I don’t want my content to be locked in a particular app (regardless of how trustworthy/good the app is).
A lot has already been discussed here about this regarding textual content (ability to import/export in various formats etc). However I’m still unsure how this would work with files.
Files in a computer need to be searchable and accessible by various other software, in a variety of contexts. For example, if I’m in Photoshop I need to be able to go to File/Open and navigate through my folders to find what I want. I don’t want to always depend on Anytype to find/open every single file.
From what I understand, files included in Anytype will be kept in a particular place/way, which is unlikely to be compatible with other software. Please correct me if I’m wrong!
If so, one possible solution would be to allow users to keep their own file/folder structure locally, while still having these files be “in Anytype”. For example, while a JPG image could appear in multiple places in Anytype, it would still live in a unique place in my local drive.
For other devices, there could be an option to either replicate the same local structure when downloading, or just keeping them in a flat folder.
Note this is different from simple linking to local files (which I expect to be able to do as well).
I believe this might not be possible as Anytype is built on IPFS and it is my understanding that the format or structure of data stored with IPFS is very different to how files are typically stored on your filesystem.
Additionally data in Anytype is stored encrypted (which is one of it’s core features), what you’re suggesting I believe would require the data to be stored unencrypted.
Unless perhaps…
When you put a file in Anytype it could note the file’s path in your local filesystem relative to Anytype’s local storage directory and store that with the file itself in Anytype’s encrypted IPFS format on the network, but not store it in Anytype’s usual local storage directory on the device because the file is already present on your system in it’s original location (so as to avoid duplicating data).
Then whenever Anytype synchronizes with the network it could check that path and compare the file on your local filesystem with the copy from the network and replace whichever is one is older?
Admittedly, I do not know enough about how Anytype works to know whether or not that solution is possible.
Data is not stored encrypted on your local machine but only on the backup node, at least for now. Kindly go through this following thread for more info:
I would really like to use AnyType not just for notes and text but i would love to use it with all of my files like a file manager.
I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to organize my files inside of anytype.
I have a NAS with hundreds of TB of data that I want to organize with Anytype. Now, I know that’s too big to host on an Anytype node.
this is something I want to keep on my local NAS server.(the files that is).
the text or small data would be nice to have accessible online.
The thing is, I would still want to have access to the files inside of Anytype from OS file explore though so that programs like Premiere Pro or others can still function like normal with Anytype as a file manager.
One idea I had was maybe just have it setup where Anytype can link to your files so that way they can live outside of Anytype.
The point is that, I would like to use Anytype as a file manager that is almost infinitely scalable with all file types.
This is one reason I like, and use, Logseq. I have a ton of PDF files and I can easily link to them…and as long as I keep them in the same location they are easily able to be opened from within Logseq as well as from within any other program. The feature they have is “Embed an asset from outside folder” and I think this would make a lot of sense in this context for AnyType. Kind of the best of both worlds…
nice!
I need a way to link the files from a NAS to AnyType so I can manage them from Anytype.
File Managers are so lacking these days and something like AnyType can bring a powerful experience to this file managing.
Maybe Anytype could API into another program that keeps a database and track of your files so you can use Anytpe as a file manager. This would be MARJOR!
Take File managing to another LEVEL…
I found one example here, not quite what I am saying but it’s a start.
