Badly Need Features

I really like EagleFiler, but I absolutely require two things:

  1. The ability to store any type of file. This is critical! I can’t put my data into this system without it. All it needs to do is launch the appropriate app when I double click the entry, just like the finder would do.

  2. Detection of externally added (or removed) files and automatic reimport of changes. I live life on multiple machines, and I need EagleFiler to respond to changes from file-syncing software in a reasonable way. I can’t manually add and remove files that I change on each machine, it just isn’t practical.

I really like the concept of this program. I’ve been looking for a sane alternative to DevonThink for some time. Implement these two features and I’ll buy it immediately… And I’ll convince two of my associates to buy this, as well.

I own both Yojimbo and KIT and I’m using KIT at the moment because it uses the file system to store files, like EagelFiler.

As EagleFiler as several features that look really nice, I’ve been following it since its launch, and these two features would definitely make me buy it.

I’m planning to add #1 soon. For #2, is it possible for you to use your syncing program to sync the entire library? This wouldn’t require manually adding or removing anything; you’d just have to bring your library up-to-date before modifying it.

I’m using Unison to synchronize my files (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/index.html) and it would work.

What would be really great is to have EagleFiler pick up changes to its library (including its own files that probably have folder and tag information) when it’s running and update its view accordingly. (Most programs I use only look at their files when launching, so I must make sure they are not running when synchronizing, which can but frustrating. Luckily TextMate picks up changes I can keep it running all the time :wink: )

Text editors are a special case because what you want is for them to reload the file from disk, not merge any changes. EagleFiler currently does this, e.g. if you modify an RTF file in TextEdit and then switch back to EagleFiler.

When there’s metadata (like tags or notes) or structure (folders) involved, it’s much trickier and not simply a matter of updating the view. As far as I know, there aren’t any apps that do what you describe, i.e. that let you change the data store outside the app and then automatically pick up the changes. You can’t do it with iTunes, iPhoto, Xcode, etc. It’s a hard problem.

Oh well, one can always dream :wink:

How about “search for orphans”: a tool in EagleFilter that would look at the files on disk that are not referenced in EagleFilter and would offer to add them.

But implementing #1 would be great by itself.

Edit: added the “search for orphans” idea.

Something like that is on the to-do list.

Feature request

May I add a request for another critical feature?

  1. The DEVONthink-like option to “import” only an alias of a file or (recursively) a folder hierarchy, leaving the original in place while indexing the text of the aliased files. This capability would allow EagleFiler to deal gracefully with the contents of folders managed by other applications (like the PDF attachments folders of BookEnds or BibDesk). It would also allow EagleFiler to keep track of large external files without bloating its own library.

Are there any other EagleFiler users to whom this option is important?

Yes, linking to aliases rather than importing full file
I agree that some way to link to a file without actually importing it would be awesome. Right now, if I try to import an alias I get “file type not understood”. Presumably, a linked file would not be searchable, but it could have all the other attributes.

More generally, I’d like to see more outline-style capabilities. I’m a regular reader of “About this particular outliner” column (on ATPM), and it has a long discussion about why and how to do outlining. Since EF has already improved on the Finder in many ways, why not this?

This is a great application. I’ve played with Mori and I’m a serious user of NoteBook, but this has a lot of advantages eg good integration with Finder.

Links are on my to-do list.

Which outlining features would be most useful to you?

Added in EagleFiler 1.1.

This is great. I just started using Eagle Filer this afternoon, and I was wondering when I would be able to switch completely from KIT. Thank you for all the improvements.

In fact, I really like EF’s behaviour of not just linking to the files and instead copying in its own hierarchy like iTunes.

I understand that you could use the DEVONthink-approach but I do hope that this possible feature would be a preference or in some way optional.

If I do add support for linking (it’s currently on the to-do list, but no guarantees, OK?) it would definitely be optional.