The original note, as written at the time
An operating system/explorer that indexes each file according to the time that it is placed in a folder. The first file in the folder gets a “1 -” added to the start of its name, the second “2 -“, the third “3 -” and so forth.
Ongoing development
An operating system or file explorer that indexes each file by the time it is placed in a folder. The first file gets “1 -” in front of its name, the second “2 -“, the third “3 -“, and so on.
I have used this scheme by hand for years, and it works for a reason that has nothing to do with computing. It records sequence. Not creation date, not modification date — the order in which things arrived.
Dates lie. A file created in March and edited in September sorts to September, which is usually the wrong place. An idea that arrived first but was finished last belongs at the top, because the reading order is the thinking order, and the thinking order is the arrival order.
And a numbered prefix is the one form of metadata that survives everything. It survives a change of machine, a change of operating system, a lost database, an upload, a download, a zip file, an email attachment. Any system that stores order in an index is one crash away from losing it. A number in the file name is stored in the name.
That is why the numbering must be assigned automatically and once. If it is assigned by hand it drifts, and if it is reassigned it destroys the record you were keeping. The rule should be: a file keeps the number it was given on arrival, forever, even if it is later moved out and back.
The cost is that you cannot insert. Number ten and number eleven can never have something between them. That is the discipline, and it is a feature: if the new thing is important enough, it takes a letter, and you have to decide that consciously rather than quietly slotting it in.