I like to use tags. Unfortunately, using tags across different operating systems is not easily possible. Maybe EagleFiler could help to make this possible.
One possibility seems to be TagSpaces. Tags are not written in Xattr but filenames. This is not nice but apparently works.
Tags are added to the names of the tagged files. For example, by tagging a file called “img-9936.jpg” with the tags “lion” and “zoo” it will be renamed to “img-9936 [lion zoo].jpg”.
Source: Wikipedia
Would it be possible to add a feature to EagleFiler to optionally write tags into filenames like TagSpaces?
KDE Plasma (Linux)
If I understand correctly, then KDE Plasma respectively Dolphin stores the tags in Xattrs: user.xdg.tags
In the terminal you can display the tags under Linux: getfattr -n user.xdg.tags test.txt
Would it be possible to write tags to user.xdg.tags from macOS (maybe EagleFiler) as well?
It should be easy to do now as an AppleScript that manually writes the tags into the filename. I can look into adding a way to do that automatically. There are some edge cases such as if you have too many tags to fit in the filename or if you have other stuff in [].
My question here is how you would get the files from the Mac to the Linux machine, since as you note the common cloud syncing services don’t preserve xattrs.
It should be easy to do now as an AppleScript that manually writes the tags into the filename. I can look into adding a way to do that automatically. There are some edge cases such as if you have too many tags to fit in the filename or if you have other stuff in [] .
Thank you. Yes, tagging in filenames is not ideal. It is only a stopgap solution. But maybe sometimes it is good to have this stopgap solution.
My question here is how you would get the files from the Mac to the Linux machine, since as you note the common cloud syncing services don’t preserve xattrs.
I don’t know much about xattrs. I think primarily about sharing files on the local network. I have a server with ZFS (truenas). ZFS works with xattrs.
I am also experimenting with Resilio.
If I understand correctly from the link above to syncthing, Dropbox can do a mapping between the different Xattrs. But I don’t want to use dropbox. Only that would show that something could be done there (maybe not for EagleFiler).
I just tried in terminal to read the tagged files transferred via Resilio. Linux does not seem to be able to read and write the macOS Xattrs. For macOS this seems to be true as well. Or I am doing this wrong.
Thank you.
Tagging in filenames is far from ideal and only a stopgap solution. But the stopgap is perhaps better than nothing.
I don’t know much about xattrs. I think primarily about sharing files on the local network. I have a server with ZFS (truenas). ZFS works with xattrs.
Also the exchange with USB stick would be a possibility
I am also experimenting with Resilio.
If I understand correctly from the link above to syncthing, Dropbox can do a mapping between the different Xattrs. But I don’t want to use dropbox. Only that would show that something could be done there (maybe not for EagleFiler).
I just tried in terminal to read the tagged files transferred via Resilio. Linux does not seem to be able to read and write the macOS Xattrs. For macOS this seems to be true as well. Or I am doing this wrong.
An additional piece of information:
When exchanging files with Resilio between OpenSuse (KDE Plasma) and macOS Ventura, the tags are apparently preserved. Only KDE cannot read the macOS tags. And macOS cannot read the KDE tags. The same is true for writing. I had tried that in the terminal with the appropriate Xattrs. But maybe I just did that wrong and something is possible.