Tomboy/PlaceForNewIdeas

This page is a place for new ideas for Tomboy.

Please keep subsections in alphabetical order.

Contents

Anonymous Notes

Not be required to 'name' notes when they are created without getting the not-so-useful name 'New Note #' (when there are lots of 'New Notes #' they get difficult to manage). Maybe the note list could display a summary of the contents when the name isn't set?

Idea credits: RyanProbasco

Archiving

Would be nice to have a way to archive notes

Idea credits: Nat

[#Nat ]

It would be excellent to have an option to archive a note instead of pressing [Delete]. That way, if you later want to search for a phone number that you took down several months ago, it will still be available. Personally, until there is a way to store large numbers of old notes long term, Tomboy won't be an adequate solution for my own note-keeping.

#RobertHoegerl I'm already using Tomboy and find it very useful. But I totally agree with Nat, it would be a *big* difference if there was such an archiving feature. Think of Gmail: "Why should you delete an email again?" You find some paragraph in a website or come up with a sudden idea and just take down a note. Maybe you don't need it anymore, but maybe it might be useful in the future. So if you some two years later think, oh, yes, there was this note sometime, you just type it in the (beagle) search field and tomboy presents you the note.

Unless Tomboy is suffering somehow performance-wise, I don't see what the advantage is to archiving a note. The note will be out of your hair as soon as a few notes are edited, and it will always be available from the search dialog. Once you reach a certain number of notes, do you really browse through every single note, or do you just search? Personally I haven't scrolled through a list of my notes in over a year. Dropping out of the applet/tray menu is effectively archiving for me. --SandyArmstrong

Application grouping

A really cool idea would be to be able to group a bunch of windows (applications) together and associate them with a note. The way I would use this is to use notes for keeping track of different tasks. When clicking on a task, that will instantaneously bring back the windows for this task. Some random use case examples:
Many of us tend to pay our bills every month. For this I might need a web browser with my internet bank, a spreadsheet with this months budget and outcome and a calculator. These applications are associated with the note. When clicking on it, it brings up all the applications I need.
Programming is a complex task that involves many applications like debuggers, IDE:s and editors. For larger projects it might also involve bugzillas and wikis, not to mention documentation. Associating the applications needed with a note will bring up my workspace fast and elegantly.
A party setup might include amarok and a browser with youtube readily available.

These are just some contrieved example, I'm sure you could come up with your own. To implement this, tight integration with common applications and the window manager would be needed, a pretty daunting task. I put it up here mainly for your consideration. -- ErikNilsson

Audio Notes

With a click in the button bar you can speak a short note into your microphone and Tomboy saves it directly as a note with audio attachment. Later you can play and pause the audio note and if necessary write it down in characters. A simple function with much value.

Being worked on as part of SummerOfCode2008. See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=523116

== Automatic Capitalization ==

At the start of a new line or after a period, Tomboy would automatically capitalize the first letter of a word as you typed. Maybe it would be better as an optional plugin.

Automatic Index for Tagged Notes

When tagging is in place, it would be very useful if every tag in Tomboy had an automatically created page, by default containing links to every note with that tag. This automatic page would not be saved, thus allowing for additional functionality: The user could create his own note for a tag, so instead of that search there could be a bit of information.

Alternatively, such a link could open a regular search for that tag with custom tag notes ignored.

Idea credits: -- DylanMcCall 2007-11-05 22:08:27

Autocompletion

When you start writing, Tomboy should suggest the existence of another note whose title coincides
Hitting enter when this happens would complete the note's name
This would help many people remember that they have a note related to what they're writing
- If anyone has any real idea how to implement this, I would love to give it a stab (with a push in the right direction) KevinKubasik
  - Here are my thoughts -- I would absolutely love to have this feature (SandyArmstrong):
    - What I want is to just hit ctrl+space and get a drop-down. But this can only ever work with exact matches. I can argue this if you don't buy it. But personally if I'm doing autocomplete it's because I can't remember the title of my note, so exact matches usually won't cut it.
    - An alternative (easier to implement, less discoverable?) approach would be to something like this:
      - Type some sentinel text like "Note:"
      - As soon as you start typing, a drop-down appears with the results of searching through note titles (favoring exact matches, then "AND" matches, followed by "OR" matches).
      - Select the note you want, click or hit enter, and "Note:stuff i typed" gets replaced by a proper link to the selected note.
When writing any word, Tomboy should suggest possible words (that already exist in Tomboy) as you type. Kate does this and its very handy, its useful in the same way as predictive texting.

Backlinks

Much like a wiki table of contents, a backlinks entry would provide a list of other note titles that link there.
Example: Creating a note called (Done) that has a list of backlinks. Now all I have to type on any todo/task/etc is type (Done) when I'm done..
This could also be done as a specific type of link (automatically added to the bottom of the other note when I create a bi-directional link)
Patch for a Backlinks Plugin: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385551
Done (checked-in to CVS 2006-12-14).

Idea credits: Brian

Bluetooth

Send a note via bluetooth to a configured device with one click
in the notes window or in the main window
sending as plain text or html

Idea credits: MartinRaissle

Browser mode

Tomboy notes run in a single window
Use forward/backward button as you open different notes
Link/button that allows you to go to any "parents" of the current note
- This could be useful outside of browser mode
  - Perhaps middle-clicking a link uses the current window?

This could be a simple preference:

[x] Open notes in new window (Shift+click to override default setting)

With the back/foward buttons only showing up once there is a history trail for a given window.

Idea credits: JeffDay

There is a program already that is like this, it's called Zim. I love the spatial mode myself. Sunnan

Calculations

The ability to stick in simple, one-time, calculations. Just the four basic operators would be a great start: add, subtract, multiply, divide. Perhaps something like "[365*24]" which would immediately be replaced with the result.
When I get time to breathe I'll pursue a plug-in for this functionality.

Calendar view

It would be good to have a better time-based view of the notes, like displaying them on a calendar. And it would help if it kept track of (at least) both the time the note was originally created and the time it was last modified and you could switch between those when viewing the calendar.
JoaoSilva: this would be very nice indeed. I suggest that whenever a note is changed, a new entry in the calendar is created for the present day with the note. For example:
1. 1 Jan: I create a new note titled "ReadingAssignments" with some text
2. 3 Jan: I update the note with some new assignment.
Now there would be an entry for the note "ReadingAssignments" in both the 1st and 3rd January. However, the entry in the 3rd would show the current note, while the entry in the 1st would show how the note was in that day. This would be very useful but it implies a different way of storing the notes.

Checkboxes are Task Items

As a solution to the todo item question, there could be a type of bulleted list called "task list". A task list is a bulleted list with checkboxes instead of bullets. Clicking on the checkbox crosses out the text belonging to the list item. Then there could be a summary note that would list all task documents and their states across the wiki.

Created a CheckboxesMockupPage:

Idea credits: Joseph

#RobertHoegerl: I agree. Would be useful.

Columns for Multiple Lists

With prioritised ToDo lists it is often useful to show more than one 'parallel' list side-by-side eg:-

Project1, Project2, Project3, etc. Then one can compare the next task in each project to decide what to do next.
Big Projects, Small Tasks. If not time to start anything on the Big Projects list, do something from the Small Tasks list.
Work, Personal. etc.

The columns would be simple vertical divisions of the page, and there does not need to be any interaction between columns. No flow of text between columns. Each column is an independant list.

This could be done with Tables (see below) by putting each list in a single cell of a one-row table, and of course tables would be useful for arranging other information too.

Configurability

Possibility to change the notes background colour, and having as choice the window decoration a bit like MacOS-stickies, making it looking really like a Post-It

Contacts

Should be able to associate notes with one or more Evolution contacts.
- Check uppercase words against contact db?
- "Link to:" menu that included contacts, events, etc.
- Or, typing the email address or name of a contact could bring up an autocompletion box, and if one hits <enter> it associates that contact. Brian

Context-Specific notes

Should be able to create notes specific to the currently active application.
- For example, if I open a context-specific note while I'm in Firefox, at http://www.google.com/, then the title of the note will automatically be set to "Google" (i.e. the window title minus " - Mozilla Firefox") and I will be able to type some comment about that website as the body of the note. Whenever I'm at this web site again and I try to open a context-specific note, the same note I wrote before will come up and I will get the chance to view, and edit it, if I wish.
- This can also be applied to other commonly used applications such as Open Office apps (notes being specific to the file open in the active window).
- I wrote something like this with Autohotkey for Windows about a year ago and use it ALL THE TIME. It's a fantastic way to do research or keep up with the latest products and services. This way, when I or a friend decide we want a really great RSS reader or personalized homepage, etc, I can simply do a search and instantly find all the great articles and blog entries I found on that particular subject along with my personal thoughts about each article (for example, "This seems like a pretty user-friendly desktop search, but it's known to use up a lot of system resources. Definitely not for slower computers."
- *NOTE* - this is similar to the idea in the "Firefox Integration" idea, except I'm not suggesting an actual extension for Firefox or anything, just something that, when you want to open the special kind of context-specific note, does something more like this:

Checks if note already exists

If note DOES NOT exist

Create the note with the appropriate title and make the title a link to the page/file

Otherwise if note DOES exist

Open the note so that the user can view the note and edit it if they like

Discrimination

Ability to store notes on multiple similar subjects that you want to keep separate. This way you could have two notes titled "important people". So, such as in my case I can keep notes on characters in one game and not be forced to keep them mixed with characters from another game or my personal to do list. Being able to save a collection of notes and make them unavailable to another set, saving to disk would be nice too.

Displaying .note files at Tomboy startup

One missing feature of Tomboy is when it is starting up, you can't have notes displaying at screen, and specially those you choosed to be displaying
- Previously opened notes now re-open on Tomboy startup since 0.7.1.

Drag 'n' Drop Files and Folders in Notes (see also: File Attachments)

Make it possible to add Links to Files and Folders with Drag 'n' Drop. Make a Prompt which asks what Tomboy would do if the User click on these Links. Click an Link to an Folder would open these Folder in Nautilus. Click on a File would open these File with the application OR open the path of these File in Nautilus.

Encrypted notes

Should be able to mark a note as "protected" or something, ask for a password, and need to enter the password everytime the note is opened. The note is encrypted on the disk.
- This would be easy to implement using the D-Bus API provided by Seahorse. Simply check the text when the note is loaded for crypt text and then prompt for passphrase. The key set as the default in Encryption Preferences would be used. The signing and verifying functionality may be useful if note sharing ever becomes available. - AdamSchreiber
I have another idea that should even be simpler. Anybody remembers ROT13 encoding? This is no strong encryption but it makes a note unreadable. I think that would solve much problems as one does often not want to let people view all notes from just one glance. But for me personally I am not very interested in stronger encryption. It would help a lot if there would be a button (make readable/make unreadable). Or do something similar. Maybe a start would be that Tomboy needs to have access to the central desktop password to open a note? -- ThiloPfennig 2006-10-07 12:38:38
- No, I don't think that this is the right solution. When we tell the user that something is encrypted, it should be really encrypted (and not only with a joke like ROT-13). It's really easy to read ROT-13 »encrypted« messages... (with a bit practice) -- ChristianKintner
Encryption should be provided by gnupg. If a user chooses to encrypt a note, the content block should be encrypted to ascii armored using the default private key. An additional tag could be used to store the key id used and also store the fact the content has been encrypted. provided gpg settings are transferred with notes, decrypt functionality will remain even if a user migrates to a new machine. Th is would work well with the seahorse/dbus suggestion from AdamSchreiber -- Cafuego

Enhanced Linking Associations

Currently, links to other notes are generated on the basis of the titles of other notes; however, this feature could be enhanced by allowing a list of "linking-expressions" to be associated with other notes. Links to other notes could be generated on the basis of a configurable list. The list could be accessible via a button on the menu bar of a note.
- Example 1 - Suppose that a user creates a note describing a particular theory; however, the theory is referred to by various names in the relevant literature. So, she inputs the other names of the theory into the "associations list" and when typing any of those expressions in another note, a link is automatically generated that points towards the appropriate note.
- Example 2 - Oftentimes, a user will designate a note by a full title, suppose it's 'Deoxyribonucleic acid'. However, the user may find it useful to associate the note with 'DNA' as well; that way whenever she types in either 'Deoxyribonucleic acid' or 'DNA' a link is generated that points to the note titled 'Deoxyribonucleic acid'. Likewise with other abbreviations or acronyms.

--AronVadakin

Keep the auto-link the same by default, but have an option, or right-click, to change the link's association.
- Example 3 - now you can have links that say "back", which go to a parent note when notes are organized hierarchically.
- Example 4 - you can have links that say something like "the website to sign up is [link]here[link]" and have "here" go to the website
- Example 5 - if you have notes that are named the same except have different dates in the title, such as notes for a specific class or daily schedules, you can have links that say "previous" or "next" that go to the the next sequential note.
I'm not saying program all these functionalities into tomboy, just the ability to change the link's association and then people can do this themselves.
This way you can also erase the current link if you do not desire a certain word to link to an unrelated topic.

--RobertSimpson

Events and Tasks

Should be able to associate notes with Evolution appointments and meetings.
- Drag a note to an appointment/meeting.
Should be able to associate notes with Evolution tasks.
- Drag a note into the task list in the clock applet to create a new task from the note.
  - Should the note and the new task stay in tune? Should the note be removed?

Evolution Integration

Synchronize Evolution Notes and Tomboy Notes.
- Here does Conduit do a good job.

Evince - Tomboy Integration

Implement PDF Annotations support in Evince with Tomboy.

The notes would not have to be at the time of executing the document, but rather the notes must be all along available for the user, this or not the this opened document, so that having to open the document to see everything what I write down, is not good.
But the interesting thing would be that, when the user marks some part of the text for a note, the Tomboy activates.
And in this part he would be rich to play with part of the code of the Tomboy so that it has supported notes of evince, since it would show to the name of the document and all the notes that became in the document, and the Tomboy would give the option to open the document if the user wishes it.

For more details: evince-tomboy integration

Idea credits: BenjaminPerez

Export

Export to Text
- AlexGravely's quick XSL fix
- PhD researcher's blog about plain text export
- Lossless transformation to and from lightweight markup languages like StructuredText, ReStructuredText, Markdown. In the end I want to read, edit and synchronize Tomboy notes with my Palm's notepad! (GregorHoffleit)
Export to TiddlyWiki
- The idea here is that the HTML that is generated is more rich (and in this case a wiki)
- Boyd's Blog entry with patch for exporting to TiddlyWiki
- TiddlyWiki Homepage
Email
- Email a note to someone and allow them to open it with Tomboy, make changes and email it back
  - Perhaps a .note extension and an appropriate MIME type?
- Email a note with Evolution (or other mail client) with note header as subject and body as text. This will allow one to exchange ideas with someone who does not have Tomboy installed.
- See also: merging notes
- Evolution-Plugin: Copy or Move an Email to TomBoy. Today we need to do this with Copy Paste. This should result in "Subject"->first line (header) - maybe add some date. -- ThiloPfennig 2007-04-24 09:29:46
Print
Web Publish
- Automatically upload marked notes to a predefined web site FTP (thanks Victor for the idea)
- Related to previous: I would like to export a simple folder containing all my notes as a linked set of HTML pages. Ideally, that folder could be imported by another Tomboy instance on a different machine.
- Export to MediaWiki, MoinMoin, other Wiki formats -B. Bogart YES PLEASE!!! Converting my tomboys to plone is getting tiresome.
- Export to Google Notebook www.google.com/notebook
- Export to jaiku or twitter or pownce
Export to iPod
- Some iPods (iPod Video, for instance) have support for text notes. A note (in an iPod) is just a text file (with some markup) in a folder named "Notes". It would be wonderful to have a plugin to export all notes to an iPod.
- This can be done with a rather simple plugin, maybe using http://banshee-project.org/Subprojects/Ipod-sharp
- Also the following guides might be useful: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/06/make_ebooks_for_1.html, Apple's iPod Notes Feature Guide
- Other projects (like the iPod manager Hipo, see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504226) have also noticed this useful feature. Maybe there's room for collaboration.
See also: Sharing
Export to .rtf (rich text format, as used by AbiWord and many other apps) would be great; Of course, having also .rtf import to a note would be awesome, specially that Copy/Paste operations between Gnome apps looses all formatting. (Ariel)

Idea credits: Nat, BoydTimothy

Just a simple text export/import would be a real boon for me. HTML, XML, wiki formats, etc. may be overkill - keep it simple. Must also have text import.

Idea credits: John

File Attachments (see also: Drag 'n' Drop Files and Folders in Notes)

Support to drag and drop files into the Notes (and actually store the files inside the notes, like in emails). (Ariel)

Actually I would like to see the reverse as well: attach Notes to files. When opening a file (ideally using any Gnome application), there would be an extra 'Note' icon somewhere on the Window frame - a click would open/close the notes.

Use cases:

Attach 'Todo' lists to files. 1 Todo Notes for many files / Many Todo Notes from 1 file.
Attach 'Tips and Tricks' notes to a program (which is a file as well)
Attach 'Links' to other files (Web site for an music file author,..etc,...)

Note: Under Nautilus there is already a tab with notes. (select a file/right click/Properties/Notes) - The idea is to use the best of both worlds (McG)

-> In the mean time, you can use urls of the form "file:///home/$user/filenam.ext" in Tomboy.

Browser Integration

Epiphany

What about Epiphany? I'd much rather have integration with a *real* GNOME app!
- A start: http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/tomboy/trunk/extra/epiphany-extension/

Firefox

Create a Tomboy Firefox Extension
- Tomboy Button would be available in Firefox's Toolbar/statusbar (maybe similar to the Beagle extension)
- Be able to:
  - Create a new Tomboy Note that includes the URL to the specific web page you're visiting
  - Access/open all notes that contain the URL to the web page you're on
    - Tomboy icon shows actual number of notes associated with the web page
    - Click on the Tomboy icon and it pops open a menu with the corresponding notes so you don't have to go searching in Tomboy for them
If you're writing in a Tomboy note make it easy to quickly add (without copy/paste) the Title + URL of the website of:
- Any opened web pages in the browser
- Pages from your bookmarks
- Pages from your browser's history
- Bookmarks stored in your del.icio.us account
- Bookmarks from digg.com, etc.
Just found DBuzilla (D-BUS for Mozilla)
- Still need to check it out, but it could be exactly what we need to make this extension fairly simple
- Could be able to talk with Tomboy via D-BUS to search and open existing notes or create new notes based on the web site (URL) you're currently on!
TomFox is a Firefox extension to create a note out of selected text, with the page title as note title and the URL included

Formatting

Quotes from Nat:

"My notes are poorly formatted. How can I make them look better?"
- How do you make Word documents look better? Using bullets and indentation, most likely. (Alex)
"Rearranging text between notes is hard. I'm faster in emacs."
Ability to rename links. Currently you can only have full URL's.
- When dragging a link from Epiphany, preserve the link "name".
- The same with bookmarks.
Please give the user the option to disable spell checking. i use tomboy for technical notes, almost every word is not in the dictionary and gets highlighted red by tomboy as misspelled, this is aggravating. -- Already exists, see the Preferences panel by right-clicking the icon (Alex)
- What exists already is the ability to enable/disable spell checking for all the notes. However, I think it should be possible to enable/disable spell cecking per note, and also to select the language per note (currently it is totally impossible). Many people work with more than one language, and spell checking in the wrong language is just annoying (I use English for most things work related, but Spanish for most other things and my UI is in Spanish: I cannot take notes in English without disabling spell checking).
Indentation:
- Intelligent indentation support (like gedit) (for example keep the indentation of the line above or below, etc), very useful when building lists etc.
- Block indentation: select a block of text and push a button to move it all right or left (pressing Tab and Shift-Tab)
- Shit+Enter with bullets: It'd be nice if pressing shift+enter would create a new with the same indentation than the previous and no bullet like in OO; right now it just creates a new bullet (HansiRaber)
Copy / Paste between Notes with format (including bullets)
- Current (5.5) when doing Copy/Paste between two Tomboy notes, all formatting is lost (bold / indentation / bullets); this is a request to have the formatting preserved while doing a copy / paste operation. (Ariel)
Copy / Paste to and from OpenOffice
- Same as above but across Tomboy <> OpenOffice copy/paste operations (Ariel)
Allow the user to choose the colours for links and possibly allow multi-colour text. (PeterArthur)
Bulletin folding, similar to code folding in popular IDEs, to allow the user to collapse itemized bulletin lists. (TomWeingarten)
I would like to see the format kept when printed to a PDF file or to a printer. I used the bullets in Tomboy and when I printed it to a PDF all my tabs were lost so I was left with one enormous bulleted list with the shapes of the bullets changing.

Free hand drawing

Support drawing with the mouse pointer. This is very useful in tablet PCs. Not an easy feature I guess, though
- RobertHoegerl: Good idea, I think, this free hand drawing.
Instead of trying to support inline drawing from Tomboy, maybe we should look at cleanly connecting to another application, such as Inkscape, which will provide a much better drawing package.
- I think, it's overkill. This feature should provide easy drawing for simple images, not so complex as Inkscape. And only few people have Inkscape installed.
- Yes, I'm all for something simpler (with maybe a right-click popup for 'Edit in Inkscape').
- RobertHoegerl: That's overkill. I don't think that there is a need for an inkscape integration. Inkspace is a professional vector graphics software which needs quite long to load. Very few actually have it installed. Tomboy is a small, quick notes application.
- JeffTickle: This is what I am working on for my Google Summer of Code project.
  - BradLandis: After a long search, I found that this project is called Virtual Paper, and found a recent blog on the topic, which also includes instruction for downloading it via SVN.

GUI

Keystroke to close all notes (Nat) -- Already exists: Ctrl-Q (Alex)
Inline Media
- Images
  - Drag and drop images directly into a Tomboy note and size to fit
- Video & Audio - Show an icon and open a helper app to play file.
* More distinct title
- Still appear editable
- Something like the evolution mail header display
- Stylable
Pin notes to main Tomboy menu
- Idea is to make it easy to make important notes always accessible
- Check box/pin icon?
- Make part of the "pinned" group?
- Done. Checked-in and released as part of Tomboy 0.5.0 (Alex)
Recent Changes (Nat)
- Be able to click several notes to open several of them instead of the recent changes dialog disappearing after opening each note. -- It doesn't go away. Is SuSE using a custom patch? (Alex)
  - Perhaps something like he clock applet, where you have to click the icon to close it? -- DanielSchierbeck
Open new notes centered on the screen, not in the upper left corner
- If the center is occupied by other notes, show the new one shifted a little to the bottom right of the top note. This is especially useful for opening notes by clicking links.
- Not that i'm a programmer of tomboy, but i think if changing that behaviour it would make sense to put new notes close to where "new note" menuitem was clicked. it's as simple as making the action happen where the users eyes expect them to happen. (HansiRaber)
Search/contents: instead of two separate dialogs for contents and search results, it'd be nice to have just one:
- Initially with the search field empty it would display all notes, arranged by name or modification time;
- As the user types in the search field, the incremental search would update the list, leaving only matched notes displayed;
- Of course, this dialog should be invokable with a single keystroke.
- Done
Keystroke to close all Notes except the one on top.
Menu-Icons should be able to become smaller.

Idea credits: Nat, drewkerr

Handheld Tomboy

OK- this one is really out there- in fact it would be a separate project. Tomboy is so addictive, and so appropriate as a sort of PIM application that I believe it would be ideal in a handheld computer/smartphone environment.

You'd have a project that involves a tomboy application for handhelds, which actually has the ability to sync with tomboy notes on the linux OS (this 'sync' would be optional)

Having Tomboy in your pocket would obviously be bliss.

Really nice extra features which might however be tough to integrate into this idea would be for example for Tomboy to wiki-link to all other applications according to certain monikers, say the subject of an agenda entry in a calendar app, or the nickname entry in an address book record. This way, Tomboy would not need to displace the functionality of other PIM applications but would build on their strengths and add to them. I could have a list of members of an assembly I am a part of stored in a tomboy note, and instead of having to record demographics for each member- by writing their nickname, I could click on the name from within tomboy and be brought to the address book entry etc.

One thing some handhelds (palm) lack is a good back button and or having multiple open tasks. That limits the potential of a Tomboy application. However, if one could wikilink back out of our example addressbook contact from the notes section via "AssemblyMembers" link- this would help a lot. Basically- getting the entire handheld environment to co-operate w Tomboy would be the ideal.

Come on- you have to admit this is a great idea. Please pass it on to whomever.

Idea credits: Faizi Crofts

Hierarchical table of contents

With a lot of notes with interlinks it can be really hard to find notes, a table of contents that groups the notes by heirarchy, based on link parents would make notes easier to find visually.

Lets say I have a bunch of notes that were all created by creating a link in an other note. That note would be parent and all the notes linked from it would show up in a second pane. Otherwise your table of contents could easily fill with notes and the search would be the only way to find anything, rather than being able to use the link structure to organize ideas (the purpose of a wiki right?).

Idea credits: [b.goto10.org B. Bogart]

History editing

Store a wiki-style changelog for each note. This would allow tracking of changes, super-unlimited undo/roll-back. Following the style of a wiki. Google Documents does this well.

Idea credits: [StevenGarrity]

Hotkey for opening notes

It would be nice to have a hotkey to bring up pre-selected notes. In addition, you could call notes individually or in groups. --KirkWerklund

HTML plugin

Open a window with html text to copy&paste instead of saving file somewhere. Maybe save it into a temporary file and launch gedit to edit it by default?

Icon Status (empty/not empty)

It would be good if the icon indicated that there were notes in tomboy, as it would serve as a reminder. I think that there should be two icons, one for when there are no notes and one for when there are.

I think most users always have notes in Tomboy...why delete them? --SandyArmstrong

Import .note files from other unix users

Allowing you to be able to import .note files from other users (/home/*), even from root (which situation may need some kind of password asking or somewhat)

Tomboy 0.7.2 allows you to specify a .note file to bring into tomboy by running tomboy --open-note /path/to/my/example.note --SandyArmstrong

Import documents from other postit-like apps - and sincronity with them

Tomboy being able to work over MacOS-X Stickies (since Linux can mount hfsplus unjournalled partitions as read/write - very useful for people like me using MacOS-X and Linux on a dualboot machine ) - and maybe able to work with some postit-like tools for w32, like BlocoDeRecados and many others - import a mere txt file would be useful as well

Indent / Dedent

In many code editors (such as Scite) you can highlight lines of text and hit tab to indent each selected line or hit shift + tab to dedent each line. I'd like it if Tomboy had this feature.

Keybindings

What would be better than Tomboy with emacs keybindings? Currently, you can set gtk programs to use emacs keybindings, but quite a few important ones are overwritten by some of the default Tomboy ones.

example: ctl-b in tomboy toggles bold text; ctl-b in emacs moves cursor backwards

All that it would take to implement this would be a way to edit all of Tomboy's default keybindings.

LaTeX equations display

It could be really nice to have a plugin that uses gtkmathview to display LaTeX equations.

Plugin is available at http://www.reitwiessner.de/programs/tomboy-latex.html

Linking/Unlinking

Its already possible to make a link to an other Note but an created link is only removeable by deleting the linked text and delete the linked note. This should be an option for instance under the right click of the mouse on a link and then ask you will you only want to delete the link or also the linked note or Notes.

Lock Individual Notes

Allow important notes to be locked so they become "read only". It is very easy to overwrite notes when not paying attention. Notes might contain strings that are the same as links which could be updated automatically. This is sometimes unwanted and can lead to problems.

Logs/Status Reports for specified period from tomboy

Have tomboy generate a log of the entries from certain entries showing only the entries made during a certain period of time. Allow them to be organized by topic. This would allow me to take notes on my work in tomboy and quickly generate a log or status report.

This is similar to Create Note of the Day Report

Merging

As the different alternatives of sharing Tomboy notes evolves (networked, peer-to-peer, email, etc.), Tomboy ought to be able to resolve conflicts easily on already existing notes. For example, if you sent Bob a Tomboy note named, "Golf Scores", he edits it in Tomboy and sends it back to you (but you've also edited it in the meantime), Tomboy ought to be able to show you the two notes side-by-side and let you choose whether to keep the old one, use the new one, merge them together, or keep both of them (rename one of them). The UI for doing this needs to be dirt simple!

One simple idea enabled by note-linking is to just create links to altered notes. Alterations that require merging can be dumped into a newly created note named "Golf Scores by Bob (September 8, 3:23pm)", and a link created at the top of the original note. It's pretty low-tech, but has a lot of value.
Could Meld be used somehow (in a nice way for basic users) to deal with merging?
User something like gmail message-IDs (that could be hidden). This would also allow to transfer notes.

Middle-click for more actions

Originally suggested as a bug in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tomboy/+bug/94726

When you click a hyperlink from a tomboy note, it closes. That's quite cool, but to make that behaviour more consistent I think the note should close too when:-selecting some text and middle-clicking the "link to new note" button.

-middle clicking the "extensions → what links here → note" menu item.

Mindmap Navigation

Goals:

Visualize the organization of your Tomboy notes
Quickly visualize the relationships of your ideas/notes
Navigate quickly to related notes

Can Tomboy and Labyrinth collaborate? That would be really useful!

Multiple Titles for Notes

If notes could be given multiple titles, it would be easy to link to a note within a sentence (without having to engineer said sentence around a descriptive title) while also preserving informative main titles. This idea would benefit greatly from Reusing Titles, as well. This idea could be similarly approached using tags.

Idea credits: -- DylanMcCall 2007-11-05 22:08:27

New notes default to their parent's notebook

Most of the time when people create notes by making a link from another note, they will want that note to be in the same notebook. For example, if I have a note called "New Features" in the "New Features" notebook which links to notes of new features I want to add to program X, I am going to create those new feature notes by making a link from the "New Features" note. When I type "Tagging support", highlight it, and then hit the link button, I want it to automatically be added to the "New Features" notebook.

Notebooks

More information on the Notebooks page
A notebook is a collection of related notes
Export as a single file
Can be shared with others (which shares all the notes inside of it)
See also: Export, Sharing

Notes Folder - Easily selectable root directory for the Notes

Easily selectable and changeable root directory for the notes; this would enable you to copy your tomboy notes from one machine, to another machine in any folder, and be able to access them. For example, I keep work-related notes and personal notes in different "note sets".

Having a menu option to display the directory tree and being able to select a new directory for the notes (and loading the existing note tree, if any) would be great. (Ariel)

Open note by name

Have a binding to open a dialog similar to GNOME's ctrl-l (in desktop, or nautilus), and then open the named note. Should show completions as the user types.

Outline/Bullets/Checkboxes/etc.

Turn bulleting on by typing - (a single dash character)
- This should work just like word processors everywhere, but is very difficult with GtkTextView. It is the single most valuable feature on this page. (Alex)
- Bullets is horrible to implement on top of GtkTextView, but I've been told adding indentation+prefix support to GtkTextView should be fairly straightforward and get away with lots of problems you'll end up having otherwise (TommiKomulainen)
- Doesn't Tomboy do this already? If i start a line with a single dash, -, this line becomes bulleted after I hit enter. (LarryArcher)
Turn checkboxes on by typing [] (open and close square brackets)
indent/unindent
move up/down
disclosure triangles
style by depth/structure
- simple css-like for fonts, size, color
- other elements could be modified in this way too
- headings, emphasis, etc.
Use Gecko.WebControl + Javascript Formatter instead of Gtk.TextView (major change)
- Could use FCKEditor to provide a bunch of features, but most importantly Bullet + List support
  - LGPL
  - Would need to strip down the features of FCKEditor to keep things simple
  - XHTML so a note's XML format could be preserved
  - Would have to rewrite XSL exporting features (among many others)
- Could also use TinyMCE
  - LGPL
  - Has "simple" mode
- Update (07 Oct 2006): Started looking into this (using TinyMCE) and saw some problems almost immediately
  1. Slow to start up since it's essentially loading a browser
  2. Widget (text and controls) doesn't really "look" like it fits in because it's not a Gtk.Widget
  3. Finicky...kind of slow and didn't quite behave like other standard editors that supports editing.
See also: Gnome Outliner this is just a gtk treeview
The 'Zim desktop wiki' is similar to Tomboy in many aspects and already has bullet support. It might be a good idea to check how they solved the issues mentioned above, and contact the developer. Zim works really well on this. http://zoidberg.student.utwente.nl/zim/

Idea credits: Nat, drewkerr, BoydTimothy

Bullet ordering

Other

Desktop Wide Annotation Service

Parent Indexing in Drop down.

Ability to label a note as a parent and then all linked notes to be indexed as children.
Ability to see this relationship in the main drop-down from the applet. Exp: When you click you'll see your main notes with their sub-notes indented or have the sub-notes appear in their own sub drop-down.

"This type of option would allow you to keep a long list of notes, or give you the ability to clean up the clutter and only see the main or "top" (parent) notes. Right now if I'm working on two websites and I'm making notes on all of my pages my Tomboy drop down is far to cluttered. I can search but pages with similar data will cause further "post searching eyeballing" If I click the applet and get three to five titles or parent notes (website 1, website 2, etc...) Then I can mouse down to website 1 and then get an additional submenu with the Children notes."; Idea Credits: Greenwood

Read-Only .note files feedback

Tomboy used to have a bug doesn't notify us if the notes were really being saved (like notes copied from other unix users directories, and forgot to change chmod/chown, readonly .note files, etc.) - a mere 'revert' or 'refresh' command, which reloads the .note files into the opened notes would be enough for our immediate feedback, to get assured our notes are really being writed

Reusing Titles

Tomboy offers a very useful functionality where notes are automatically linked to as soon as their titles are typed. This is exciting because it means one need not directly remember to link to further information on a topic; it happens automatically! However, because one can not use the same note title twice, that functionality is often not exposed in actual use; people use descriptive titles for notes that must be linked to directly, in a way that tends to not integrate well with a sentence. It would be useful if titles could be reused, and when a link points to many notes with the same title, a menu appears containing all of them. As a result, less descriptive titles could be used that integrate better with sentences for linking, and a person's collection of notes would be more manageable.

That selection of identically named notes could be sorted in such a way that puts the one most likely on topic nearer the top. For example, it could be sorted based on tags, where the most similarly tagged notes are at the top of the list. Sorting by dates could also be interesting.

Idea credits: -- DylanMcCall 2007-11-05 21:50:10

Searching

Ability to list orphaned notes (orphaned from "Start Here")
Modify Recent Changes dialog to be Table of Contents. Bug #348023
- Done

Idea credits: drewkerr

Selecting multiple words/sentences

Ability to select several none succeeding words/chracters holding in Ctrl
Great if you are going to change text properties for several words at once that are not adjoining

Idea credits: Mandingo

Session Support

Re-open all open notes across sessions
- This is available since 0.7.1. --SandyArmstrong

Idea credits: drewkerr

Sharing (Networked Tomboy)

Sharing a note is different than exporting a note. A shared note is linked between computers and changes when any user makes a change to a note.

Share notes with a team
Share notes with an individual
Share notes with a service
- Google Notebook
Existing sharing efforts
- iFolder 3 - file synchronization for Linux, Windows, and OS X
  - Create an ifolder out of your /home/user/.tomboy directory
  - Note: notes that are added from other machines into the .tomboy directory by iFolder aren't picked up by Tomboy without restarting
- Conduit - synchronization for GNOME
- WSOP project for synchronizing Tomboy notes
  - Last known source code: mailing list
- Google SOC Project 2006 Networked Tomboy
  - Haven't heard anything out of this project or seen any code. Is it dead?
  - I think the project jielded some refactoring and nunit tests
- There is a bugzilla entry with some code using .net remoting and avahi: Bug #321037
See also: Export, Merging
rather than share it would be nice to use TomBoy via a JabberNetwork or locally with live editing. I think every participant should have a different default color (take a look at Gobbys implementation). I think one also could share the placement of notes. -- ThiloPfennig 2006-10-19 14:51:49
I think it should even be combined. There should be a button "share notes". You select the connected other tomboy users, with who you want to share this note. Click "ok" and it will be available for the other user and show a little hint "User 'xyz' shares the note 'xyz' with you." popping up in the taskbar. Afterwards both users can edit the note at the same time, every user has a different colour. -- RobertHoegerl

Shortcuts (keyboard)

Shortcuts to increase / decrease text size ctrl+ / ctrl together with Ctrl and mousewheel scroll as in firefox
Keyboard shortcuts to set the font size: small, normal, large and huge.
when pressing alt-f12 let user navigate to note starting with letter pushed on keyboard and highlight it, so that user can open it pressing enter
also maybe it would be an idea to autoplace pinned notes alphabetically on top of the list?

Idea credits: #Mandingo

Spell Checking

Toggle spellchecking on a per-note basis.
Select languages on a global and per-note basis. -- DanielSchierbeck
- What's the use-case for selecting these on a per-note basis? (David)
  - Half my notes are in Danish, the other half is in English. My grocery list is in Danish, while ideas for Evolution, Tomboy etc. are in English. -- DanielSchierbeck
- Only show language selection UI if more than one language is available. -- DanielSchierbeck
Quickly accessible spellcheck enable/disable toggle (e.g. a button in the the note window toolbar, with maybe a dropdown for language selection).

Statistics

Add statistics to the about box. Show the following:

Number of notes -- Number of notes is now shown in the ToC in 0.4 (Alex)
Number of links
Number of words
etc.

Idea credits: drewkerr

Stylus Support

I would love it if it was possible to use your stylus to write notes on tomboy and as an added extra with support from someone like "cellwriter" convert from handwriting to text. This is missing from Linux at the minute and Windows does it so well.

Synchronization

Create a new plugin that can synchronize notes with a remote server. This would allow commuters to have the same notes on different computers.

Sync with IMAP/IMAPS server, using special e-mail messages and xml attachments. (Should take advantage of the IMAP server notification messages, it can be effective and very portable)
Sync with LDAP (openldap) server
Sync with other servers (please suggest)
Sync with Google Notebook through the Google Notebook Data API
Use Subversion as a remote synchronization server
specify sync intervals (upon startup/in X minutes, when IMAP server notifies about a change etc.)

Idea credits: LaszloNagy

Sync with SyncML server, allowing easy sync with mobile devices. Include regular auto-sync. Specs : http://www.openmobilealliance.org/release_program/SyncML_v112.html ; Other doc (related to opensource syncml server funambol): http://www.funambol.com/opensource/documentation.php ; Libsyncml (might be useful?) : http://libsyncml.opensync.org/

Synchronization, unsupervised, from the command-line

A command-line switch to trigger tools > synchronization, if it has been correctly configured. This would allow simple shell scripts to be used for synchronization; allowing, for instance, simplistic cron-based sharing of notes.

Extra credit:

* Work on running tomboy instances (probably already there; have not checked). * Echo output correctly to the terminal, as stdout or stderr depending on degree of errorness. * Make operation fail-safe; but instead of aborting in case of conflict, a copy of both versions should be kept and propagated, each with an "@hostname" suffix. A new note with the common name should also be created, linked to each of the two conflicting versions (let the user sort out the merge).

Syntax colouring

I often paste some code snippets to a Tomboy notes, but to be able to read and analyse it easily I have to use an external text editor with syntax colouring. It would be very nice if Tomboy could colour the code.

Tables

Support for tabular data (GregorHoffleit)

Tomboy does no good job for tabular data. Tab stops have fixed width, while as the width of text elements might vary (depending on your display and font).

Tomboy should support some kind of tables, either by allowing to change tab stops, or by implementing full tables.

Tables would also allow multiple ToDo lists to be shown side-by-side - see 'Columns for Multiple Lists' above. (Haz)

Tabular Notes

Like in firefox have all the different notes under one window.
Have a small extra toolbar that keeps track of all the open notes.

Tasks

"When I take meeting notes on paper, I have a little symbol I use to denote that a particular note is an "action item" or task." (Nat)

Mark parts of a Tomboy note as an action item
Could create a task item in Evolution and display task completion UI inside Tomboy
- Alternatively, a special Tomboy note/dialog could show all tasks grepped from all notes in a single list (complete with links to the Tomboy note they came from (Boyd)
- Done (without Evolution integration): A plugin for the above can be found at http://www.ediweissmann.com/taskslist/
Proposed Tasks Solution

Idea credits: Nat

Timestamps

Timestamp a note.

See on a line-by-line basis the time at which that line was edited or added in a left-margin annotation
- One idea I've had for this is using a vertical bar graph with a bar for each line, and the bar's width dependant on the age of the line, or possibly using color shading. (Alex)
Less ideally, a little button or shortcut for inserting a timestamp would be okay

Idea credits: Nat

Better just an automatic timestamp on a note, plus the ability (through a shortcut keystroke) to insert the current timestamp). If you add timestamps on a line-by-line basis, or if you use some sort of graph, please make it an option which can be disabled. I think timestamps on every line would be overkill and would cause TomBoy to lose one of its greatest features: simplicity.

Idea credits: John

Toolbox

Some preferences are needed to remove, hide, reduce the toolbox, which looks huge.... - btw, the context menu would have all of them, like 'Tools' and 'Delete'

Transparent Filenames

If a user wants to amend a note remotely via ssh, he can open the .note files in ~/.tomboy. These .note files are uncompressed XML, so while they're not pretty to look at with VI, they're not difficult to understand either. The main problem is opening the right .note file, since their names are strings of 32 seemingly random hexidecimal digits. Since the notes have names anyhow (New Note #X, by default), why not name the .note files with something that might be more helpful?

I'm not opposed to this idea but if you are ssh'd in, won't a simple grep (for the title) show you which file to edit? Just something to help prioritize features. -- WaltArmour

Trash Can

Use the trashcan for deleted notes by default and avoid the confirmation dialog (and provide an easy way for users to restore their deleted notes)
- http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382007
- Very good idea! -- RobertHoegerl

Turn off list feature

When you type a hyphen followed by some text, like so:

- something

- something else

The text gets converted into bullet points. For me this is an annoyance. I'd like it if there was an option to turn off this behavior.

URLs (treatment of pasted..)

I often insert http links in my notes, an nice option would be that Tomboy could fetch the header of the url, e.g. that "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q16KpquGsIc&NR=1" would be displayed as "Youtube -Ronald McDonald insanity" ; when you hoover over the icon it could display the full url, and clicking your right mouse button would give you an option to copy the actual adress to clipboard. It would be useful to be able to turn this behaviour on/off via preferences..

Idea credits: #Mandingo

I liked this idea, but implemented something much simpler: http://code.google.com/p/tomboy-plugin-url-title/ It's an addin which allows you to right click on a url to asynchronously fetch the page and insert the title from the html into the note after the URL. --JamesKingston

Webpage of Tomboy having a forum

Would be interesting if the official Tomboy webpage having a forum where we can put messages there - it can use phpbb, flatnuke, or any other

Xgl/Compiz

"Stick" a Tomboy note to an application
- When you move the application window around, the Tomboy note moves around with it
- Possibly attach the note diagonally like a "sticky" note
- Integrate Tomboy with the window-decorator so the notes can be "minimized" to the application's title bar and not clutter up the screen
- Show "minimized" Tomboy notes as tabs sticking out from the side/back of the application
- So doing stuff like this is a pretty strong motivator behind Gimmie. Doing this without help from applications as to what resource is currently inside the window is hard/useless.
Use effects when viewing mindmap
Show minimized Tomboy notes as crumpled up pieces of paper

References

Kudos to the following people/sites for the ideas used on this website. If you'd like to be recognized for the work you contributed to this site, add yourself here!

- AlexGraveley - Tomboy author
- BoydTimothy - initially create

live.gnome.org

Anonymous Notes

Archiving

Application grouping

Audio Notes

Automatic Index for Tagged Notes

Autocompletion

Backlinks

Bluetooth

Browser mode

Calculations

Calendar view

Checkboxes are Task Items

Columns for Multiple Lists

Configurability

Contacts

Context-Specific notes

Discrimination

Displaying .note files at Tomboy startup

Drag 'n' Drop Files and Folders in Notes (see also: File Attachments)

Encrypted notes

Enhanced Linking Associations

Events and Tasks

Evolution Integration

Evince - Tomboy Integration

Export

File Attachments (see also: Drag 'n' Drop Files and Folders in Notes)

Browser Integration

Epiphany

Firefox

Formatting

Free hand drawing

GUI

Handheld Tomboy

Hierarchical table of contents

History editing

Hotkey for opening notes

HTML plugin

Icon Status (empty/not empty)

Import .note files from other unix users

Import documents from other postit-like apps - and sincronity with them

Indent / Dedent

Keybindings

LaTeX equations display

Linking/Unlinking

Lock Individual Notes

Logs/Status Reports for specified period from tomboy

Merging

Middle-click for more actions

Mindmap Navigation

Multiple Titles for Notes

New notes default to their parent's notebook

Notebooks

Notes Folder - Easily selectable root directory for the Notes

Open note by name

Outline/Bullets/Checkboxes/etc.

Other

Parent Indexing in Drop down.

Read-Only .note files feedback

Reusing Titles

Searching

Selecting multiple words/sentences

Session Support

Sharing (Networked Tomboy)

Shortcuts (keyboard)

Spell Checking

Statistics

Stylus Support

Synchronization

Synchronization, unsupervised, from the command-line

Syntax colouring

Tables

Tabular Notes

Tasks

Timestamps

Toolbox

Transparent Filenames

Trash Can

Turn off list feature

URLs (treatment of pasted..)