Sync Tomboy Notes and Zim in Dropbox
Posted: January 28, 2011 Filed under: Dropbox, Tomboy Notes, Zim | Tags: dropbox, Multi boot, tomboy notes, ubuntu, zim, zim wiki 7 CommentsTomboy Notes is a multi-platform application, so keeping your notes synced with Dropbox is handy for obvious reasons.
Luckily it’s dead easy to do: enter Preferences (either by opening up Tomboy and clicking Edit -> Preferences, or if you’ve got it on your GNOME panel, right-click the icon) and select the “Synchronization” tab. Choose the “Local Folder” service and find your Dropbox, which is inside your home folder by default. Inside of Dropbox, make a new folder for the Tomboy Notes database, and select that folder.
Dropbox acts like any other directory on your computer, so when Tomboy syncs itself to your Dropbox, Dropbox automatically syncs that database across all the computers you have it installed on. Now you can access your notes anywhere!
As for Zim, syncing is even easier, and gives you more benefits. When you start a new wiki, just remember to save it somewhere in your Dropbox folder – that’s it. If you’ve got a wiki you’ve already started and want that synced instead, you need only move the folder you saved it as (remember, Zim wikis are saved as folders, not files) to your Dropbox. You’ll have to tell Zim where it is next time you start the program, of course.
Beyond file synchronization, saving Zim to your Dropbox has another two little bonuses: if you login to dropbox.com and navigate to the place where you’ve saved a Zim wiki, you’ll find you’ll be able to actually read your Zim notes anywhere, regardless of whether Dropbox is installed or not! Since they’re stored as plaintext, you could also edit them without Dropbox or Zim by downloading and re-uploading the file.
As for the other extra feature, if you’ve worked with wikis at all you probably know most give you the ability to revert changes or view the history of an article. Zim doesn’t come with that functionality – which is understandable, as storing every revision of an article can clutter up a folder right quick. But Dropbox will give you a similar feature:
It is what it looks like, folks. Wiki history, brought to you by Dropbox, accessible from your own file browser.
Writing On Linux 
Tomboy notes has a syncing system built in. But I like dropbox better. Are you running Ubuntu 10.04? Or are you running the latest version 10.10
10.04.1. I prefer the LTS versions, and by all reports, it seems to be the less buggy of the two.
Anyway I actually am using Tomboy’s syncing system here – specifically to point to Dropbox.
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Zim Wiki supports version handling with Bazaar. Just choose “Save Version” from the menu, and a bzr repo will be initiated.
hello,do you know any android apps which can read zim created text (with its formatting)? i have been trying to find a way to sync notes between my linux box with my android phone nicely (if its android and windows there are tons of apps which can do it nicely). So far i found tomdroid (android apps) but it stil does not support text editing (but i think it has a good prospect).
None of these options are secure environments. Open plain text with no client encyrption spells trouble. But, if you want all your precious data to be intercepted, who am I to say..??
You can actually use Ubuntu One to sync across all your Linux machines. You can use an encrypt/decrypt script within Nautilus. It will bundle up the Notes directory in your /home directory, create a zip file of it then convert it to a DES3 encrypted file which is put up onto Ubuntu One folder, then you can copy it back to your home directory on another linked machine, where you can run the same script to decrypt the file to unbunble the Notes DES3 zip to the Notes directory on your target directory. Safe, secure and it works.