Re: [Usability] spatial nautilus concerns, revisited

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel borgmann gmail com>]

On 5/12/05, Diego Moya (a.k.a. TuringTest) <turingt gmail com> wrote:
> > Are you hinting at projects like Beagle & LaunchBox as one possible
> > future for Gnome file "management"?
> >
> 
> Actually that's the Next Big Thing in document management. The
> technology is mature for that and it will be a major improvement in
> computers usability. Many people have already realized that, and some
> of them are in charge of important software development
> companies/movements.
> 
> Direct access to the file system is only good for storing hierarchical
> information, but most information recall is done by associative memory
> and best accessed through associative retrieval tools (a.k.a.
> searching by content/properties/metadata/keywords)  and navigating by
> relations (a.k.a. del.icio.us "related tags").
> 
> I predict that all major Desktop environments will organize user
> information that way in at most two years from now. Mac OS X is
> already there, since the release of Tiger with Spotlight.

I do not think that it will totally replace spatial file management.
For accessing information, certainly. But for accessing documents for
work, what can be faster than what is right in front of you?
Practically speaking, folders are just a special kind of document and
there has to be a way to display and edit them (note that this does
not force you to actually use them). I think that spatial Nautilus is
the best tool for this job. This is also the reason why I see no point
in any kind of hybrid approach. If anything, it should replace the
traditional browser IMO.
The only scenario under which spatial folders would become totally
obsolete would be a scenario where documents can't have a physical
location anymore. I don't know why this should be an advantage though,
as both approaches can compliment each other nicely (and for some use
cases, like programming, it will be essential for a long time to
come).