OpenMeta support

[JayB]

Are there any plans to add OpenMeta support to Nimble Commander?

I.e. tagging files/directories, reading/displaying or deleting those tags, creating and naming custom tags/tag-classes (apart from the standard colors) etc.

NC is already able to detect the com.apple.metadata:_KMDItemUserTags, so I assume my question isn't too far out.

[mike]

Are there any plans to add OpenMeta support to Nimble Commander?
I.e. tagging files/directories, reading/displaying or deleting those tags, creating and naming custom tags/tag-classes (apart from the standard colors) etc.

Very unlikely in any foreseeable future.

NC is already able to detect the com.apple.metadata:_KMDItemUserTags, so I assume my question isn't too far out.

Actually it is not, NC uses only FS-level information when talking to native vfs, no metadata is involved.
I'm very reluctant to adding of metadata support on regular level, since Spotlight (MD* stuff) facilities are painfully slow and that will hit performance severely.

[JayB]

I'm very reluctant to adding of metadata support on regular level, since Spotlight (MD* stuff) facilities are painfully slow and that will hit performance severely.

That's what I feared.

[JayB]

Rixstep has introduced Rixtag, which does it kinda how I envisioned it: http://rixstep.com/1/20170808,00.shtml … test drive download via ftp: http://rixstep.com/4/0/rixtag/

The app doesn't use the macOS default tags (OpenMeta: com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags), but creates its own extended attribute com.rixstep.Rixtag. It's an xml plist, converted to binary plist and written to a xattr called "com.rixstep.Rixtag" as hexadecimal. Since the original content is a plist, one xattr can contain as many tags as the user wants, e.g. <string>movies</string> <string>war</string> <string>english</string> <string>2017</string> <string>4k</string> <string>Nolan</string> etc.

In the Rixtag app the user just selects the tags he wants, and he gets all the associated files, no matter their location. Problem is: it's a dedicated app, it's not part of the file browser/manager. But the Rixtag app uses some form of database, maybe something related to locate/find, coupled with a scan for only the com.rixstep.Rixtag attribute. It's definitely not md/spotlight, because in Rixtep it seems that the user needs to refresh the database. (With Spotlight the system would do that automatically.) EDIT: afaik, you can build alternate additional locate databases, i.e. you don't need to rely on the one at /var/db/locate.database

So it seems that in order to have speed with tags, you can't use Spotlight and macOS default Finder tags, but some equivalent of the find/locate command, a proprietary extended attribute, and a dedicated scan only for that proprietary attribute. Transposed for Nimble Commander, NC could basically run the occasional update in the background with a decent nice factor. Then the user only needs to open a "tag window" or "tag tab" in NC, and it has all files tagged with the proprietary xattr, and then it's standard search operation, like searching for filenames, only here searching for tags, plus an option to untag a file. (Might need some tweaking to search for several tags.) In the normal file system the user would then only need a command (menu or contextual menu) to tag a file (with selection list or input option for new tag title), and then it would pop up in the "tagged file list".

(Maybe some food for thought.)

[piratx]

Well, wouldn't expect someone all ready said something like this ^. Thank you.
My issue or problem with NC is always the coloring (yes those colors Apple ditched to bring tags) I had always needed to move files from here to there and those was long copies.
So I was doing parts on those into disks.

A good example to get this:
I have a NAS which has a huge amount of space. So in there I send files to a folder named: dropbox, backups etc. And then those (when I need the extra space or I want them to go offline) are moved to one or plenty of disks to be saved for future use or just cold storage.
When a backup folder have many of those files its not easy to know where you where before the last copy (which in my case, might was on 2 days ago or 1 etc).



Instead in Finder you can see those green dots (means those are moved - you can delete them if you like)



I would really grateful for something like this on NC, just something that will translate the tag color from Finder to Nimble Commander would be great to have. Tags can work to, maybe an option on Date Added/Modified/Accessed, Kind menu on each window/tab which will give tags option or "simple" Date Moved/Copied.. I hope I am not confusing or anything with those sentences.

Thanks in advance!