Folder structure & icons (draft)

It is time for some spring cleaning!

Here I present my new folder structure and take a deep dive into the creation of .ico files. I have been toying with the idea of optimizing the folder structure on my PC for a long time. What ultimately triggered this endeavor was my biggest annoyance with the Windows Explorer – the Group by function. Since my data is already well organized, this only delays finding the file I am looking for. When it appeared again in a folder in which it has been turned off, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. With the help of WinSetView I was finally able to deactivate it everywhere, but this also launched an avalanche of changes.

I sometimes have a tendency to be a little too perfectionistic. This often stops me from starting a project, but when I do, I sometimes get too caught up in the details. I don't necessarily see that as a negative thing, because in the process I broaden my horizon and usually learn a lot of new things. And that was also the case here. The only bad thing is if you forget the stuff you learned and therefore I decided to write this down, in case I need it again.

Folder structure

I would consider my previous folder structure as almost adequate. The content of each folder was well named, but many frequently used files were located in deeply nested folders. The main reason was that my structure was built on the standard libraries of Windows

├── Documents /
├── Downloads /
├── Music /
├── Pictures /
└── Videos /

One of the issues is that most topics I work on are placed in the documents folder and in order to keep it uncluttered, a lot is therefore moved to subfolders. I followed r/datacurator with interest, a forum, where people present their own folder structure.

One thing that quickly became clear is that there is no one right solution. Everyone has different demands and they will likely change over time. Hence finding the "right structure" is a never ending process. I ended up with an adjusted structure from this GitHub repository.

├── archive /
├── audio /
│   ├── music /
│   └── recordings /
├── documents /
├── downloads /
├── images /
│   ├── graphics /
│   │   ├── artwork /
│   │   ├── comics /
│   │   ├── icons /
│   │   ├── screenshots /
│   │   └── wallpapers /
|   ├── photos /
|   └── public /
├── literature /
│   ├── articles /
│   ├── books /
|   ├── documentation /
│   └── newpapers /
├── projects /
│   ├── latex /
│   ├── python /
│   └── webdev /
├── scratch /
├── software / 
|   ├── backups /
|   ├── games / 
|   └── messenger /
├── videos /
│   ├── editing /
│   ├── movies /
│   ├── tv-shows /
│   └── web /
└── work /

Moving the files was a bit tricky to ensure cloud backup is intact and making sure that my music player and image organizer do not loose information.

It seems like we are close the the finish line, but I'm just getting started. In order to recognize a folder quickly, it is often helpful to assign a unique icon. However windows only provides a limited number and they probably do not represent the topics of all folders. There are collection of Windows Icons or the Beautiful Flat Icons by ElegantThemes.com that offer a wider choice. But even with all those options, I was not quite happy.

Folder icons in windows (so far only notes)

The icons of folders are stored in .ico files. This is not an image format, but rather a container that contains images of different sizes. This way Windows can select a suitable icon, depending on where the folder is shown and what size it has. Similar to the default icons, I ended up creating some that looks as follows

If the folder is large, it shows a folder icon with a symbol for the topic. However if the folder is small (for example in Quick Access), the details of the folders are removed and the symbol is shown in a circle. In order to create such an icon, we need to do the following things:

Find a suitable symbol for each topic.
Create multiple images for different sizes with that symbol.
Merge those images to an .ico file.

Here we will discuss this in the opposite order as this is the way I learned it.

Magick

learn what ico is and how to create them

i tried to edit png files -> does not look sharp and difficult to modify (color etc) i tried matplotlib/pillow -> exhausting to create shape of logos -> svg is the best solution

To draw a circle with SVG just write

<svg width="256" height="256" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle r="128" cx="128" cy="128" fill="green"/>
</svg>

and after playing around a bit I ended up with these two

Drawing a folder in SVG

that went pretty smoothly only issue was to add things like small details and a color gradient. not bad either, because it taught me new things like masks

Symbols

Getting the "drawing" on the icons is easy thanks to sites like SVG Repo.

Compile with python

In a very simplified form (missing a lot of steps):

with open('template.svg','r') as f:
    template = f.read()

svg = template.format(color1='red',color2='green',color3='blue')
with open('icon.svg','w') as f:
    f.write(svg)