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26 Aug 2007
PDF’s, tagging and MicroContent
I came across an application called Yep. This application allows a user to manage his PDF's. The application has many features similar to MicroContent Clients, so worthwhile to have a look. And also to look into the difference between PDF's and MicroContent Items.
To be clear PDF's are not MicroContent. PDF's lack the internal structure of MicroContent. Although the internals of PDF's are accessible, such as the text, it is still not really structure. However this is what makes a PDF different from an Image. However the fact that a PDF can consist of multiple pages, it is no longer a simple Image. And thus a PDF is not something small either.
What Yep makes clear is that the standard solution (Finder on the Mac) for the management of PDF's is insufficient. And I guess the same can be said for files. So what does Yep add?
Unlike a standard MicroContent Client Yep can not show the content of an Item, so it only shows the meta-content. This meta-content is taken from the meta-content of the file-system, such as the file-name, creation dat, file, size, etc. Yep seems to add a extra layer on top of that data, though. This layer contains the tags, the author and an URL for instance. The tags can be fed back into the comments of the file meta-data to allow Spotlight searching.
The main view of the application is however the Items-pane. This Items-pane can be set into table or image mode. The table-mode shows as the default the file-name, creation-date, author and number of pages of the PDF. One can add/remove columns and set ordering. In image mode one sees the first pages of the PDF's on a rectangular grid. And can zoom and out, and a loupe is available to take a close up view of an Item.
The List-pane is for creating collections of Items. There are three modes available: file location, collections (hand-picked and smart) and tags. The tags are a combination of words take from folders, documents and hand-set. The application has various ways to browse through the tag-cloud, which I will look at in more detail. And I will analyse the application in more depth.