Re: ITagProvider

["Joe Shaw" <joe joeshaw org>]

Hi,

On 10/2/07, Kevin Kubasik <kevin kubasik net> wrote:
> Agreed, tracker could technically be the tagging backend/provider.

Sure.  I have pondered writing a Tracker backend for Beagle in the past.

> > (2) Tagging really has nothing to do with desktop search and indexing.
> >  Tags should be indexed by the indexer and made available through
> > search, but fundamentally they're no more related than metadata in
> > MP3s, JPEGs, emails, etc.
> >
> I agree that they _shouldn't_ be treated differently, however, the
> inherent complexity

What's the inherent complexity?

> > I agree wholeheartedly with this, and it's the reason why I wrote the
> > Nautilus metadata backend in the trunk.  A tagging library backend
> > could fit pretty cleanly into this mold.
> There were 2 issues I found with this model, they could be just a
> matter of implementation.
>
> 1) We are still bound to a single backend system, intelligently
> handling universal desktop tagging would be quite difficult.

I'm not sure what the context of "backend" here is.  I think a desktop
library would handle more than just files -- it'd be URI based like
Beagle -- so it could handle emails, web pages, etc.

If you mean things like pulling from del.icio.us, then you'd just
create a separate Beagle backend.  One for the local library and one
for del.icio.us.  With all the focus GNOME is giving to the Online
Desktop metaphor, there's no reason why the local database and a
remote database like del.icio.us couldn't be sync'd independent of
Beagle.

> 2) Data replication, as well as sync/performance issues with users who
> actually utilize tags (think thousands of tagged files).

What's the concern specifically here?  The database will have to be
timestamped somehow to make offline change notification reasonably
performant.

Joe