Pass with caution!

I started using Tomboy as a replacement tool for the sticky notes applet. After a few days I started realising that there was more, much more to Tomboy. The project can be found at http://www.gnome.org/projects/tomboy/

Tomboy is more than just another yellow sticky notes application. It is a great way to make notes and even publish them to share with others. Tomboy is also very addictive and easy to use.

In the recent versions of major Linux distributions a relatively new application has found it way. To start using it under Gnome desktop go to the menu Applications > Accessories > Tomboy Notes. A click on this launches Tomboy and a launch applet appears on your menu toolbar.

Unlike most programs in Tomboy you do not have to remember and open any particular file in your directory tree. It creates its own hidden directory under you home directory. To see the contents of this directory you can “enable” view hidden files option in Nautilus. Although there is no real need to do this. Similarly there is no need to save, Tomboy does that on its own.

Launching Tomboy from menu bar is very quick and you can always return to incomplete note by selecting appropriate note from here. From the menu bar applet Tomboy has two options:

Left clicking
This gives you list of all recent notes that you have used in order of recent usage. You can make notes stick so that even if is not of recent use it will not disapper from view. Additionally this allows you to create a new note as well as search option.

Right clicking
To setup plug-ins and change preferences. Plugins offer a nice feature to expand functionality of Tomboy application. Under prefereces you can see the installed plugins and assign hot-key combinations for instant actions. You can configure auto-spellcheck etc. from this menu.

Otherwise also there are only five simple menu items in the notes window – Search / Link / Text / Tools / Delete. The search menu opens another box from where you can commence search for any word contained in any note. It returns a list of notes that contain your search text and number of occurences of the same in each note.

While writing a note if you select a word(s) the link menu become active. if you click on this a new note with the highlighted word(s) as note heading is started. The highlighted word can also be given special formatting from the options available under the Text menu. Although limited text formatting options are sufficient. Standard short cuts of copy, cut, paste, bold, italic also work.

Delete menu deletes the current note. To prevent accidental deletions a conformation box appears. Tools menu gives rise to many more possibilities and would be discussed last.

Other features:
Spell check:
Once you have enabled spell check any word that you type wrongly is underlined in red. This makes for great tool and makes your life easier.
Auto (hyper) linking:
One of the best features of Tomboy is all sorts of hyperlinking.
First of all Tomboy indexes all words that are written and compares them with headings of all notes that you have made. If it finds any word (or combination of words) which that are heading of another note, this word(s) is automatically highlighted and linked to that note. Of course clicking on the link opens up the linked note. This makes a great way of even making cross referenced notes.
Similarly you can write full path to a file and a hyperlink is automatically created. Clicking on this fires up the associated application and opens the file. A great way of embedding your files in to the notes and not having to remember directory tree. This way even if multiple notes may contain links to the same file you do not have to keep the file any special place.
If you write a URL of a website it is automatically converted to hyperlink and clicking on this fires up your default browser and automatically points to the web site. Similarly if you write any email address Tomboy shows this as a link. Clicking on the address starts a compose (write to) window of your mail program. Only caveat is that at end of all external hyperlinks you have to press a return key right at the end of hyperlinked text.
Note heading:
When you start a new note Tomboy appends its own heading base on number of notes that have been made. You can over write this with what ever heading you want to give. If “Note of the Day” feature is turned on then every day a new note is generated giving date in the heading. You can add your daily tasks and appointments here.
Plugins:
Tomboy is a evolving application and the latest release is still 0.6~0.7. However even at this early stage it is very robust and already many official/unofficial plugins are available to enhance the application. Installing plugin is as easy as dropping the downloaded binary file in to the plugin folder. Simply right click on the Tomboy launcher on your menu-bar, choose “open plugin folder” option. This opens the file manager window now just drag-n-drop the plugin file from your download folder. By default all plugins are not enabled but this can be done in preferences menu by toggling on/off the installed plugins. You need to quit and restart Tomboy for changes in plugin settings to be effected.
I installed a “Remind” plugin (download from http://raphael.slinckx.net/blog/projects/tomboy-reminder-plugin/
) and enabled it. Now if in any note I write “Remind 15 August” that note will automatically open up on 15th August. Such convenience! There are many more plugins available. Just look up the Tomboy home page.

The tools menu offers us choice of printing notes which opens print box with usual printing options. However another option under this menu is Export to HTML. this can on click of a button create a fully clickable web page. The pop up box also offers you choice of exporting only the current note or all notes that are linked with the current note. And by saving this html page in a web folder (assuming you have appropriate rights) you can easily publish your note as web page.
In my organisation configured web-server to allow personal pages and have created “public_html” in home directories for all users who publish and update web-pages on intranet. This way they can share updated information very easily.