so, random thought but

the way that files are organized is as a tree structure. there’s a root directory and then nodes can either be folders or files, which implies that a file can only be categorized under one folder at a time. and obviously this works pretty well for the most part but I feel like it might be a bit reductive at times too. for example what if I’m organizing pics by theme and I have a pic that fits two themes? I can’t put it in both folders at once unless I want to mess around with hardlinks or symlinks or something

but what if there were tags instead of folders? a file can have an arbitrary number of tags, and tags can have subtags (for example “pics” -> “by theme” -> “spooky”) that way files can show up under multiple “folders” (tags) at the same time, by design

there is probably some unknown unknown that makes this a terrible idea btw - it’s just something I’ve been thinking about

@kasdeya no this is a good enough idea that a bunch of photo management tools just . . . do this

they tend to have to implement it as a separate data structure (typically a database file of some sort to track all the tag relations) because the OS kinda doesn't let you jailbreak from the filesystem, but it's not uncommon

@kasdeya YES! Sorry for yelling, but I've been pondering that exact same idea from time to time ^^ I'd really love having a tag based file system for organizing my personal files. Sometimes a strict hierarchy just feels too limiting and I'd like to have multiple hierarchies to manage my files.

Here someone had some more extensive thoughts on the idea: https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organization-around-tags-not-hierarchies

@kasdeya like a booru site? I believed there was a software what did that though i forgot its name and never checked it out personally.
But yes, beïng able yo put pics in multiple locations without making duplicates would be rad.