what would happen if we added a bit of metadata to each file that was a unique pointer to a table that has two fields – a unique document ID and a location for each document. then every time a file is moved, it triggers an update to the table so that the location for that file is changed, and shortcuts always point to the table first, so moving things doesn’t break them.

this is motivated by my experiences with people who get frustrated and confused by shortcuts because they basically think of the file as existing in more than one place because the icon exists in more than one place, but then if they (or someone else) moves the original around, they don’t understand why the file (via the shortcut) won’t open.
i also worked with a woman once who copied a file instead of creating a shortcut and had two parallel versions open that weren’t updating each other, which frustrated her (justifiably). so i think making shortcuts easier and clearer should be a big goal. the digital is about many locations being possible.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 at 10:49 am and is filed under ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.