Yojimbo rant

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Bare Bones software recently released a new version of Yojimbo. It’s been described as having “[t]ons of new features and improvements[.]” That’s true and it’s really a great application, but I’m sad to see that what I think is a very needed feature is still missing. I’m talking about truly smart collections to take advantage of Yojimbo’s tagging power.

Apart from filetype folders (that are called “Smart Collections” in the app), Yojimbo lets users create two other kinds of file “collections.” The first type is a regular “collection,” which is basically just a folder into which you can drop any of your files. The second is a “tag collection.” These are akin to smart folders because they display any file tagged with the keywords you choose. Here’s what creating a new “tag collection” looks like:

Yojimbo's "Tag Collections"

The problem here is that you can only make collections that contain all tags you list. There is no way for you to get a collection with any of the tags you list. This almost makes the program useless to me.

As an academic research, I use Yojimbo to keep track of source material. One topic I study are spectrum commons. In my research I have turned up many articles relevant to my work that deal with commons, though not necessarily spectrum commons (i.e. land or water commons). I tag these with the keyword “commons.” I’ve also turned up relevant papers that are about spectrum but have nothing to do with commons, so I tag these “spectrum.” Now, you’d think that I’d be able to create a smart tag collection that would display everything tagged either “spectrum” or “commons,” or both “spectrum” and “commons,” but no dice.

Over a year ago I sent a feature request to Bare Bones and they replied saying that they were working on this. The issue was also brought up on the Yojimbo discussion list last November. It’s been ten months since the last time Bare Bones software updated Yojimbo, and the new 1.5 update is the first point upgrade in almost a year. Please, Bare Bones, throw me a bone.

Dec 6, 2007 | Comment | Tags: , ,

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