only problem is migrating the collection to a new/different platform. easy to copy a directory structure over. hard to export metatags in a specific application. we need to see some standardization of metadata, or centrally locating it (in the proposed database file systems, or an outright database like oracle, mysql, sqlite).

file systems are here to stay for a while yet..

[crestfalleen]

Thanks everyone. So many answers and so much help. Again, thanks so much. I'll let my boss know.

[Trubu]

Originally Posted by scottjl

the only problem is migrating the collection to a new/different platform. easy to copy a directory structure over. hard to export metatags in a specific application. we need to see some standardization of metadata, or centrally locating it (in the proposed database file systems, or an outright database like oracle, mysql, sqlite).

file systems are here to stay for a while yet..

Agreed - I do still use a traditional folder structure for text files and other stuff that isn't necessarily easy to tag or add metadata to. But for media, I no longer worry about it at all, I just dump stuff into whatever program I'm using to manage it. It was a big step, after micro-managing for so long.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by Trubu

It does require a fairly major shift in thinking, though. The old file/folder metaphor is hard to let go of completely.

Yeah, and I'll freely agree that I'm one of those stuck in my ways folk that's resistant to change.

I don't have any busy work with the file/folder system. I keep things very organized from the get go and always have with very clear folders, sub folders etc. so it's not like I ever have to create a directory from scratch etc. It's just gradually built up over the years, backed up and moved to every new computer I have.

I'd be very resistant to moving to any kind of smart list or database type system vs. being able to manually manage my files. So I hope any moves in that direction are optional and can be turned off--like turning the start menu, control panel etc. in Windows XP
back to classing Windows 95 style!


But I will say I'm mostly talking about documents, data files etc. for my research and teaching work. I don't have a lot of media content. I don't take a lot of pictures so that's easy to manage. I just make a folder for each set of photos (say each vacation etc.).

Music I just use iTunes--it puts it in folders by artist and album which is how I'd do it myself anyway--so still easy to move to different computers etc.

Video is moot as I don't do digital video. Mainly stick with my DVR and Bluray/dvd for video needs, anything on the PC is just streaming video.

So I can see the tagging system etc. more for media files. Just not a good solution IMO for documents, databases, powerpoint files, pdfs etc. IMO.