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Old 11-24-2004, 10:13 PM
bkonia bkonia is online now
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Join Date: 11-23-2004
Posts: 98
Yes, I understand what you're saying now and you do make an interesting point. Presently, UR does not make any attempt to stay in sync with the Windows file system. When you copy/move/rename files within UR, that has no effect on the "real" files according to Windows. UR provides you with the ability to link to a Windows folder (and its files and subfolders) primarily as a convenience, so you don't have to link each file indivdidually.

What you're looking for is a way to use UR as an actual replacement for Windows Explorer. The problem is, since you're dealing with two completely independent file systems, this could become very confusing very fast. For example, what happens if you link to a Windows folder and then move a subfolder of that folder into a section in your Data Explorer that is not linked to Windows? Where does the file go in Windows? You've moved it somewhere, but the place you've moved it to is not accessible by Windows.

Conversely, what happens if you move a Task Info Item into a Windows folder that you previously linked to? For the sake of consistency, UR would then have to create a real file object in Windows. However, Windows doesn't support the creation of Task objects, so what would this file look like in Windows? The other option would be to not create a file in Windows and just leave it in UR, but then when you view this folder, you would have objects, perhaps entire folder hierarchies, in UR that don't appear when you view it from Windows Explorer.

Another approach might be to create a special type of file system link, which would allow the user to manipulate Windows files, but not to drag Windows files from within this link into UR hierarchies or vice versa. I guess this would be conceivable, but then you'd have to wonder what the point of the whole exercise would be. If you can't drag the files around freely within UR, then you may as well just use Windows Explorer.

This is a pretty complex topic and I'm tired at the moment, so maybe I'm missing something obvious. If so, please enlighten me!

I also understand your reason for not wanting to import all your data into UR. However, you did mention a really good solution to this, which is to put everything in one big folder. In fact, ever since I started using PersonalBrain and later transitioned to Ultra Recall, I've been using this approach. I got the idea for it because that's the way normal way that PersonalBrain works. They encourage you to import all your files into your "brain" which is really nothing more than a regular Windows folder that is indexed and organized within the PersonalBrain application, rather than through Windows Explorer. When I transitioned to Ultra Recall, I simply created links from UR to all the files in my "brain" and I was good to go. Of course I can still see the files in Windows Explorer, but I no longer use WE to organize them into folders, because UR has a much better organizational paradigm than the simplistic folder hierarchy of WE. My next step will probably be to get rid of Windows altogether and just import all those files into Ultra Recall.
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