Tomboy is a
free and open-source
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
desktop
notetaking app written for
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
,
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
, and
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...
operating systems. Tomboy is part of the
GNOME
A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...
desktop environment. As Ubuntu changed over time and its
cloud
In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...
synchronization software
Ubuntu One
Ubuntu One is an OpenID-based single sign-on service operated by Canonical Ltd. to allow users to log onto many Canonical-owned Web sites. Until April 2014, Ubuntu One was also a file hosting service and music store that allowed users to store da ...
came and went, Tomboy inspired various
forks
In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...
and clones. Its interface is a word processor with a
wiki-like linking system to connect notes together. Words in the note body that match existing note titles
become hyperlinks automatically, making it simple to construct a
personal wiki
A personal wiki is wiki software that allows individual users to organize information on their desktop or mobile computing devices in a manner similar to community wikis, but without collaborative software or multiple users.
Personal wiki softwa ...
. For example, repeated references to favorite artists would be automatically highlighted in notes containing their names. As of version 1.6 (2010), it supports text entries and hyperlinks to the World Wide Web, but not graphic image linking or embedding.
Development of the original Tomboy software ceased in 2017. Starting in 2017 the development team rewrote the software from scratch, for ease of maintenance and installation, renaming it tomboy-ng. Tomboy-ng is written in
Free Pascal
Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) is a compiler for the closely related programming-language dialects Pascal and Object Pascal. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License, witexception clausesthat allow static linking against it ...
.
Features
Some of the editing features supported:
* Text highlighting
* Inline spell checking using GtkSpell
*
Automatic hyperlinking of Web and email addresses
* Undo/redo
* Font styling and sizing
* Bulleted lists
* Note synchronization over
SSH
The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution.
SSH applications are based on a ...
,
WebDAV
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for concu ...
,
Ubuntu One
Ubuntu One is an OpenID-based single sign-on service operated by Canonical Ltd. to allow users to log onto many Canonical-owned Web sites. Until April 2014, Ubuntu One was also a file hosting service and music store that allowed users to store da ...
, or the Tomboy REST API that is implemented by several server applications
Plugins
Tomboy supports several plugins, including:
*
Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
mail links
* Galago/
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...
presence
* Note of the day (disabled by default)
* Fixed width text
*
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
export
*
LaTeX
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
math (in the package , not installed by default)
* Print
Ports
* Conboy: a Tomboy port to the
Maemo
Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to com ...
platform written in the
C language
*
Gnote
Gnote is a free and open-source desktop note-taking application written for Linux, cloned by Hubert Figuière from Tomboy. It uses a Wiki-like linking system to connect notes together. Gnote is part of the GNOME desktop environment, often fill ...
: a conversion of the Tomboy code to the
C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
language, but is not cross-platform
* libktomgirl: a platform-independent library that reads and writes the Tomboy File Format
* Tomdroid: an effort to produce a Tomboy-compatbile notetaking app for the
Android operating system.
See also
*
Comparison of notetaking software
The tables below compare features of notable note-taking software.
General information
Basic features
Advanced formatting and content
See also
* Comparison of text editors
* Web annotation#Comparison of web annotation systems, Comparison ...
References
External links
*
{{Notetaking software
Software that uses Mono (software)
Free note-taking software
Cross-platform free software
Free software programmed in C Sharp
GNOME Applications
Note-taking software that uses GTK
Personal wikis