mattjhussey

Annoyingly, Google Drive actually works like this but they don't provide the UI to make use of it. A note/file, or even a folder, can be nested inside multiple folders. An invoice could be inside the "Tax Return 2019" folder and also the "Invoices" folder. It's the same item; if you edit it in one place it's edited in both. If files are treated as notes and folders as tags, you get the best of both worlds. A folder structure for specific organisation, and multiple locations for accessing files in different contexts and allow slicing of sets. The problem is that they don't provide a simple way of saying "search for things in folder A and folder B". It's possible to do but you need to capture some Identifiers to put in the search window. It's a shame because it's free when using their file formats and provides OCR of images and PDFs for free, plus you can have spreadsheets, Coda files and presentations all in one place. I'm at the point where I'm considering writing a mobile app to give me that UI and allow for better cutting of the data.

Thanks for your replies. Sorry for not getting back sooner but I've not been at a computer for a while and really wanted to sit and read instead of use my phone. I see about features vs "is a" but things like music have numerous categories that are fusions of more than one patent. Progmetal is both prog rock and metal for example, but prog rock and metal would be cousins or siblings, so wouldn't be in the same parent child line within a hierarchy. I'm sure I could think of others but it's essentially similar to the diamond inheritance problem in software. Reverting to tags of features could address this in a similar way to using Interfaces in software but sometimes it still gets ugly. I can't always get to my computer and nested tags don't show up properly in my phone so it's not really an option. If need to leave them flat to work on my devices. I definitely agree with this. A year is not a sub tag of journal, taxes, etc. This would only apply when the sub tag is always an entity of its parent. Notes with the tag "2018" are a different set of notes to those with the tag "journal". On a Venn diagram they are potentially overlapping. However, all notes with "Tiger" exist within the set "cat". Using the tag "Tiger" just narrows the focus within the already selected set, while "2018" takes another slice through it.

This is exactly what I need. Unfortunately I'm not on mac but something like this may help a lot.

Thanks for your reply. This was more an example of how a tag can have multiple parents and what I can do about it. I actually store my photos elsewhere. If I tagged something as tiger, I'd also want it tagged as animal and also as cat because a tiger is always a cat and always an animal. That seems like a lot of work and I'd definitely forget to do it when creating a new note. Tagging it as "animal.cat.tiger" would fix that, except that tiger can have more than one parent. Using simple tags would work except I would lose seeing some tigers when looking at animals, if I forget to tag them. This could also be "languages.compiled.cpp", "languages.clike.cpp". Again it has two, or more, suitable parent groups that it will always be in.

I'm just looking for some advice on how I can organise some tags. Say I have some photos, I could have a tag "image" and also a tag "image.jpeg", because all jpegs are images so I will have no problem with subtagging. If I then have some photos of animals, I can have the tag "animal" and then I may also have a tag "animal.cats" and then another "animal.cats.tigers". All tigers are cats, all cats are animals, so it would work if I typed "tag:animal.*". However, how do I handle that tigers can also be inside "animal.endangered" and "animal.carnivore" and "animal.dangerous"? I could create "animal.endangered.tigers", "animal.carnivore.tigers", "animal.dangerous.tigers" but I then have "tigers" in multiple places, and without the ability to search for "tag:*tiger*" I won't be able to easily find them all. Is there anyway to get around this?