Getting Started

2.1. Adding Tomboy to the GNOME Panel

To add Tomboy to a panel in GNOME, right-click on the panel, then choose Add to Panel. Select Tomboy Notes in the Add to the panel dialog, then click Add. You should see a yellow note icon appear in the panel, representing Tomboy. The panel icon is illustrated in Figure 1.

Tomboy is automatically added to the taskbar when run on Microsoft Windows, or the dock when run on Mac OS X.

2.2. Creating Notes

Once you have successfully added Tomboy to the panel, you can create new notes using one of the following methods.

To create a new note using the mouse:

  1. Click on the Tomboy note icon present in the GNOME Panel or Windows taskbar. A menu will appear.
  2. Select the Create New Note option in the menu.

To create a new note using the keyboard:

  1. Open the Tomboy menu using the key combination Alt+F12.
  2. Use the N key to select the menu option Create New Note.

2.3. Editing Notes

After creating a new note, a new window will appear with the title New Note N. At the top of the note is a toolbar with several buttons and text. Directly below this toolbar is the content area of the note. This is illustrated in Figure 2.

The note can be edited by clicking in the content area and using the keyboard to add and remove content. The first line is considered the title of the note. By default this is populated with the text “New Note N”. The title is changed by clicking in the content area on the first line and using the keyboard to change the title. By default, focus is given to the content area upon creation of a new note, so you can immediately start editing the note without the need to click on the content area with the mouse.

Using the toolbar available on each note is discussed in Section 3 ― Working With Notes.

Figure 2 The default window for a New Note

2.4. Table of Contents

To get an overview of all the notes managed by Tomboy, select the Search All Notes menu item from the panel menu. By default, the Search All Notes dialog will display the notes in the order that they were last modified. Click the Note or Last Changed column headings to change the sort order. Click the column heading a second time to toggle between ascending and descending order.

You can find specific notes by entering text into the search field in the Search All Notes dialog. The list of notes will automatically update to list only the notes which have matching text.

To open a note in the Search All Notes dialog, do one of the following:

  1. Double-click on a note.
  2. Highlight a note by selecting it and then select Open from the File menu.
  3. Right-click on a note and select Open from the context menu that appears.
  4. Highlight a note by selecting it and then press the key combination Ctrl+O.
IntroductionWorking With Notes