[tomboy-list] Google Summer of Code Ideas

[Arun Chaganty]

> This makes sense, but there are some details to be considered.  If the
> note itself is stored in the metadata, to be able to find it in
> Tomboy, some sort of indexing is required.  We could do something
> today by storing note URIs in the metadata and using the existing
> Tomboy DBUS interface.

 Yup, exactly what I had in mind. As we discussed on the IRC, we may have an
issue
with older filesystems (mainly FAT). I have checked out xesam, but I don't
seem
to find anything particularly useful, in this regard. It is just a guideline
for storing xattr,
but does not provide a mechanism to work around filesystems that do not
support
xattr.

And whether we're storing the note contents or
> just the URI in the metadata, I believe that is tied to the local
> filesystem, and does not persist in the file if you email it to a
> friend.

Well that's true. But I think being able to move around files and not loose
notes
is pretty useful as is.


> So this is one approach brewing in my mind...correct me if it doesn't
> line up with what you're saying:
>
> 1. Some sort of note reference is stored in file metadata (maybe even
> associated with a specific section of file contents?).
> 2. When viewing files, Nautilus can help a user see that a particular
> file has associations with other files, including Tomboy notes, and
> makes it easy to navigate to these files/notes/etc.

Ideally this can appear in the Information tab of Nautilus, and maybe
in the info bar at the bottom ("This file is associated with 'x' other
files").


> 3. Other applications are able to see these associations...perhaps
> when attaching a file to an email, Evolution can ask the user if
> associated files should also be sent?

This was a tighter level of integration that I didn't even think of
 :-P. Yeah, all other programs have to be able query a file for
it's associations, and notes. So Evolution would send a request
to Tomboy and look at the file associations and prompt accordingly.


> 4. Some applications may have Tomboy-specific plugins that allow
> tighter integration between file contents and Tomboy notes.
>
Same as above.

>
> What do you think?  Anything to correct or add?  SoC submission
> deadline is coming up and we need to have some specific goals that we
> can evaluate.  And I haven't even specified implementation details.
> ;-)

As we spoke about on IRC, I think we would have to move to an
sqlitedb backend if the whole system is going to query Tomboy for
file information. And before I forget, I put up my GSoC proposal sometime
yesterday night.


>
> > What I've been thinking about is at a higher level than Evince, and
> creating
> > notes for blocks of text. I feel that that kind feature should be added
> to
> > evince, i.e. provided inhouse, rather than stored externally.
>
> Can you provide more details about how this would work?


Well, Evince would save the line number/ word and the text, which it could
probably do in it's .evince/ folder (checking the file through a md5 hash?).

It would use this to show a nice yellow patch containing the note, or
underline
/bolden a word.. If you've ever seen MS Office 2003 do annotations/markup,
something like that.

-- 
Arun Tejasvi Chaganty
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