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From: Joel Salomon <salomo3@coo...>
Subject: acme: some thoughts about design
Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 23:40:27 -0400 (EDT)

Tristan Seligmann said:
> Maybe not a search engine, but even something like being able to "tag" a
> document with various categories etc. and then being able to view files
> matching a combination of tags would be more powerful than "just" an
> HFS.

Hans Reiser, in "Name Spaces As Tools for Integrating the Operating System
Rather Than As Ends in Themselves" http://www.namesys.com/whitepaper.html
has some interesting thought along those lines, where "paths" can be
semi-structured:
 [subject/[illegal strike] to/elves from/santa document-type/RFC822
ultimatum]
unstructured:
 [santa illegal strike ultimatum elves]
or completely structured:
[subject/strike to/elves from/santa document-type/RFC8221]

he says:
> [this last] query is structurally equivalent to a relational query. Many
> authors (e.g. semantic database designers) have written papers with good
> examples of standard column names which might be worth teaching to users.
> So long as they are an option made available to the user rather than a
> requirement demanded of the user, the increased selectivity they provide
> can be helpful.

He's likely to implement under linux first, but this idea really needs its
own OS to realize fully.

<ramble>
Automatic indexing of a file system is another idea that could be useful -
maybe atop venti, along with fossil? some program to index blocks as they
are written to venti and associate the index block with the data block.
Get access permissions from fossil. Get fancy and check file types
(file(1)), and have specialized indexers for different types (though M$
has a couple of patents you'd likely be stepping on here). Probably good
for a master's thesis in computer science.
</ramble>

> mithrandi, i Ainil en-Balandor, a faer Ambar
Translation?

--Joel