[MPMoriarty]

I use the "Comments" metadata tag extensively in Mac OS X. I use it to provide a simple couple word summary for my PDF files and such. I also use it as a way to relate the file to other files I have on my system.

For example...

If I have a PDF file and two Word files that all are related to this project I am working on, I simply put the project name in all of their comment tags.

Currently, you can't even search for any data in this field using the Finder's search mechanism (CMD-F). Why? I don't know.

Since Spotlight can index and search just about everything, has Apple allowed SpotLight to index this part of a file's metadata.

This is very important because this could make my life so much easier since I usually have all my files spread all over in my system.

While I realize those who do have TIGER are under an NDA, a simple yes/no would go a long way.

And if it isn't, could someone who does have TIGER please suggest it to Apple as a future feature.

I have already sent feedback, but the more the merrier.

Mike

[fireside]

i would assume it does

[gorickey]

Yes.

[MPMoriarty]

Originally posted by gorickey:
Yes.

Ah, thank you.

I am glad that Apple decided to go the whole nine yards with SpotLight and index everything...including the "comments" metadata tag. I have been waiting forever for a way to search for the information I type in this field.

You see, why it is important for me is because the "comments" tag is user-definable. I can put whatever information I want in there:

- Project names the file is related to.
- Summary of what the file contains (great for taking a quick glance at a bunch of PDFs)
- Who exactly sent me the file

I know now that SpotLight is going to really improve my productivity and lessen the amount of time organizing all my files.

Don't get me wrong, I will still organize my files. Just because SpotLight was introduced doesn't mean the end all to storing files in specific places.

The thing SpotLight is going to do for me is not make it so important to remember where I stored everything.

Mike

[cybergoober]

Didn't work for me...

Put comments "Badda-bing" on a file then brought up Spotlight and searched for "Badda-bing". No results found.

[Catfish_Man]

Spotlight is semi-broken at this point (ime), which is hardly surprising. I would be very surprised if it didn't reliably search comments by the time it's released (there's nothing difficult about adding that capability in, it might even be possible for a 3rd party to do it).

[hmurchison2001]

Originally posted by cybergoober:
Didn't work for me...

Put comments "Badda-bing" on a file then brought up Spotlight and searched for "Badda-bing". No results found.

You Sopranos geek! LOL Try modifying the file in some way. I'm not sure simply adding comments will engage Spotlighs indexing. As Catfish says hopefully this will change by release. I agree with MPmoriarty that this would be a killer function for searches and I would start using the comments function more.

In fact I over the supposition that Automator could be set up to add the same comment to a batch of files so that you simply group files together and drop'em on a Automator button and "badda bing" they all have your comments appended. Nice and neat and FASSSST.

[MPMoriarty]

Here's how I see it...

Everybody who is talking about SpotLight has two related gripes:

They want to be able to add some of their own metadata to files on their hard drive using whatever criteria they can think of.

They want to be able to group or connect two related files that the system might not think are related.

The "Comments" tag is the solution to both of these problems.

Put a group name in the "comments" tag to group related files, create your own unique metatags, etc.

But now I am confused. One person says it does search "comments" tags, and another one doesn't.

Even if users don't like this method, I know I will. I am going to use the "comments" tag to its full potential if SpotLight can index and search it.

Mike

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by hmurchison2001:
You Sopranos geek! LOL Try modifying the file in some way. I'm not sure simply adding comments will engage Spotlighs indexing. As Catfish says hopefully this will change by release. I agree with MPmoriarty that this would be a killer function for searches and I would start using the comments function more.

In fact I over the supposition that Automator could be set up to add the same comment to a batch of files so that you simply group files together and drop'em on a Automator button and "badda bing" they all have your comments appended. Nice and neat and FASSSST.

That's a really cool idea. If someone else doesn't get to it I'm definitely going to be making an automater stage to do that. I bet you could even have it append, rather than replace, the comment so that you could do a kind of "add keyword" function.

[MPMoriarty]

You mean use the comments field as a place to store a bunch of keywords about the file. Sorta like how iPhoto lets you add multiple keywords to pictures?

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by MPMoriarty:
Here's how I see it...

Everybody who is talking about SpotLight has two related gripes:

They want to be able to add some of their own metadata to files on their hard drive using whatever criteria they can think of.

They want to be able to group or connect two related files that the system might not think are related.

The "Comments" tag is the solution to both of these problems.

Put a group name in the "comments" tag to group related files, create your own unique metatags, etc.

But now I am confused. One person says it does search "comments" tags, and another one doesn't.

Even if users don't like this method, I know I will. I am going to use the "comments" tag to its full potential if SpotLight can index and search it.

Mike

Sorry about the double post.

As I see it, the comments tag is A solution, not THE solution. imo, THE solution is BFS like extensible metadata, and using the comments tag for that is kind of a workaround. However, I can see why Apple didn't want to rewrite the FS to add that, since Spotlight gets 90% of the benefit (searchable, fast, fairly extensible metadata) with probably 20% of the work (getting all the programs to work with the new FS, plus just writing the new FS). What seems possible is some kind of "file wrapper" that can have metadata attached to it, but otherwise behaves exactly like the file it wraps. It would be a bundle containing a metadata file and the wrapped file, and you'd have to write a metadata importer that got the metadata from both (using the correct importer for the wrapped file could be hard, I'm not really sure). Double clicking it could either launch a background-only process that launched the wrapped file, or it could use folder actions to do that. Adding metadata to the wrapper would be done using a separate program, unless Apple decided to implement this concept and put it in the Finder. The hardest part would be maintaining compatibility with other systems, since to them it would appear as a folder containing two files. I have no clue how one would solve that problem.

<edit> Thought of another problem that would need to be solved for this: getting the file wrapper to show up as the right type in the Finder. If you changed its extension and type/creator codes to match the wrapped file, then it would open in the wrong app. If you didn't, then the Finder would say it was a different type of file. </edit>

[MPMoriarty]

Originally posted by Catfish_Man:
Sorry about the double post.

As I see it, the comments tag is A solution, not THE solution. imo, THE solution is BFS like extensible metadata, and using the comments tag for that is kind of a workaround. However, I can see why Apple didn't want to rewrite the FS to add that, since Spotlight gets 90% of the benefit (searchable, fast, fairly extensible metadata) with probably 20% of the work (getting all the programs to work with the new FS, plus just writing the new FS). What seems possible is some kind of "file wrapper" that can have metadata attached to it, but otherwise behaves exactly like the file it wraps. It would be a bundle containing a metadata file and the wrapped file, and you'd have to write a metadata importer that got the metadata from both (using the correct importer for the wrapped file could be hard, I'm not really sure). Double clicking it could either launch a background-only process that launched the wrapped file, or it could use folder actions to do that. Adding metadata to the wrapper would be done using a separate program, unless Apple decided to implement this concept and put it in the Finder. The hardest part would be maintaining compatibility with other systems, since to them it would appear as a folder containing two files. I have no clue how one would solve that problem.

<edit> Thought of another problem that would need to be solved for this: getting the file wrapper to show up as the right type in the Finder. If you changed its extension and type/creator codes to match the wrapped file, then it would open in the wrong app. If you didn't, then the Finder would say it was a different type of file. </edit>

Sorry.

When I said it was "THE" solution, I didn't mean it literally. I just meant a solution for people, for now.

Of course, you are correct about the one true solution being an extensible metadata file system. I never used BeOS before. I have heard about it and its powerful BFS file system. Could you actually create your metadata tags?

Although the ability to create your own custom tags is great, the problem comes in with your files custom metadata working on another metadata file system. Would you be able to carry over all of your custom tags?

Mike

[cybergoober]

Hmm. OK.

1. Never seen The Sopranos... no, seriously.
2. I created a new file, added comments then edited file.
3. A search on the comment string returned no results.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by MPMoriarty:
Sorry.

When I said it was "THE" solution, I didn't mean it literally. I just meant a solution for people, for now.

Of course, you are correct about the one true solution being an extensible metadata file system. I never used BeOS before. I have heard about it and its powerful BFS file system. Could you actually create your metadata tags?

Although the ability to create your own custom tags is great, the problem comes in with your files custom metadata working on another metadata file system. Would you be able to carry over all of your custom tags?

Mike

I haven't used BeOS either (the only build I got didn't run on my machine), but from what I've heard its equivalent of the Finder could display arbitrary metadata, which was used (for example) to store the to:, from:, subject:, etc... lines in emails. The user could also add on their own metadata fields and search those, iirc (although I suppose that's basically just like having multiple comments fields).

I agree that interoperability between metadata formats is a problem. That's one place where spotlight actually has an advantage over a new filesystem. The metadata isn't stored as some custom attribute of the file, it's actually extracted from the file leaving it unchanged. If they'd added on metadata fields we might have ended up with another situation like sending multifork files to windows machines, which would have been a pain in the ass.

[Brass]

Originally posted by MPMoriarty:
Sorry.

When I said it was "THE" solution, I didn't mean it literally. I just meant a solution for people, for now.

Of course, you are correct about the one true solution being an extensible metadata file system. I never used BeOS before. I have heard about it and its powerful BFS file system. Could you actually create your metadata tags?

Although the ability to create your own custom tags is great, the problem comes in with your files custom metadata working on another metadata file system. Would you be able to carry over all of your custom tags?

Mike

BeOS and its BFS... yes, you could add whatever metadata you wanted to any files, defining your own tags (fields, whatever). It really confused me at first as to why you'd want to do it, but it makes good sense really. And the implementation in BeOS was very neat.

[hmurchison2001]

BeFS was cool. I just have a hard time thinking that Apple has Dominic Giampaolo(BeFS co-creator) and Pavel Cisler(Be Tracker) on payroll without having plans for a fs upgrade from HFS+

It's old but a couple of things standout from Scott Hacker's article about moving from BeOS to OSX. I don't know how reliable it is but the concept of fs plugins to read/write to alien fs sounds really cool. BeOS Trackers "Node Monitoring" which allows live updates in the finder window. Could be cheesy could be useful it's all in the implementation.