There were some brief comments here a couple of years ago about Tagspaces, which made it sound promising. Has anyone on this forum actually tried it out?

You mean the program with this name or the general idea of tag spaces/clouds ?

I haven't used the program but when you check the references section in the wikipedia page for tag clouds you find a lot of interesting articles.

Yes, I meant the program:

https://www.tagspaces.org/

Thanks for the suggestions.

I downloaded and tried tagspaces.

The interface is pretty great. You could use this as your main file browser with a built-in editor for many file types. The basic version only searches filenames, but the pro version also supports full-text search. And in theory, I love the idea of tagging files so I can easily identify files relevant to a particular topic or issue in the future.

But I don't think I can deal with the tag implementation for tagspaces: it stores all of the tags in the name of the file. So a file name like "moving plan.doc" becomes "moving plan [personal][household][expenses][Fern Street].doc"

You don't see the tags in the file name when you use the Tagspaces browser, but you do see them anywhere else. I'm not sure why this bugs me so much. Part of it is that you get long, unwieldy filenames. You would also want to rename files before emailing them or sharing them.

Saving the tags in the name has a big advantage, though: the tags are portable across all your devices. If you sync your files with Dropbox, your tags will show up on your phone and your other computers.

Anybody else see other drawbacks of storing the tags in the filename?

The paid version of Tagspaces gives you the option of storing tags in sidecar files instead of in the filenames.

https://www.tagspaces.org/products/pro/#tagSidecarSaving

An interesting review of TagSpaces here:

https://flipboard.com/@flipboard/flip.it%2FUGeKss-go-cloudless-with-tagspaces-a-powerful-/f-d11e08cce3%2Fthenextweb.com

Hm, TagSpaces has made some huge advances. I particularly like their article on Cryptomator (sounds very useful for all kinds of other uses, too), and the fact they supply an open-source WebDAV server version for those who prefer to host their own TagSpaces servers.

The blog is well worth reading - a sensible antidote to the "use the Cloud at all costs" journalism that is currently so prevalent.

So Tag spaces has continued to develop. There are local hosted AI integrations, lots of usecases outlined.
https://www.tagspaces.org/gallery/