DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / tomboy-ng / tomboy-ng.1.en
tomboy-ng() tomboy-ng()

tomboy-ng - manage a collection of notes using a simple GUI markup

tomboy-ng [-h --help] [--dark-theme] [--debug-sync] [--debug-index] [--debug-log=LOGFILE] [-l --lang=CC] [--config-dir=PATH_to_DIR] [-o PATH_to_NOTE] [--open-note=PATH_to_NOTE] [PATH_to_NOTE] [-t --import-txt=PATH_to_FILE] [-m --import-md=PATH_to_FILE] [-n --import-note=PATH_to_NOTE] [--title-fname]

tomboy-ng is a rewrite of the much loved Tomboy Notes. It runs on Linux, Windows and MacOS. It is file compatible with Tomdroid and GNote (>=v0.30). Tomboy-ng notes support Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, Highlight and Underline in four sizes. It will sync notes with other systems using Tomboy's File Sync model and to remote servers using sshfs. It will Sync with a Github account, either all your notes or just ones in the SyncGithub notebook. You can edit notes, from almost any device with a browser in markdown format.

tomboy-ng has built in systems to take snapshots of your notes for safe keeping, to import and export notes in different formats, spell checking means to group your notes into "notebooks" for easy management.

Many users will want to have tomboy-ng start at logon time and leave it running indefinitly. When running, it will put an Icon in the System Tray and you can interact with it via that Icon. However, some Gnome 3 based Linux distros have problems initially with the System Tray Icon, on such limited systems, see the project wiki page mentioned below.

On Windows and Mac tomboy-ng uses native libraries, on Linux, tomboy-ng comes in both GTK2 and Qt5 version and many systems have almost all the necessary libraries pre installed.

While options below are familiar to Linux users, Mac and Windows users may like to look at some examples further down to see how to use them.

The GTK2 version follows the system colour theme. However, the Qt5 version (eg Bookworm and later) requires some instruction from the user. Using the --dark-theme is simplest and probably the least satisfactory approach, the note edit screen is a dark theme, other windows vary. A better Qt5 approach is to set an environment variable that instructs the app to follow the existing (generally gtk2) theme. You may need to install qt5-style-plugins package. Either add the variable ahead of the tomboy-ng command line like this -

QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2 tomboy-ng

or, a more general solution, applying to all Qt5 apps, add that var to either /etc/environment (requires root or, simpler in a .xsessionrc file in your home dir.

cd ; echo "export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2" >> .xsessionrc

Probably need to log out and back in again. A more comprehensive approach is to install the qt5ct package and give your Qt5 applications the same environment variable as above but set to qt5ct (instead of gtk2). This will allow you to choose one of the qt5ct colour themes or alter a copy with colours of your choice. The qt5ct command has a nice GUI.

On Windows, tomboy-ng will follow the system for Dark Theme but only for the note edit window. Using the --dark-theme switch is not recommended.

On MacOS, tomboy-ng is believed to follow the system theme.

Print some help and exit.

Print the tomboy-ng version and exit.

Makes the note edit windows a reasonable dark theme (but you the system theme). Other part of the app are not dark. This option may be removed in future releases.

Do not show the small tomboy-ng splash screen at startup. However, if an error is detected the splash screen is always shown.

Tomboy-ng normally picks up its language from the OS and does an auto switch. However, its possible to force a language at startup using the two letter language code, ie es for spanish, nl for dutch, fr for French and uk for Ukranian. If you would like to help translate tomboy-ng, please, please get in touch.

Create or use an alternative config. That config could, for example, specify an alternative location to store notes and sync against a different file sync repository.

Open a note in single note mode. In this mode, a separate process runs, it does not have access to the normal notes location, nor sync but can read, display and write back to a stand alone note. If the note name does not exist, a new note is created. If the note name specifies a plain text file or a rtf file, the contents of that file will be imported into a new note and that note will be named as specified on the command line but with an extension of ".note". In this mode, the note remains in its existing location, it is not moved to the tomboy-ng notes location, it is not synced, nor searched by tomboy-ng in its normal mode. Note that the switch (-o or --open-note) is optional, "tomboy-ng some.note" will works as well.

Import the indicated plain text file into the Note Repository, converting it to note format. The first line of the file will be used as the title unless --title-fname is also specified in which case the file name will become the title. If another instance of tomboy-ng is running, its notified of the import and the note will appear as the newest.

Import the indicated markdown file into the Note Repository, converting it to note format. The first line of the file will be used as the title unless --title-fname is also specified in which case the file name will become the title. The conversion assumes a CommonMark version of markdown and not all aspects of even that are supported. If another instance of tomboy-ng is running, its notified of the import and the note will appear as the newest.

Import the indicated Tomboy Note format file into the Note Repository, the note itself is not changed, its just copied in and, if necessary, a GUID style file name is assigned. The last change date of the note is retained. If another instance of tomboy-ng is running, its notified of the import.

Applies only when importing a text or markdown file, determines that the filename will be used as the note title instead of the default first line of the file.

Generate a lot of logging information on the console during a sync, index or spell process, each one relating to a particular field. You can combine or even use all three. Intended for debugging. The debug information is written to the console in Linux and can be captured to a file on all platforms, see below.

Direct debug info to a file, this is necessary to see that output on Windows and Mac and sometimes useful on Linux. LOGFILE is a filename and a (writable) path to that filename. See section below on debugging.

tomboy-ng comes bundled with several read only notes that provide help on topics such as keyboard short cuts, setting up a sync system, using the built in calculator and keeping your notes safe.

The project's wiki also has extensive information available. https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy-ng/wiki

tomboy-ng generally does not write debug output unless something has gone wrong but it does accepts a couple of debug switches as noted above. They will cause detailed progress reports relating to their section of the application to be written to the console. However, Windows and Mac do not, for this purpose, have a console. But can be told to capture this log info to a file using another command line switch or by setting an env variable that specifies a file name. Please ensure you have permission to write to the location specified.

tomboy-ng --debug-log=%userprofile%\debug.txt --debug-sync

set tomboy-ng_debuglog=c:\%userprofile%\debug.txt

Mac users can do something similar :

open /Applications/tomboy-ng.app --args "--debug-log=$HOME/tomboy-ng.log" "--debug-sync"

Linux users who need a debug logfile can also :

tomboy-ng --debug-sync --debug-log=$HOME/tomboy-ng.log

Windows users should do something like this -

Rightclick the startbutton and select "run". In the field, enter this command line exactly as show (including the inverted commas) -

"C:\Program Files\tomboy-ng\tomboy-ng.exe" --debug-index --debug-log=%userprofile%\Desktop\tomboy-log.txt

Press enter, tomboy-ng should start up normally. Close it. A file called tomboy-log.txt will have been created on your desktop.

If you intend to post such a log file to (eg) the Tomboy help system, do please check through it first to ensure there is nothing there you don't want the world to see.

On Linux, notes are stored (by default) in $HOME/.local/share/tomboy-ng On Linux, config is stored (by default) in $HOME/.config/tomboy-ng

https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy-ng

There you will find several wiki pages going into far more detail than here.

You may also be interested in TomboyTools, an addition application that allows inport and export in a range of formats. This man pages was built using TomboyTools. https://github.com/davidbannon/TomboyTools

Please send bug reports to the tomboy-ng Github Issues system, see above.