Rhinote - A simple "sticky notes" script in Python

Rhinote is a small, simple Python/Tkinter script that provides virtual "sticky-notes" on your desktop. It's handy for jotting down quick notes or holding copied text that you plan to paste elsewhere later. Notes can be saved (as plain ASCII text) for later viewing/editing with Rhinote or any other text editor. While many such "sticky-note" programs exist for virtually all computing platforms, Rhinote is extremely simple, lightweight, and "keyboard-friendly."

This update of Rhinote has been updated to run on Python 3, and has several new features available. See NEWS for the latest information.

Usage

On Linux, use a terminal to cd to the directory where rhinote.py lives and type python3 rhinote.py (or python3 rhinote.py & to get your command prompt back). Optionally, you may turn rhinote.py into an executable by placing it in your ~/bin directory, renaming it rhinote, and making it executable with (for example) chmod +x rhinote.

On Windows, double-clicking on the rhinote-win.pyw script should run it, provided you have Python installed.

When the Rhinote note appears, simply start typing, or paste (Ctrl-V) any text you've already cut/copied to your system clipboard. Rhinote will automatically wrap words at the ends of lines.

Rhinote offers a set of very simple text and file manipulation tools; all commands are keyboard-driven. Pressing Ctrl-h at any time will display all available commands:

Ctrl-x: Cut selected text
Ctrl-c: Copy selected text
Ctrl-v: Paste text from clipboard
Ctrl-a: Select all text
Ctrl-Shift-a: Unselect any selected text
Ctrl-z: Undo
Ctrl-Shift-z: Redo
Ctrl-n: Open new (blank) Rhinote
Ctrl-o: Open file (via a file dialog)
Ctrl-s: Save current note
Ctrl-Shift-s: Save current note as filename
Ctrl-p: Print current note
Ctrl-h: Display help
Ctrl-@: Display about message
Ctrl-B: Browse to this repository
Ctrl-W: Close the current note
Ctrl-Q: Quit the program, closing all notes

Modifying Rhinote

Currently, there is no mechanism to change the configuration of Rhinote. If you want to make changes, the only way is by modifying the source code. Most of the changable items are set up as constants at the top of the program, and can easily be changed.

Change the Note Colors

The default colors for the notes cycle through various pastel color, chosen to mimic paper sticky-notes. With the COLOR constant. you can replace the list with your own set of colors, or just a single color if you prefer. (Make sure to keep the square brackets if you use a single color, or the program will break.)

Change the Window Size

If you prefer the note windows to be a different size, you can change the GEOMETRY constant. The format is {width}x{height}, and is in pixels.

Change the Font

If you don't have Source Sans Pro installed, or prefer to use a different font, you can change it using the FONT constant. The font name is inside the curly braces, and the font size is after that.

Disable Word Wrapping

If you prefer to have no word wrapping, or want character-based wrapping instead of word-based, you can change the WRAP constant. Use tk.CHAR for character-based wrapping, and tk.NONE to disable wrapping completely. Note that no scroll bar will appear in the note window, so disabling wrapping is not advisable.

Linux Users

Add this to your desktop menu:

cp rhinote.py $HOME/.local/bin/rhinote
cp rhinote.desktop $HOME/.local/share/applications/
cp icons/rhinote_48x48.png $HOME/.local/share/icons/rhinote.png

Printing on Linux

Rhinote offers a very rudimentary printing "system" (if you want to call it that). It uses the enscript program to format the text, then passes the result to lp (or lpr if lp is not found) for printing. If you don't have enscript installed, Rhinote will print using lp/lpr directly (so no fancy formatting). As long as you have these two programs installed (most Linux distributions do), Rhinote notes will print on your default printer.

Windows Users

A wrapper script, rhinote-win.pyw, is provided to run under Windows. This script, with the pyw extension, allows Rhinote to run without a console window appearing. If you want to make changes to the code, you can run rhinote.py directly, and see any messages in a console window.

Printing on Windows

Print functionality requires the use of pywin32. Please install the latest version using pip. If you attempt to print without install pywin32, you will get an error message reminding you to install it.

pip install pywin32

The actual print process uses Windows Notepad to print a temporary text file, which is stored in your user folder.

Historical Notes

The original website is inaccessible, but can be found via the Wayback Machine.

The original README file can be found here.

The original documentation file can be found here.