[amphitheatre]

I would posit most things in a file system are better represented by graphs. A file type would have a program to run with, a program to edit with, maybe also referencing files in relatively placed directories/locations, and potentially pointed to by a crown job or other automation routines…

Trees and hierarchical layouts do make sense for some things, but as soon as you start symlinking, a proper graph works better - though I imagine computationally harder (a sacrifice I’m willing to make on most desktop machines tbh).

Your notion of sticking everything in a single space and using tags, searches, and filters is something I’ve wanted to explore for a while. Afaik it’s unexplored space, unless others could point me to some awesome tools or processes?

[zvr]

The UNIX filesystem has traditionally been a graph for ever. I haven't looked at details for a couple of decades, but definitely all UNIX/POSIX/Linux filesystems operate on a graph model.

A distinction I used to make when I was teaching this stuff: on your filesystem tree, on Unix names (labels) are on the links (arrows), while on DOS/Windows names are on nodes (boxes).

If you want to explore a tag-based system, take a look at https://www.tagspaces.org/