The Collector Folder Type

• A File Collector is basically a file containing shortcuts to other files and folder items that are browsable by Probe. Grouping together a collection of shortcuts to other files in a single file may seem simple, but it proves to be a valuable tool in file-managing.

Figure 1 : A Collector as seen from 'outside'.

Figure 2 : The 'inside' of a Collector.

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• The Collector representation have some important features:

• A storage structure can be browsed even when the actual storage is not available (Off-line browsing).
• Browsing the Collector is done exactly as any other folder in Probe. This implies that powerful selection and navigation tools work as usual.
• The Collectors format is space efficient. References to 15 000 files can be kept in 1 MB of diskspace.
• Collectors are loaded and searched very efficiently.
• Collectors allow for folder organization different than that on the actual storage.

Figure 3 : Probe Search Results...

Figure 4 : ... are actually stored as a File Collector.

• Some examples of how Collectors may be used are:

• Offline Browsing of a remote site.

  In a dial-up situation, or when when a remote site is not continually available, a Collector can be created to mirror the contents of selected parts of the site. The directories of the site can then be browsed and searched when the server is unavailable.

• Accessing CD-Rom file/folder structure.

Creating a Collector for the contents of a CD is easy. When doing so, one can browse and search CD:s without having to physically access them. Only after locating the file beeing searched for, the specific CD can be inserted into the CD-player. A lot of media swapping is eliminated.

• To make snap-shots of the structure of local/networked disks.

Making a Collector that is a snapshot of a local disk containing, say 10 000 files, is easy and take little time. Since Collectors can have a comment associated with it, you can store a remark about the state of that disk at Collector creation time.

• Fast searching.

Loading and unparsing Collectors is typically done at a rate of 10000 files/second. As a consequence, searching a Collector is a magnitude faster than searching a local disk, and several magnitudes faster than searching remote storage.

• File Collectors are also used internally by Probe, for example, together with the Location Bar, and for storing search results (see figures 3 and 4):

• Since the Location Bar essentially is a logical structure, containing pointer to file and folder objects, with nicknames associated with them, the Location Bar is ideal to store this structure.

• The ouput from a file search, is really a collection of pointers to files. As a consequence, Collectors are well suited for storing search results.