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Tomboy – and thoughts on desktop application integration.

I came across this neat app this evening: Tomboy. It’s a simple note-taking app, but both GNOME and KDE have one already, so what more has Tomboy got to offer?

Tomboy’s USP is its ability to link together notes – and therefore ideas. There’s also a system tray applet thrugh which you can quickly view the last few notes you’ve created, or search for notes.

This is what I like best about Tomboy, though…
It is a top priority for Tomboy to be able to handle all the sorts of information you want to keep track of. We are currently developing support for linking-to and managing all the Desktop Objects you interact with, all from within a simple note interface.

Support is currently in the works for:

* Creating Evolution Todo and Task items
* Linking to and annotating scheduled Appointments
* Linking to received Emails
* Online status of instant messaging Buddies
* Inline File & Image previews
* Rhythmbox Playlists

This application reminded me instantly of Microsoft OneNote. I quickly realised, having used OneNote for a short while, that both OneNote and Tomboy have something to learn from each other. OneNote has a much better interface, with the ability to enter text anywhere on the page, with stylised “stationery”, and a notebook-like appearance (side tabs and all). But it doesn’t have the great linking abilities of Tomboy. Nor does it have the quick mouse-flick access to recent notes that Tomboy offers.

In fact, both of these applications have slightly differing target user-bases. Microsoft is betting OneNote to be the killer app on TabletPCs. The idea is to simulate a paper notebook as much as possible. The concept of not having to save your notes, or not having to maintain an on-disk notes hierarchy, all fits in with this aim. Tomboy, on the other hand, is all about integration between information and the applications that will handle this information. Hence the support for Rhythmbox playlists and Evolution emails. It’s also about quick and easy access to numerous little bits of information that typical users store during everyday computer usage. Simulation of an actual notebook seems to be nowhere on the minds of the developers of Tomboy. Which is not a drawback, definitely. It’s just a different type of application.

As an aside, I’ve noticed a couple of initiatives for tighter integration between GNOME software. This is one; another is Dashboard. Yet another is Beagle. Then there are programmes to explicitly achieve this: the GNOME Desktop Integration Bounty Hunt. There are some fantastic ideas up on the Bounty site.

One major area where I think we need to pay more attention is the File Manager, for both GNOME and KDE. Spatial or not, Nautilus still lacks features like inline display of ID3 tags (like in Windows Explorer), “hover” previews of music & movies, and better thumbnail display. Why does Kuickshow even exist as a separate application? It’s crying out for integration with Konqueror! How about an integrated search feature in the File Manager? Nautilus doesn’t have one, and Konqueror’s sucks! Perhaps we could have a specialised “Music” or “Movies” or “Pictures” folder, where we can have all sorts of rich views for that particular type of media. Another view from Windows Explorer that I miss in Nautilus and Konqueror is the “View by File Type”. Windows Explorer arranges files so beautifully by clubbing together all PDFs together, all my plain text files together, and so on. Except that it relies too much on extensions. So a backup file with a “~” appended at the end (hence with the extension .txt~) is a separate category. Nautilus and Konqueror have long since given up relying only on filename extensions, so this type of view ought to be more effective on Linux.

This kind of integration’d be great for the Linux desktop – it’d speed up corporate adoption no doubt! For sure, desktop Linux has come a long way – remember there was a time when we couldn’t even cut-and-paste reliably between applications! And we’re no longer just playing catch-up to Microsoft Windows/ Office – the functionality offered by GNOME (2.6 onwards) and KDE (3.2 onwards) exceeds that offered by Windows XP.


October 16, 2004 ·  Post to Twitter ·  Email this ·  Insights, OneNote, OpenSource, Tomboy ·  Leave a Comment


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