Re: Tomboy in Desktop

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006, David Nielsen wrote:

> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:10:22 +0200
> From: David Nielsen <david lovesunix net>
> To: desktop-devel-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: Tomboy in Desktop
>
> man, 24 07 2006 kl. 12:51 +0100, skrev Calum Benson:
> > On 22 Jul 2006, at 12:50, David Nielsen wrote:
> >
> > > Sticky Notes tends to get cluttered up for note taking while project
> > > managing, it's an all or nothing interface whereas Tomboy allows me to
> > > show only related notes. I normally prefer having only the set of
> > > post-it notes I care about displayed rather than having my screen
> > > covered in yellow goodness.
> >
> > This seems to be about the most frequent gripe with the Sticky Notes
> > applet, to be honest... perhaps we should re-start this thread with
> > "assuming we're going to fix sticky notes to let you show/hide notes
> > individually or in groups, do we want Tomboy in the desktop"? :)
>
> Yes, the wiki-like interlinking between notes, spell checking,

Could spellchecking could be retrofitted to sticky notes too?  I'm sure
some people would like to be able to spellcheck in any and every text box
but that is another story.

> searching, drag and drop support for referencing mail and other nice
> features in Tomboy makes it a superior product.

Referencing and linking does seem to be the key feature of Tomboy, but it
makes it quite different from Sticky notes.  Alex Graveley himself is not
suggesting it as a direct replacement for Sticky Notes.

> Comparing Sticky Notes with Tomboy in that way is like saying that the
> Wright brothers airplane is basically the functional equivalent of a
> modern fully staffed Airbus.

Wanting a car doesn't mean you should throw out your bicycle, but both get
you where you want to go but in different ways and require different
learning.

> Sticky Notes is a mere electronic version of the beloved post-it note,

Nothing wrong with doing one thing well.  Sticky notes are admittedly
simple, and a migration path to Tomboy would be great but forcing user
to change feels wrong.

The suggestion of Tomboy replacing Stick notes is a lot like suggestion
Gthumb was being used as a reason to get rid of EoG.  Similar but
different.

> No distros actually expose the sticky note application as far as I'm
> aware,

Sticky Notes is a panel applet and can be found in the Add to Panel
Dialog.  (I did like it in the old days when applets were listed in the
main menu but that is long since gone, but the discoverabiliy of sticky
notes doesn't have anything to do with the distributions.)

Your comments about what makes Tomboy different only reinforces the
point that stick notes should be left alone and Tomboy taken as a
seperate case, admittedly with some overlap on Sticky Notes (but also
some overlap on Gedit in some ways too).

-- 
Alan H.