Re: Tired of Hierarchies

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 3:32 AM, Jason C. Wells <jcw@highperformance.net> wrote:
> When will we be able to access our computerized data on the desktop with out
> complete dependence on the hierarchy?  Has anyone in the FOSS community
> tackled this problem?  What software is used?
>
>  I am tired of hierarchies.
[snip]
>  In a library I can access pretty much every volume in two steps.  Search
> the index, then go to the location of the volume and pick it from the shelf.
> Their is a pattern here.  The easiest systems that I use all have a
> "search/index" paradigm attached to them.

The indexing system (Dewey or whatever) is a hierarchy, though it may not be
obvious when the books are arrayed on a library shelf.

If you want to index your files (metadata, or informative filenames, or
whatever) and dump them all in one directory, go ahead.  Thinking about
a suitable indexing system is an exercise for the reader.  (A non-trivial
exercise.  Library indexing systems are still a topic of research; I imagine
the complexity of indexing millions of items of entirely disparate kinds of
data, such as a typical computer contains, would be phenomenal.)

Rahul
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