I notice that without having a visible directory tree on the side, like in obsidian, my Space now is basically flat. I think I’d like to keep files in subdirectories, but I was wondering if I could setup rules so that pages with tag X can be automatically placed/moved into directory Y. So that all my pages tagged of a certain type in frontmatter can be better grouped together. Obviously a file can’t be in multiple directories, so there’d have to be a first-match on the rules for mappings, but I think that would be useful. Additionally, working in the other direction might be nice, as being able to map the directories and sub-directories a file is in to itags for that file might also be handy. Thoughts?
When i started using SB it also felt weird to me the lack of folders usage.
Eventually, it grew on me the way it is designed.
I don’t really use/have anymore any tree visualization , i.e, I don’t have Midnight Commander, or Thunar or Vscodium or any other file manager opened with my notes at all times.
I don’t need it, I just use SB.
And, when I ssh/scp into my machine, it is easier to grab any markdown file I may need knowing that they are all in a specific folder.
With the Journal Library, I am now keeping the daily notes separately but, those are different kind of notes within my personal setup.
Right. So rather than addressing the symptom, let me play the psychologist here and ask: how is your relationship with your mother?
Just kidding.
Rather: what need are you addressing with organizing things in folders? If I would tell you “folders don’t exist”, what would change in your life? What would you be scared of?
I too, always assumed: you need to be neat. You need to organize your stuff nicely in folders. But then I started to spend a lot of mental energy in figuring out the perfect folder structure. And then that structure would change, and I’d spend a lot of time reorganizing things.
The other side of the spectrum is not to organize at all. Name your notes whatever, no structure. Then add structure using tags, or perhaps some light structure with a folder prefix or (I experimented with this for some time: emoji prefixes, one for people, one for books etc.). On disk this looks weird, but… does it matter?
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As one who organize things in folders, I agree with Zef that is mostly a mind construct (plus I saw the “downsides” yesterday) .
Altough, I would argue that sometimes if I edit files with other editors it is easier to know where the file is an a folder-based structure, especially if I don’t remember the name. I used to leverage a lot the auto-note mover plugin in Obsidian for the same reason, but that ended up sometimes with duplicates. I personally see this feature more as an official plug maybe?
You’re not wrong. The only potential issue is that many file systems perform slower on larger directories for file lookup because it’s a linked list. But that’s likely not a significant problem. Anything you might want could be replaced with using find and grep or by using string prefixes for page names. So I concede, this is a valid response. Thank you