UUUUUUPDATE!I have a pretty fat update here...it's particularly fat cause I'm together with Maurizio right now, and when we get together crazy stuff happens.
(for those who just tuned-in for the first time, Maurizio and me live 2500km far from each other, and typically meet in person every second month or something...).
First of all let me post a couple of shots:
1) the file panel today:
- Tabbles 1.3.10 Beta something... file panel with scrollbar and more
- shot.png (117.92 KiB) Viewed 1718 times
I guess you noticed the Mac-ish scrollbar, and the new stuff in the
Combinable tabbles box. Apart from the stuff in the screenshot:
- some more stuff has changed in the main window: the default for the next versions will be the
non-ZUI mode (list-mode) and the way the Tabbles will be displayed will be muuuuuuch easier for a newbie to grasp...
- the up/down arrows (which will soon be replaced by a proper scrollbar) in the main window
do now understand when to stop... 
We're planning
a beta in the next couple of days and a release straight after (this time for real!).
2) Maurizio, his cup of green tea, Visual Studio 2008 my netbook and the Xmas tree in the background: I'm sure Maurizio will first sue me and then unleash his dogs on me, but I guess it's a risk I should take
- Maurizio Colucci, Visual Studio, Andrea's netbook
- 21122009077 (Large).jpg (76.32 KiB) Viewed 1718 times
3) business cards, like a real company! Well, at some point we had to make some... no?
- Andrea D'Intino first business card with Yellow blue soft
- business_card.jpg (99.38 KiB) Viewed 1718 times
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== and now, some really cool stuff === I) the rules engine and part of the file-system watcher have been rewritten, nearly from scratch.
The goal is to have a bullet-proof file-tracking technology which would allow you to move any amount of files (of any size) freely among your drives so that Tabbles doesn't "forget" about the tagging on the way. Even if this is not so evident, there is pretty large amount of work behind this feature, and what is most important, the feature is everything but trivial...I've seen Maurizio yelling "I read my own code and I can't understand it...sigh...sobh" (ok, the sigh and sobh were indeed my idea... but I believe you get the point
). Seriously, if anyone out there knows of some tool doing something similar, please let us know (we couldn't find any).
One solution Maurizio is looking into is moving from a file-system watcher based technology to a
file-system filter, which is indeed even more complicated technology... but let's see, maybe what we have now works fine already, we still have to test it thoroughly but for sure it sounds promising.
II) ok, hold on cause this is a really cool one, probably as cool as the auto-tagging rules.
(SUSPENSE)(HOLD YOUR BREATH) (HOLD YOUR BREATH A BIT MORE...)(OK, HERE YOU GO) === Auto-tagging wizard === -
-
Many people have been asking/whining, in different ways and different times, things like "
oh, I thought it would categorize/find/index all my files automatically...". What we answered was a firm "makes no sense: Tabbles is a tagging tool, not a search tool." - don't get us wrong, this is still our position.
But in the past few weeks, we (Maurizio and me) have independently been thinking about a feature that would
automatically create auto-tagging rules based on the existing folder structure, using with some quite simple AI along with our auto-tagging rules.Here's the core of the idea: people who approach Tabbles, typically have a lot of folders with an exploding structure and lots of duplicates, both folders and files. What we'd do is more or less this:
1) present the user (at the first execution) with a tree of his folders, asking him to check the important folders.
2) For each folder that will be manually checked:
- 2a) a tabble will be created, named as the folder
- 2b) all the files/folders inside that folder will be tagged with the tabble from above
- 2c) an auto-tagging rule will be created for that folder -> tabble
3) scan recursively all the folders inside the hand-picked folders, and find folders with the same name:
for each time at least 2 folders with an exactly same name will be found, a tabble will be created, and the 2a, 2b and 2c applied to the newly created tabbles.
4) after this process Tabbles will be one more pass: it will read the names of all the files inside all the folders involved in the points 1, 2 and 3. It will then split the names into chunks (using stuff like "-", "_", "." as separators) and whenever a chunk of a filename (or the whole filename) will match the name of a tabble (read: of an existing folder), the file will be tagged with that tabble.
Example: I have a folder named "Logo". Inside the folder have 7 subfolders and altogether something like 50 files. Most of them are named something_logo_something.something...since all this files are inside the "Logo" folder, they will be automatically tagged with the "Logo" tabble based on the point 2).
But the thing is, that
I have 100 more files named something_logo_something.something inside other folders too! Why is that? because if a logo is used in the Tabbles forum, another on the homepage and another one on the blog, I'll need 3 different files, and I'll need them both in the "Tabbles docs" folder as well as in the "Homepage" folder...capisch?
And this is where the point 4) comes in handy...serendipity?
The goal here is to
provide the user with a 1/2 categorized database, where he "guides" Tabbles through the procedure and tells him which folder is important and which not.
(OMG, I just called Tabbles a "him"... )Anyway, if you're reading this, chances are that you probably already categorized your whole db, hand-picking files or using the auto-tagging rules... but imagine how cool it will be for a newbie to find his stuff 1/2 categorized!
Plus,
this wizard can of course be used anytime, so as soon as you get a new folder full of crap, you just run it, pick that folder and let Tabbles do his job... I think it's a pretty cool feature, isn't it?
Maurizio reckons it would take a couple of days for a prototype, but then this baby is gonna need a looooooot of nursing, both in terms of fixing/tuning, but specially in terms of testing... anyone?
Anyway, we hope to be able to pack this into the 1.4, which is planned to be out around the 15th of January (which is probably unrealistic... but let's see).
(while I'm writing this my dog is next to me snoring pretty noisily...can't blame him, it's 3.00 am after all!
)
...and the coolness is not over...III) Hierarchical tabbles a.k.a nested tabbles (the
Ride of the Valkyries starts playing in the background)
Well, the thing has been discussed on the
blog and also here in the
forum (I'm sure there is more about it, but I can't find it now...). The current idea sounds like this: you drag'n'drop a
tabble (child) into another
tabble (father): this would cause the
child-tabble to disappear from the main window (it will still be visible in the quick-tag window, in the file window and possibly there will also a mode wher you can see all the tabbles in the main window) and whenever you tag a file with the
child-tabble (manually or via auto-tagging rule) the file will be tagged with the
father-tabble too.
Example: I tag a file with the tabble
"Radiohead" (using the quick-tag window or a rule) and the file also gets automatically tagged as
"Music"This feature will also take some 2-3 days to code (but it shouldn't require 1/2 as much testing) but since it's an "advanced-user" feature, we prefer pushing it a little bit furthe (please keep in mind that we're still living off our savings so we hope to start selling a decent amount of licenses soon, else there will be no new feature anymore
- but we won't let this happen, don't worry
)
Ok, I think I wrote enough for tonight... peace!
uh, and merry Xmas!!!
Andrea
)
