Tomboy: a sticky wiki-like app

Tomboy is a sticky wiki-like app that I have always wanted to try. I have a certain fondness for wikis because of the ease of creating related notes via linking them together, or putting them together under a specific category. Anyhow, Tomboy is wiki-like in the sense that you could link your related notes quite easily. I call it sticky because similar to stickies, you could put these small notes on your desktop. So if you have certain tasks or lists that you would like to see on your desktop, Tomboy is an app that you could try.

Installing Tomboy was a breeze. It is one of the packages included in Ubuntu Breezy Badger so via the Add Applications option in the Applications menu I was able to add it. If using Debian-based distros, you could “apt-get install tomboy” from the command line.

When you run Tomboy for the first time, you will have a note that says “Start here” and as it says, you could use it to organize your thoughts. Maybe use it as a base note which has categories you foresee that you will use a lot. For example, you could set a To Do category. If you highlight the phrase To Do, you will have the option to create it as a link to a new note (or you could call it a sticky) which would have To Do as a heading on it. How do you make into a new link/note? Notice that after you highlight it, the arrow sign on the toolbar will be colored and not grey anymore. So just click that while the phrase To Do is highlighted. For any new link/note you would like to have, just do that and there you have it.

The Tomboy icon near the Date and Time on the panel would have the options for the app. Even if you have closed the notes already, as long as you have the icon on the panel (meaning it is still running), you still have access to your notes. If you hit Alt-F12 or left-click on the icon, your notes’ headings will be listed and you could select which note to see.

A good thing about the notes in Tomboy is that you do not have to organize them all from the Start Here note. You could just keep on creating new ones. Similar to a wiki, you could check out the recent changes in the notes that you have made. Or you could also perform a search on your notes too. In case you already have many notes, that is something useful.

You could also modify how your notes look like. You could highlight things, or make the text become bold or italicized or even be stricken out. You could even undo and redo these changes easily.

If you think this sticky wiki-like app is for you, try it out =)

More screencaps here.

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