Re: [Epiphany] Bookmarks (was Armchair Dev...)

[Peter Harvey <pah06 uow edu au>]

On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 16:56, Steve McKay wrote:
> Wow, you have to say something really contrary to get noticed around 
> here. I feel complled to reiterate (from my previous message) that 
> heirarchical structures by-and-large SUCK for infomation retrieval. 
> There are always multiple points in any given heirarchy where a single 
> entry belongs. It is, in fact, the multi-topical aspect of epiphany 
> bookmarks that made me realize that epiphany is clearly on the right 
> path with the meta-info based bookmark approach.
> 
> Don't waver and don't pay excessive heed to the heirarchical zealots. 
> Keep on the path, brother. Thou art righteous in your topical approach.
> 
> ;-)
> 

I'll quietly add my opinion here as well. As a user, I do find
Epiphany's approach to bookmarks really brilliant. Allowing a bookmark
to exist in multiple categories is fantastic, and when I create a
bookmark it's really simple to do (just check the topics that apply).

However, I am reaching a point now where the complete lack of
hierarchies is becoming a problem. For example, when doing research it's
nice to keep a bookmark for the individual websites of people relevant
to your research area. It's also nice to keep bookmarks for people in
your faculty. Then it's nice to bookmarks your friends websites. And
then ... I'm finding I want to have a category called "People" with
sub-categories for each possible way I think of that person (Faculty,
Friends, CSP Research, Agents Research, etc.).

As Epiphany has shown, I will most likely put the same person into
multiple categories. But as my list of bookmarked personal websites
grows longer, I know that I need a hierarchy.

In a similar vein, I'd like to bookmark my reference documentation by
sub-categories (Programming, Constraints, Web, etc). So we have two
examples here where shallow hierarchies are useful. I will say that I
loved the idea put forward by Eric Newman for auto-detecting the
hierarchy (http://mozdev.org/pipermail/epiphany/2003-August/000093.html)
though I am concerned that it wouldn't work well in practise.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

-- 
Peter Harvey.
Mostly Quiet.