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Something what I miss in KDE and really like in Win7 ( ) is the possibilty to put all the music or video-files in one "folder", not important where they are. (local volume, network-filesystem, etc. )

I think it would be great to integrate the databases of some applications in this way.

As example: Amarok

[img]http://www3.pic-upload.de/31.10.09/2s758zjop3a.png[/img]
(musikdatenbank (german) = musicdatabase , forgot the scrollbar in the mockup

You could simply add music with "drag&drop" to the database or look at all your music-files (or video, picture, ) on your computer (things in database) without opening the specific application.

This is much faster, as example, when you just want to show some Holiday-Pictures, it is faster to navigate in Dolphin to "Picture database > Holidays > abcd " than using the normal folder-navigation.

That's it: A powerful application with a database, but very fast access with dolphin, when you don't need all these features of the powerful application.

I know it obfuscates the "real" datastructure but it is faster, and, for the most people who don't care about folderpaths and things like that, mutch easier

Good idea. Although these would probably be in the form of kio slaves which display the databases as folders and files. What you are showing in the mockup is a kpart, which dolphin does not support.

I don't like this idea because the philosophy of linux is : 1 application for 1 action.

It is said that when nepomuk and strigi get into their stride you will be able to forget about filing things properly. Personally, I hate the idea.

I'm not sure what is intended by the image of dolphin with music files - you can already drag'n'drop any folder onto Places, which gives you instantaneous access. I use this for remote folders. That seems to be what is being described with regard to holiday photos, but I don't understand the reference to the database, unless it is exactly what nepomuk is proposing to give us.

dridk wrote:I don't like this idea because the philosophy of linux is : 1 application for 1 action.

Then you should be against kio slaves in general. This is fully in line with other kio slaves, for instance akonadi and email kio slaves or applications kio slave. KDE in general goes directly against this philosophy in numerous place. For instance kio, kparts, and kontact, all of which have the capabilities of on program embedded into another. In fact there are already amarok and digikam kio slaves, but I can't get them to do anything useful.

annew wrote:That seems to be what is being described with regard to holiday photos, but I don't understand the reference to the database, unless it is exactly what nepomuk is proposing to give us.

Neither Amarok not Digikam currently use nepomuk for their databases. Amarok keeps a database of your music, and digikam of your pictures. This is to allow access to those databases outside of the respective programs.

Neither Amarok not Digikam currently use nepomuk for their databases. Amarok keeps a database of your music, and digikam of your pictures. This is to allow access to those databases outside of the respective programs.

So is this about opening their databases to nepomuk? If that's so, then I would definitely be in favour of it. While I still prefer to use my own filing system I can see the advantage of having everything indexed.

annew wrote:

Neither Amarok not Digikam currently use nepomuk for their databases. Amarok keeps a database of your music, and digikam of your pictures. This is to allow access to those databases outside of the respective programs.

So is this about opening their databases to nepomuk? If that's so, then I would definitely be in favour of it. While I still prefer to use my own filing system I can see the advantage of having everything indexed.

The BlackCat is right, that's what i meant.

I don't understand why you "hate" this idea...
When it's just an optional menu item, nobody would be forced to use it...

But for users who aren't interested in file directorys, it is easier to use.

Following the Unix philospophy, you shouldn't use amarok too (Cause amarok doesn't play only music, plugins like lyrics or wikipedia reader)

kbblak wrote:I don't understand why you "hate" this idea...

Obviously I was not clear, as I think you misunderstood what I said. I hate the idea that we should stop worrying about where on our disks (or elsewhere for that matter) we put a file, as it will all be indexed anyway. It just sets alarm bells going in my head. Lose the index and will you ever find the file? Whatever happens I shall continue to organize my files as well as I can.

That does not make me hate the idea of amarok and digikam databases being index along with the rest, in nepomuk. As far as I'm concerned, if we're going to have this functionality I want to see it available from all possible sources.

the digiKam is following this idea that we do not push photos to somekind "virtual album" what does not exist. We trust the basic functions of filesystem, folders what we use as albums. Then we just grep the metadata from files and we write that to database to get fast access, but same time write all metadata to files itself again to have thirdparty applications (all other applications what has anything to do with metadata of imagefiles) to access same information.

With digiKam (with small d and big K) user is not tied to digiKam itself. User can send all photos as such way to any other user who can open the file and see the metadata what is included. Problem actually is that usually RAW files are closed source and we can not have write support all of them. Thats why DNG is great format or sending then in other loseless format what includes metadata like PNG, TIF and JPEG2000.

And digiKam allows kio-slaves, they just dont currently work as should (I do not know about that so much, you need to ask from developers). There are like digikamalbums:/ digikamsearch:/ digikamtags:/ digikamthumbnail:/ and digikamdates:/ kio-slaves. They should work more like nepomuk that you get a lists of them like you get on digiKam itself from left sidepanel. Tags would get organized like you have build them (and so they are stored to files) so you can find fast way them.

And I suggest that we stick with the basic idea to have a one application for one purpose (that is the Unix-way, not Linux-way ) and in this case, have Amarok to manage all the music, digiKam manage all the photos and Kaffeine/Bangarang manage all the videos. And then use Dolphin to manage all those as files as well when needed with mixed functions.

Nepomuk is great but what we should tie it as well to Dolphin itself? Aren't we going to direction where we do not so much anymore control the files, but data with the applications. Like I have always liked the KDE way to allow draggin files from application to other.
Example to send photos to Email what I have currently writing, I have just dragged them from digiKam to email window. Drag music from Amarok to K3B and just pass the filemanager between.

The nepomuk is to search information from files. And allow us to build virtualgroups of them. So we could more easily manage them with different applications. Like tagging photos on digiKam to holiday and rate them. Then on Kmail just pull that information without actually even thinkin files but the memories.

Thats why I can not understand why we would like to go littlebit back in history and do everything in one application as files. Dolphin is great and needed to that we can then even manage all the information as files. As Annew said, if database is gone, we are done bretty much with all the files after many years what we have spended to collect them

It is not about doing all in one application or having everything in a database.

In fact, the idea is to have everything where it belongs and "links" between stuff in a database, i.e. Nepomuk's RDF store.

That way one can always use established means to create/get /modify content, but Nepomuk will allow additional "points of view" on it.

Like the proposed "view my music collection in a file manager".

What would be about implementing it for Konqueror?

What about symbolic links of files in these folders, together with some GUI actions would that hide the details from users? Or is there something more here that I am missing?

I prefer my file manager to be lightning fast... I thought that is why we created Dolphin in the first place - to have a dedicated file manager.

Right now even just nepomuk keeps by HD churning away continuously so much I just disabled it. I don't want to imagine Dolphin handling my Music collection as well. Personally I use MPD + QtMPC and not Amarok, plus all my music is easily accessible in a ~/Music Places entry.

This would probably be in the form of a kio slave, which means it wouldn't take resources unless you in that mode.