Tomboy - the productivity application for Linux

Tomboy is a very simple application for Linux in principal, but its uses are extensive and you can build a note taking system as simply, as elaborately and as productively as you want. The basics of Tomboy is that it uses a Wiki like linking strategy, where specific words can be links.

For example, start a new note and name it To-do. From then on, this becomes a link, if you write To-do in any other note it will become a clickable link that takes you to this note. This means easy navigation throughout the notes, and together with the powerful search feature you can reach anything in seconds.

Getting Tomboy

If you have Ubuntu it will be installed automatically and you will be able to find it under Applications - Accessories. The repositories are not yet updated, so this will only be version 8.0, as opposed to the newest, 10.0 version. The newer version enables Notebooks, in other words folders for your notes. Check out the Tomboy website for the new version.

Using Tomboy

I think I pretty much covered how Tomboy works, simply name a note, start writing, and from then on, the note title becomes a link. Let’s focus on how to use this application productively. First of all, I was very nervous about using any apps like this because I am afraid of loosing the context of true folders. In reality though, search functions are so good nowadays that adding many folders just makes you loose focus, instead of gaining it.

Managing contact interaction

I think the best way to use Tomboy is to have an aggregation page for your notes, and having separate notes under it. A good example of this is the way I manage contact interaction now with Tomboy. I have a Notebook called “Hack Your Day” where I store my main notes. These are To-Do lists, and my contact list. I also have a Notebook called “Hack Your Day contacts” which contains all my contacts as notes.

The contact notes are all named with the full names of my contacts an underneath I Basically write a log of events so I know who’s who, and how I interacted with these people. I simply use the format “Date - Event”.

In the main contact note I simply have a list of all the people I have on my contact list. This enables me to take a look at people at a glance, or to write very short notes, categorizing people. The possibilities are quite endless, and while this system is extremely powerful, it is also extremely simple, yet productive.

Managing Ideas

When managing my ideas I use the WikiWord feature of Tomboy. This enables organization, without the need to create notes for each idea at the start. I have a note named Ideas in my Hack Your Day folder and it contains a very basic list of my ideas. The ideas desciptions are usually pretty short, but for each one I create a description under 6 words.

If I work on an idea immediately, the short description would be “Tomboy Review” for example, if I want to jot down my ideas on this post. If I want to create the post at a later time, but I don’t want to forget the idea, I would use a Wiki word and would name the idea “TomboyReview”. This would underline the word, but not create the note. Once you click on the Wiki word the note is created.

The great feature of Wiki words is that it declutters your interface of empty notes. the other feature I love is that if you rename the note, all links will be updated. I don’t really like to write in Wiki word format, so once I am ready to create the idea, I can simply rename the note to “Tomboy Review” and the note will also be updated, but the link from the ideas note will also become “Tomboy Review” instead of “TomboyReview”.

Searching and organization

Organizing your notes is quite easy. You can create notebooks as folders and that’s really all you need. Apart from this, a feature I use a lot is the pin feature on the desktop. Tomboy resides in the tray and left-clicking on it will let you see the newest notes, create notes, search and list notebooks. If you click the little pins next to notes you can pin these to the list, these will always be visible, regardless of the time of creation.

When viewing any note, you can also click on tools to see what note links to the one you are viewing. This is both handy for quick navigation, and for viewing inter-note relationships.

Integration and export

If you like to view notes a bit differently, or if you would like to quickly share them with even non-Linux users, you can export your notes to a html format. This can help your productivity, since you can print some to-do notes for when you’re not around your PC, but you can email the html file, or even put it online with some formatting. Simply go to tools and export to html.

Links inside the note are also listed when exporting to html, so this opens up a new world of possibilities. If I were to print my main to-do note, I would not only see the simple list of my to-do’s, but underneath, all linked notes will also be displayed, giving me a detailed list.

The html template used is pretty simple, so if you have very basic hmtl and css skills you will be able to create a template for yourself, publishing your notes in any way you want, but in reality the default simple format is fine.

If you use Evolution for your emails, you can use Tomboy to keep track of your emails by simply draggig an email onto Tomboy. This will create a new note with the subject as the note name. I find this feature handy, but quite useless for me. Evolution is there to manage your emails and does a really good job of it too, so there is really no need to use Tomboy for this (although it’s feasible of course).

Plugins

Tomboy can be enhanced by plugins, but it already contains most of what you need, and other plugins are rare. Export to html and evolution integration are both add-ins, there are only 1-2 more you can use. If you have some programming knowledge you can of course write your own, it’s on my to do list to learn some C programming for this purpose.

One great extension I found was TasksList, but I couldn’t get it to work. This plugin cab pull specific notes together, creating notes automatically. For example, I would not need a master contact list, I could format each contacts name with [contact], and all the people would be pulled together into a separate list.

I compiled the plugin myself (Im very proud of this since the code wasn’t correct), but sadly I only found the 0.2 source, while the screenshots shot TasksList at 0.7.1. The plugin dll itself can’t be used because the newer Tomboy versions changed their plugin management. If anyone knows a solution, please let me know.

Overview

My verdict is that Tomboy is THE best productivity and organization application I have seen. This means that it has the best simplicity, usability productivity and organization values overall. Onenote may offer more features for example, but it is much more complucated.

Tomboy allows you to focus on your tasks and what you are doing, as opposed to the organization and beautification of notes. It is a great example of why I’m starting to say Linux is better than Windows. This is a free application for a free OS and its better than any paid utility I’ve tried. In addition you can alter it, write your own plugins to suit it to all your needs.

Weather you need contact management, project management, an ideas repository Tomboy can help you do it productively, after about 5 minutes of planning. A great app to use, please try it, even if you use Windows you can use a live CD to try Linux from a CD, Tomboy will be available on an Ubuntu Live CD right away.