I’m somewhat “obsessed” about file organization, filenames, and so on.
To keep my personal files in $HOME organized, I use the following system:
$HOME/home - the main folder for my personal files. It is organized quite systematically. Or at least this is how it is assumed to be.
$HOME/usr - for command-line related things. That is, shell scripts, automator workflows, configuration files, etc.
$HOME/var - things that I prefer to keep unorganized. Either I don’t have time for them or I think it will be best to organize them later, when I will get better understanding how to use them.
The words usr and var (as well as home, of course) are borrowed from the Unix conventional directory layout. What you think about the way I use usr and var for my personal stuff? Do these names really make sense or they look more like an arbitrary choice?
I never tried Obsidian seriously. Do you mean that it can be used not just to keep an organized set of Markdown notes, but also to organize arbitrary files (e.g. Keynote, PDF, MPEG, etc.), without moving them?
Obsidian will show other files in its’ vault folders. I tried using it as a more general-purpose file organization too, and I think it’s a very poor tool for organizing pretty much anything other than text files.
Although if the goal is to have an Obsidian vault that’s organized topically in folders, and to be able to store other files in those folders so that you only have one folder tree en toto, Obsidian won’t cause problems with them.
They key thing here is that using the same folder structure helps a lot with the usual “where did I put this” dilemma. So for me, if I am in “notetaking mode”, just go to Obsidian and if I am in “archivist mode” I just browse the structure with the Finder or Forklift.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know Obsidian can even open a number of common files natively (some videos, some images, etc.).
Do you do anything to separate the notes out at all (separate folders inside other folders for notes, etc.) or do they just live right in the folder with everything else?
I’m evolving my approach to file organization. I started with rigid hierarchies. Dallied with Tags. And now I’m almost all in with dumping them all in a huge pile and using good search tools to find stuff.
I tried folders, then one-huge-pile+search, and then back to folders but in the much smarter way.
The key is: Don’t try to organize everything. Some things should be organized, but some things should not. They should not be organized because they are most useful for you - at least currently - in disorganized way.
I wouldn’t do this because of the confusion with /home, /usr, and /var. But that’s just me. Also following Unix conventions isn’t particularly “user friendly”. Better to give them names reflecting their contents.
Update: after reading more about usr and var folders, I decided that var is a misleading name for what I tried it use for. In Unix, var is used for files of variable size, like logs, that is, the files that can grow very big. Thus, to use var as a synonym to place of chaos, as I tried initially, would be misleading.
FWIW, I put all of my custom scripts in /Users/myusername/Documents/Scripts. I am thinking about moving at one level up. But in my mind, that is a very clear labeling.
I don’t have much in the way of Automator workflows, but any of my custom code that can live there does live there. And if I download some other custom code (the Downie Chrome extension that had to be manually installed from code by the user), that stuff lives there too.
