Using Tagsistant

After installing Tagsistant we need to start it up and get it set up.

Make a directory that will contain tags:

user@computer> mkdir ~/Papers_tfs

(My pdf files are contained in a directory named Papers, so I append an tfs to denote that this is a tagsistant file system version of the original.)

To start Tagsistant:

user@computer> sudo tagsistant ~/Papers_tfs

Make some tags (note that "tags" are actually directories, and this explains why they are created using mkdir):

user@computer> mkdir ~/Papers_tfs/numerical_analysis
user@computer> mkdir ~/Papers_tfs/approximation_theory
user@computer> mkdir ~/Papers_tfs/orthogonal_polynomials
user@computer> mkdir ~/Papers_tfs/mathematics

Add some files, i.e. Tag your files:

user@computer> cp ~/Papers/paper_on_interpolation.pdf ~/Papers_tfs/numerical_analysis/
user@computer> cp ~/Papers/paper_on_interpolation.pdf ~/Papers_tfs/approximation_theory/
user@computer> cp ~/Papers/paper_on_interpolation.pdf ~/Papers_tfs/mathematics/
user@computer> rm ~/Papers/paper_on_interpolation.pdf
user@computer> cp ~/Papers/paper_on_Legendre_polynomials.pdf ~/Papers_tfs/numerical_analysis/
user@computer> cp ~/Papers/paper_on_Legendre_polynomials.pdf ~/Papers_tfs/orthogonal_polynomials/
user@computer> cp ~/Papers/paper_on_Legendre_polynomials.pdf ~/Papers_tfs/approximation_theory/
user@computer> cp ~/Papers/paper_on_Legendre_polynomials.pdf ~/Papers_tfs/mathematics/
user@computer> rm ~/Papers/paper_on_Legendre_polynomials.pdf

Note: Only one copy of paper_on_interpolation.pdf is stored is stored in ~/.tagsistant/archive/. This applies to paper_on_Legendre_polynomials.pdf, as well.

We can browse our files using tags now:

user@computer> ls -la ~/Papers_tfs/approximation_theory/AND/numerical_analysis/AND/orthogonal_polynomials/

and we would get:

paper_on_Legendre_polynomials.pdf

while

user@computer> ls -la ~/Papers_tfs/approximation_theory/AND/numerical_analysis/

produces:

paper_on_Legendre_polynomials.pdf
paper_on_interpolation.pdf

Shutting down the filesystem:

user@computer> sudo fusermount -u ~/Papers_tfs

Note: Your files are still available (in ~/.tagsistant/archive/ as mentioned above) even when tagsistant is not running.

Installing Tagsistant on Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkaty

We need to compile this program from source. This can be scary but this is my experience and it was painless, luckily.

1. Download the source code for the developer's website: http://www.tagsistant.net/ I put the zipped bundle in my local temp folder: ~/tmp/.
2. Extract the contents into a local working folder: ~/tmp/Tagsistant/.
3. Navigate to the folder with the source code.
4. You will run './configure', 'make', and then 'make install'. But beware: any of these steps may halt and they will need to be re-run until they complete. The installation may not work unless you wait for the current step to be completed in full before proceeding to the next step. I encountered three things that went wrong in my installation: certain packages had not been installed, priviledges were not high enough, and certain folders could not be created. In each case read the messages carefully, and try to fix them in succession.
5. During the './configure'-stage it complained that I did not have libfuse-dev and libsqlite3-dev . I used Synaptic to find and install each and whatever dependencies they asked for. The key part of the message here had the string: (I lost it.)
   
6. During the 'make'-stage it complained that I did not have libgtk2.0-dev. I used Synaptic to find it and install it and whatever dependencies it requested. The key part of the message here had the string: gtk+-2.0 was not found.
7. During the 'make install'-stage it complained that it could not make the folder /usr/local/share/pixmaps/tagsistant/ so I made it using 'sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/pixmaps/tagsistant/'. Upon re-running 'make install' it needed permission to make a file so I had to re-run using sudo: 'sudo make install'. After re-running this time, the installation completed.
   
8. To make sure the program was known by my system I typed 'which tagsistant' and 'which tagman'. My system replied '/usr/local/bin/tagsistant' and '/usr/local/bin/tagsistant', respectively.

My next posts will give my experiences using tagsistant to tag pdf of academic papers and my experiences mirroring and synchronizing my tagged pdf files in the context of tagsistant.