Tags problems

Hi Michael,

I have a big problem with tags : not in EagleFiler itself, where it works perfectly, but on all the files :

I try to have tags everywhere to find what I need. Tag is something fantastic. I have a lot of documents in EagleFiler but not all of them. When I tag a document with Tagit for example, or Leap, the tag disappears on EagleFiler. Why don’t we have the same system for tags in all application ? I have to “re-tag” everything…

Can you help me ?
Thanks !

EagleFiler imports tags from OpenMeta. This means that if you tag a file using another application, when you import it into EagleFiler the tags will transfer.

EagleFiler also copies tags to OpenMeta. So if you change a tag in EagleFiler, the other applications will also see that change.

The case that doesn’t work is that EagleFiler will not see tags added by other applications if the file is already in EagleFiler.

Tags
Thank you Michael, after import in EF it works, tags are included !

As I was trying this with a .text file, I realized that, in EF, it is a mess :

Tags
Thank you Michael, after import in EF it works, tags are included !

As I was trying this with a .text file, I realized that, in EF, it is a mess of bizarre letters :

What can I do ? If I open it from EF, I can read it again, the text is normal.

This is probably an issue with the text encoding of your file. EagleFiler assumes that text files are either plain ASCII or Unicode (with a BOM or UTF-8). If you save your file as Unicode text, EagleFiler should be able to display it properly.

tags and fonts
If you mean html files, it works.
What is strange with txt files is that they are OK with drag-and-drop on EFiler, but not with shortcut F2 or drop on the EFiler panel “aire de largage”.

Well… I learn everyday !
Thank you Michael for your help.
Claude

HTML files are different because they can declare any encoding in an HTML tag, and then EagleFiler will know how to display them. There’s no way to do this for text files.

Once in the library, a file is a file; it doesn’t matter how it was imported. Whatever you’re doing, it sounds like it’s creating text files in differing formats.

Tags editable from outside
Oh dear - that explains some problems I’ve been having.

Please could you include the capabilty for eagleFiler to recognise changes in tags made from outside, particularly from Leap.

The inclusion of OpenMeta tags in eagleFiler makes it work very well with applications such as Leap, and is, in my opinion, extremely valuable – allowing different “views” of the files on my machine. However, the fact that tags cannot be changed from outside is very counter-intuitive, especially given EagleFiler’s “open” directory structure, with the files fully accessible from the finder. Since the tag is conceptually a property of the file, it should be editable from outside of EagleFiler, in the same way that the file contents are.

Here’s a simple example of usage: I tag files, emails, etc. needing attention with “todo” when I store them – sometimes in an eagleFiler database, sometimes elsewhere. Leap (or Spotlight) allows me to quickly see all my “todo” items, no matter where they are stored. I’d like to be able to change “todo” to “done” in Leap. (Actually, I have been doing so, and wondering why my to-do list doesn’t get any shorter!!!)

I realise there will be implementation, and possibly speed, issues with getting eagleFiler to recognise changes from outside. I’d like at least the option of a slower system which kept a consistent view of tags. At least, even if eagleFiler doesn’t show tags changed from Leap, it shouldn’t delete those tags, which is what it seems to be doing now. – i.e. right now it is apparently reconciling its internal tag database with the OpenMeta tags by over-writing the OpenMeta tags. I’d prefer it to over-write its internal database.

Thanks,
Andrew

You can use the Reload OpenMeta Tags to copy the tags from OpenMeta to EagleFiler. However, you would need to do this relatively soon. When you open the library in EagleFiler, choose Backup Metadata, or approximately every 2 hours, EagleFiler will change the OpenMeta tags to match the EagleFiler ones.

Thanks for that! I’ll have to see if I can figure out a way to automatically trigger the script for items that have been changed in Leap or elsewhere.

EagleFiler 1.5.2 adds a hidden FixOpenMetaTagsToMatch preference. Click here to prevent EagleFiler from overwriting the OpenMeta tags with the EagleFiler ones or click here to restore the standard behavior.

Thank you - that’s great! Now tags done from outside don’t disappear. Reload OpenMeta tags is fast enough that I can run it on a whole database from time to time, to keep things in sync.

Incidentally, your x-eaglefiler://default?.. link is a neat way to set those preferences

cheers,
Andrew