importing tomboy notes

[Mike Turquette]

Hi all,

I have two machines that I use tomboy notes on.  Using sshfs I tried
to synchronize them via local directory sync, but that has failed
abysmally.

I've had to diff my notes, manually figure out which ones are more
recent and store the combined set of notes in a temporary directory.
Now that all of that is done I have two questions:

1) does Tomboy has a good way of importing Tomboy notes?  I have all
of the notes in a directory, but my attempts of forging a manifest.xml
by hand have not gone well.
2) what is the best way to synchronize notes between two PCs?  I like
the direction snowy is headed but I would like a solution until snowy
is released

Thanks!
Mike
_______________________________________________
Tomboy-list mailing list
Tomboy-list@...
http://lists.beatniksoftware.com/listinfo.cgi/tomboy-list-beatniksoftware.com

[Sandy Armstrong]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Mike Turquette<mturquette@...> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have two machines that I use tomboy notes on.  Using sshfs I tried
> to synchronize them via local directory sync, but that has failed
> abysmally.

Did you follow the direction in the Help document?  Chances are it was
set up improperly (yes, it is kind of counter-intuitive to set up,
that's why we're working on Snowy).

> I've had to diff my notes, manually figure out which ones are more
> recent and store the combined set of notes in a temporary directory.

Yikes, that sounds like it was a pain. :-/

> Now that all of that is done I have two questions:
>
> 1) does Tomboy has a good way of importing Tomboy notes?  I have all
> of the notes in a directory, but my attempts of forging a manifest.xml
> by hand have not gone well.

The manifest.xml is not necessary unless you are using sync.  It is
not something you need to create manually, ever.

All you need to do is make sure Tomboy is not running on the "new"
login, copy all of your backed-up *.note files into ~/.tomboy, and
start Tomboy.

> 2) what is the best way to synchronize notes between two PCs?  I like
> the direction snowy is headed but I would like a solution until snowy
> is released

At this time the only supported way to synchronize your notes is to
use the built-in Synchronization feature.  If you need help setting
this up, feel free to ask questions in here, or in #tomboy on GIMPNet.

Best,
Sandy
_______________________________________________
Tomboy-list mailing list
Tomboy-list@...
http://lists.beatniksoftware.com/listinfo.cgi/tomboy-list-beatniksoftware.com

[Sandy Armstrong]

Hey Mike,

Don't forget to reply-all...CC'ing the list in my response.

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Mike Turquette<mturquette@...> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 5:18 PM, Sandy
> Armstrong<sanfordarmstrong@...> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Mike Turquette<mturquette@...> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I have two machines that I use tomboy notes on.  Using sshfs I tried
>>> to synchronize them via local directory sync, but that has failed
>>> abysmally.
>>
>> Did you follow the direction in the Help document?  Chances are it was
>> set up improperly (yes, it is kind of counter-intuitive to set up,
>> that's why we're working on Snowy).
>
> I'm still used to just using manpages so I often forget these simple things.

That's okay, our docs on sync still need work, anyway.  :-)

> I looked up "Note Synchronization" in the help doc, but honestly it
> didn't give me anything I don't already know.  The doc basically said
> to configure note sync (webdav, ssh or local folder) for your
> particular needs and then run "tools -> synchronize notes" as often as
> you want.  This is what I did originally, but I found that both PCs
> would not end up with all of the notes...

How did you configure it?  Did you make sure to point it at an
initially empty directory (some people get confused and point it at
the ~/.tomboy on their other computer)?

Also, what version of Tomboy are you using?  Tomboy 0.12.0 and 0.12.1
are known to have data loss bugs when using sync, but 0.12.2 and newer
should work fine.  The latest stable Tomboy release is 0.14.2.

> In fact I experienced with one particular note that every time I
> synced it would create a new folder (ie, sync/tomboy/0/1 ...
> sync/tomboy/0/2, etc) and place this note in that new directory
> despite that fact that the note never changed!  It seemed arbitrary
> and buggy to me.

Well, metadata about the note could have changed.  We sync cursor
position, for example.  Even if the note is truly 100% unchanged,
there is no harm in excessive syncing.

The server directory layout should not really concern you as a user,
ideally.  The intent is for users to not poke around in there, as it's
kind of complicated.

>>> 1) does Tomboy has a good way of importing Tomboy notes?  I have all
>>> of the notes in a directory, but my attempts of forging a manifest.xml
>>> by hand have not gone well.
>>
>> The manifest.xml is not necessary unless you are using sync.  It is
>> not something you need to create manually, ever.
>>
>> All you need to do is make sure Tomboy is not running on the "new"
>> login, copy all of your backed-up *.note files into ~/.tomboy, and
>> start Tomboy.
>
> Great!  I'll do that for one of my PCs so at least I can continue
> taking notes, but I'm not convinced that when I enable note sync on
> both of them that they will end up with identical notes...

I find it's easiest to start with one PC having all the notes, the
rest having 0 notes, and then configure sync for all of them, syncing
the PC with all the notes first.  Then you never have to worry about
the getting conflict notifications on your first syncs.

I'd really recommend giving this another try.  Perhaps we could go
step-by-step and see if there's anything in your setup that might be
causing problems?

There will be other supported methods of syncing your notes (via
services like Dropbox and Ubuntu One) after we fix a few bugs to
separate note data from add-in and other configuration data.

>>> 2) what is the best way to synchronize notes between two PCs?  I like
>>> the direction snowy is headed but I would like a solution until snowy
>>> is released
>>
>> At this time the only supported way to synchronize your notes is to
>> use the built-in Synchronization feature.  If you need help setting
>> this up, feel free to ask questions in here, or in #tomboy on GIMPNet.
>
> Any ETA on when Snowy will be out?  What is left to be implemented?  I
> might be able to pitch in!  I've just signed up on the snowy list so
> hopefully I can get updates direct from the source.

Yeah, that's the best place to follow it.  I can't really predict
exact dates, because it is a side project.  All I can say is that the
current goal is to have Tomboy Online launched with a stable version
of Snowy along with our next stable Tomboy release in September.  With
enough time, testing, and help, we should be able to get Snowy stable
much earlier, though.

Hope this helps,
Sandy
_______________________________________________
Tomboy-list mailing list
Tomboy-list@...
http://lists.beatniksoftware.com/listinfo.cgi/tomboy-list-beatniksoftware.com