
Untitled Document Syndrome - naish
http://daringfireball.net/2009/02/untitled_document_syndrome
======
decode
Most people don't understand hierarchical filesystems. I understand that and
that's fine. As designers and programmers, we should be enabling those people
to have control over and access to their stuff in a way that they can use.

But I do understand hierarchical filesystems, so why would I want to do things
the same way as people that don't? I don't use notepad.exe just because vim is
too confusing for most people, either.

I installed iTunes once and it took me a couple of confused minutes to figure
out that I couldn't play a file in it. First you have to teach the app about
all of the music that I might someday want to play, then you can finally
choose one of those and play it. But I know where my music files are on the
disk and I just want to play them. To use Gruber's analogy, I wanted to type
'print "Hello World"' and it wanted me to start defining includes.

In the same way, I store my information in text files on the disk. They're
arranged in a way that makes sense to me. They're searchable, portable, and
small. And it works great for me.

~~~
jodrellblank
_I do understand hierarchical filesystems, so why would I want to do things
the same way as people that don't?_

The filesystem isn't relevant to what either of you want to do - namely, start
taking notes, and, not lose them if you forget to save them.

Sure, save them wherever you like however you like - but I bet you start with
"I need to make a note of this phonenumber" and not "I need to create
~/data/contacts/business/suppliers/joans.computers" so I can put this
phonenumber in it".

~~~
cturner
Interesting. I think your point is generally good but that phone numbers is an
example against it. I tend to document stuff using the second approach,
because I'm documenting for lookup. Phone numbers are a case in point - I
always have it in front of me on a scrap of paper, but want to enter it into
the appropriate page and place of our wiki where I or a colleague will be able
to quickly recall it later. I'm creating it with the lookup in mind.

Whereas if I'm opening a document just to play around with ideas I won't be
doing that, and most documents start that way. I think this is why Word has so
far won the field in mainstream document production. Word is a superb tool for
prototyping and terrible in almost every aspect of structuring data for its
long-term use.

------
pg
Odd. I never knew this problem even existed. Practically everything I make
starts with vi, and I never just type it without an argument.

I write untitled things on Etherpad (because it doesn't let you give things
titles yet), but Etherpad backs up every keystroke.

~~~
kahseng
What about before Etherpad? I'm curious to know.. :)

~~~
pg
Before Etherpad, I solved the problems it solves by various expedients like
publishing drafts on my private web server, putting stuff on wikis, and
exchanging drafts by email.

Etherpad is a bigger deal than people realize yet. It's one of those things
you don't understand till you try it. I myself didn't. I put off trying their
first beta for weeks, and then within about 2 minutes of trying it I got it.

------
LeChuck
One thing I've never understood is the confirmation dialogue you get when
closing an application. Of course I want to save the document! The only time
wouldn't want to save my changes is when I want to revert all the changes I
made this session. I already have a perfectly good button for that the, undo
button. (at least in a perfect world).

~~~
thorax
You don't ever run into that accidental situation where you opened a
doc/makefile/source/etc that you just wanted to view but not change? That
dialog is handy when you accidentally made a change but weren't aware of it.
It doesn't happen a lot, but I know I'd have a number of more random
characters in documents than I have now.

~~~
ambition
I think unlimited undo would solve this situation. If you're autosaving
revisions, it's not a huge step to imagine allowing undo across application
invocations.

------
DannoHung
I just want my filesystem to be categorical instead of hierarchical. Maybe
some use of metadata types would make it easier to avoid collisions too?

Example. My "The Battle of Evermore" mp3 could live in the following typed
categories:

    
    
      "FileHash:blahblablahblah"
      "iNode: blahblahblah"
      "Title: The Battle of Evermore"
      "Artist:Led Zeppelin"
      "Album:Led Zeppelin IV"
      "Collection:Project: LotR RotK Music Video"
      "Playlist:Music: Swordfightin' Songs"
    

etc etc

Is that so wrong? If you use a rigorous enough metadata type system, you could
program it too!

~~~
DLWormwood
> I just want my filesystem to be categorical instead of hierarchical. Maybe
> some use of metadata types would make it easier to avoid collisions too?

What's weird is that the very first file system the Mac used was very close to
this. MFS didn't support true directories; folders were an illusion provided
by the Finder. Be OS, I believe, was the closest to your ideal that was ever
developed, but it was considered too alien and "late" for it to have ever
gotten traction. Just like the automobile got saddled with the internal
combustion engine and manual wheel-based control, personal computers got stuck
with x86 and hierarchical file systems.

~~~
jrockway
_personal computers got stuck with x86 and hierarchical file systems_

And UNIX. Can I have my Lisp machine back, please?

(OK, so I never had a Lisp machine. But I want one :P)

~~~
eru
But with lexical scoping!

------
dthakur
OneNote handles this really well. It automatically saves everything. Very
handy when working on notes and ideas.

------
bisceglie
i see this as a flaw in modern operating systems. the LifeStream OS concept
dealt with this rather nicely, providing a document-centric, time-oriented
file system, but also allowing for versatile meta-data to aid in classifying
objects and navigating around.

~~~
dfens
Jef Raskin worked on an OS named Archy that also dealt with this problem:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy#Persistence>

------
bouncingsoul
I'm surprised he didn't mention the iPhone Notes application as a great
example of the principles he's talking about: besides autosave and getting rid
of the filing friction it also eliminates the friction of naming.

For me a huge part of the hassle with saving documents is naming them. When
I'm in note-jotting mode it's usually low level, so to have to step back and
try to quickly come up with a title that covers everything I've _not yet
written_ is frustrating because I'm not in an overview mindset and there's
nothing yet to summarize. Add on to that the administrative work of filing,
and saving text documents becomes something I put off for as long as possible.

I've tried Notational Velocity, but it has the same problem of forcing you to
create a title separate from the content. (It also lacks creation dates, which
are I find valuable for putting notes into context.)

------
statictype
Abstracting away the filesystem works great if all the software you use does
provide you a way to get to it anyway (like iTunes does) if you really want
it. However a lot of software doesn't provide that.

For example, on my S60 phone, the file system is pretty much hidden from the
user. You just save your notes\contacts\pdfs\mp3s and the programs know where
to put them and how to retrieve them. But try saving a python script as a note
and then trying to get Python to execute it on your phone. Oops, no way to
find out where that damn file is saved.

------
thaumaturgy
I would _love_ to solve this problem. I've commented before about the
limitations of current file system management (e.g. top comment on
[http://www.woobius.com/scribbles/posts/0007-document-
control...](http://www.woobius.com/scribbles/posts/0007-document-
control.html)), and I've worked out most of the UI and algorithmic structure
for a replacement system.

Soon. Real soon now, I'll get sick enough of dealing with file "management"
systems, and this will start to roll out.

------
jrockway
Would it make me a "smug Perl weenie" to point out that the Perl should be:

    
    
        say "Hello, world."
    

instead of

    
    
        print "Hello, world.\n"
    

(Larry++ for having the balls to call it "say" and not "println". It's
shorter, _and_ it's a real word!)

~~~
bonaldi
There's more than one way to do it, then?

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josefresco
All major office apps have had 'auto-save' as a feature for oh I dunno .. a
million years now.

~~~
alabut
That's not the main thrust of the article, it's about a class of apps like
Yojimbo, iTunes and iPhoto that abstract away the underlying file system so
that even the concept of saving data goes away.

------
unalone
Is there anything like Yojimbo but _simpler_? Some program for me to jot notes
and clip things that doesn't reformat text or give me tons of filters? Yojimbo
and Evernote are both too bulky for my tastes. Anybody have any
recommendations?

~~~
jaaron
If you're using a mac there a lot of note taking programs:

    
    
       - Evernote
       - VoodooPad
       - NoteTaker
       - Journler
       - viJournal
       - MacJournal
       - TAO
       - DEVONThink
       - Tinderbox
       - Yojimbo
    

And that's a list from what I've been using for note taking: emacs org-mode.
Though lately I've been a bit torn between using org-mode and something like
Evernote, particularly due to its device synchronization. I would really like
to hear other people's thoughts about this.

Oh, and if you don't like Yojimbo and Evernote, you might want to check out
Voodoo Pad.

~~~
tigerthink
I like xPad. It's simple and free:

<http://getxpad.com/>

