OpenMeta

I'm just starting to mess around with the Tagging based on OpenMeta. I've heard that you're eyeballing
supporting it Hazel and that sounds fantastic. It'd be nice to setup some actions to automagically add tags to
files in a folder or whatever. I haven't even really scratched the surface to what Hazel can do for me but
I have a feeling that having some sort of interoperability with tags will make the effort to tag worthwhile.

Another vote for OpenMeta here!

I've looked at Hazel as a tagging workflow tool several times, and as cool as it seemed, the spotlight-comment-based system always ended up being just quirky enough that I didn't want to rely on it. OpenMeta seems like the "right solution" for robust tagging, so if Hazel were to deal nicely with operations on these tags, I would be thrilled. It seems like this tagging system would allow Hazel to offer more metadata options reliably too, like removing tags (which is always touchy with spotlight comments) and ensuring tags aren't duplicated like that could be with spotlight comments.

I am evaluating it. I need to figure out a few things first, including issues like it being Leopard-only and my release schedule. I can't make any promises now beyond that.

One thing to try in the meantime is using a shell script. I don't know if it ships with your systems or not, but look for the 'xattr' command (I seem to remember downloading it some time ago but maybe it ships with Leopard). I'll try and post more about this after some research but it would allow you to add tags the way OpenMeta does.

No worries here.

I'm hoping that the Mac Box Set gets a lot of people still on Tiger to move to Leopard. I understand your POV and the need to support your 10.4 customers as well. In the meantime I'll begin to flesh out my tagging strategy and by the time it's a well oiled machine I've got no doubt that Hazel will join the party soon enough.

Long term hope is that Apple extends this functionality across OS X and many API so that you get this stuff for "free" by using Cocoa. I imagine that if Apple did it there'd be some spit polish that won't exist in OpenMeta.

We as users though gotta get the message through and I'm going to do that by proselytizing OpenMeta aware applications. I often read "I don't use Spotlight" by too many Mac users and what I'm reading between the lines is that they don't like the search facilities. All of us are using Spotlight in some form when we utilize smart folders.

I think Tagging will eventually add the final element to Spotlight. Conceptually I see a lot of people struggling with it. They're are stuck to folder hierarchy or central repository for data. It's going to take a bit to get people out of their legacy modal views.

Another vote here for OpenMeta support.
:mrgreen:

I forgot about the commandline 'omtool' that ships with it. This is just off the top of my head so you may need to test it for yourself but you can do a shell script like:

Code: Select all: omtool -a "some tag" "some other tag" -p "$1"

That would add those two tags to the file. If you want to replace the tags:

Code: Select all: omtool -a "some tag" "some other tag" -p "$1"

Note that you may need to specify the full path to 'omtool', wherever you ended up putting it.

Again, just off the cuff so make sure to test it before running it on any files you care about.

Any updates on OpenMeta support by chance? DefaultFolderX has released a beta including OM tagging -- Hazel is the other app that I'm eagerly anticipating support in, to complete my metadata workflow...

sherkaner wrote:Any updates on OpenMeta support by chance? DefaultFolderX has released a beta including OM tagging -- Hazel is the other app that I'm eagerly anticipating support in, to complete my metadata workflow...

What is the most obvious benefit of Hazel for OpenMeta? I know this is a subjective question. I'm thinking that it would be to assign rules to certain folders so that you could automatically tag files with a tag or tags. I'd love to be able to tag files in a Hazel monitored folder and then have Hazel move them to the final destination.

I'm probably only scratching the surface as to what Hazel could do with tagging.

Actually Hazel already (half way) suports OpenMeta.
You can take use of "Tags" (OpenMeta) in "Conditions - Other" and set a rule according to it, if a file contains a certain tag or if a tag is missing (blank).
Additionally, as Mr_Noodle post it in this thread, you can use OpenMeta's "omtool" to add tag to a file.
Also, it is easy to create, let say, a small OMC (OMCEdit) standalone app which could, under certain rules, pop up a dialog where you can set a tag for the file just added to watched folder...

Edo

P.S.
Here it is - "OMC_Tagger":
http://drop.io/OMC_Tagger/asset/omc-tagger-app-zip
Before running it, make sure that "omtool" is placed in your "Applications" folder. Then, set a rule "Open file" with OMC_Tagger.
Also it is recommended to check "Quit after executing the command" in OMC_Tagger "Preferences".
Note: It can tag only one file at a time if used in Hazelrules, otherwise it can handle multiple files if used directly from OMC_Tagger.

Yeah, in my mind the usefulness goes in both directions: being able to perform actions based on existing tags on files, and ability to assign tags to files based on rules you set up.

The use you mention is one thing I definitely want to be able to do. I'd also like to be able to tag files in any of the other tagging tools out there, and then have Hazel process the files into folders based on those tags (and things like created date). But yes I think there is all sorts of interesting things you can do, once the support is in Hazel.

hmurchison wrote:What is the most obvious benefit of Hazel for OpenMeta? I know this is a subjective question. I'm thinking that it would be to assign rules to certain folders so that you could automatically tag files with a tag or tags. I'd love to be able to tag files in a Hazel monitored folder and then have Hazel move them to the final destination.

I'm probably only scratching the surface as to what Hazel could do with tagging.

Yeah, I'm aware of this. Because I rely on my tags so heavily, I guess I'd feel more comfortable with a more "built-in" support, particularly for tagging, rather than having to use the command line tool. To be honest, OM support is the main thing that I want in a tool like Hazel and I'm waiting on my decision to purchase it until OM support is more definitely in there.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

edo2909 wrote:Actually Hazel already (half way) suports OpenMeta.
You can take use of "Tags" (OpenMeta) in "Conditions - Other" and set a rule according to it, if a file contains a certain tag or if a tag is missing (blank).
Additionally, as Mr_Noodle post it in this thread, you can use OpenMeta's "omtool" to add tag to a file.
Also, it is easy to create, let say, a small OMC (OMCEdit) standalone app which could, under certain rules, pop up a dialog where you can set a tag for the file just added to watched folder...

Edo

P.S.
Here it is - "OMC_Tagger":
http://drop.io/OMC_Tagger/asset/omc-tagger-app-zip
Before running it, make sure that "omtool" is placed in your "Applications" folder. Then, set a rule "Open file" with OMC_Tagger.
Also it is recommended to check "Quit after executing the command" in OMC_Tagger "Preferences".
Note: It can tag only one file at a time if used in Hazelrules, otherwise it can handle multiple files if used directly from OMC_Tagger.

Add another vote for 'proper' OpenMeta support here!

Thanks for all the feedback on this. I'm still mulling it over and will post something more official in the coming weeks but my current leaning is against official OpenMeta support. Unfortunately, I find the method to store tags is a bit risky and claims of "no secret API" are a bit misleading. Again, I'll post something more detailed later but the current thinking is that there will be no official support. At best, there may be unofficial support that would have to be enabled via a hidden default.

Trust me, I understand the desire for this feature (I've wanted it since Hazel was conceived) but given the current way it's being done, I can't be fully on-board with it. While none of this is final, there would probably have to be a real change in how OpenMeta stores its tags or in how the user is educated about the issues for me to change my stance. Again, though, I'll post a more detailed article sometime soon. Thanks for your patience on this.

That's understandable.

The hope for me is that Apple recognizes a demand for this functionality and includes it in 10.7 along with all the
polish we expect. Until then we're riding on the risky side of things and developers do have to be mindful of the support
ramifications of adopting such technology.

Tagging is powerful and becomes even moreso when it branches out systemwide and can leverage scripting and more. I hope we don't have to wait too long to get a fully supported universal tagging feature with sane management of tags.

Looking forward to your official posting on this.

Sorry to hear that. I hope you've discussed it with the devs over at Ironic about your concerns -- after all, it's meant to be an open-source "standard", and I don't think they want to alienate developers of utilities that would benefit users most by OpenMeta's inclusion, such as Hazel.

I understand your concerns and I agreed with you at one point, but there has been a lot of really good discussion over on the Ironic forum about just this thing that won me over. But perhaps, like you say, they can alleviate your worries by changing how they describe OpenMeta's base level support. In a practical sense, it seems very reliable to me, with the ability to recover nicely from even the very unlikely event that Apple were to overwrite tags in their namespace (which would be unprecedented). But I do understand that describing this as "using no undocumented APIs" could be construed as slightly misleading if you know what's really going on under the hood. It's just that in a real-world sense, it seems like a very robust system which is what matters in the end, and is why I'm really hoping to see it supported in Hazel. I know there was a similar conversation between the developer of DefaultFolderX and Ironic, and happily he was won over to supporting it.