Meta Tagging in Vista

Tagging documents and files by one or more categories is, simply, pretty damn neat. It’s been supported for a long time on sites like flikr and the ever popular gmail, and I am certainly not the first person to comment on the advantages of sorting and searching by category instead of filing things hierarchically in complex folder structures.

When I heard Windows Vista was going to support tagging files, I got excited. When I used Vista’s implementation of meta tagging firsthand, I became sad. For what it works with, the system is well done and I enjoy how the results come back with regular search items in the new Windows Search interface. What I don’t like is that the system doesn’t work with music or video files, or any ‘new’ file formats. I’m not going to lie and pretend I know everything about Vista and why this is so, but here are my thoughts.

The operating system is in control of the file system. Vista is using NTFS as of now, and has full control over both NTFS and the soon-to-come WinFS, which both support alternate data streams (ADS). With ADS, a file can store information (such as meta tag information) without affecting the file, and as far as the operating system is concerned, without changing the size of the file. So why don’t all files support meta tagging through storing data in an ADS? Seriously, I’m asking. Because I just don’t understand.