tom-ui

This project is in its early stages. It's not yet reliable enough for production use.

Content

1. Overview

2. Installation

• 2.1. Mac OS X
• 2.2. Ubuntu Linux 20.04
• 2.3. Any platform

3. Features

• 3.1. Tray icon
• 3.2. Project tree
• 3.3. Timeframe list
• 3.4. Project quickstart window
• 3.5. Reports
• 3.6. Data import
• 3.7. Command line interface

4. Useful resources

5. License

1. Overview

tom-ui is a time-tracking application with a graphical user interface (GUI), available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. It is a simple Qt5-based frontend for the tom command line time tracker.

tom-ui is being developed to not interrupt your work and to be as little hassle as possible. It will eventually support many features of the command-line software gotime but it's not going to be a full-featured time-tracking application.

2. Installation

2.1. Mac OS X

Download and install the latest .dmg file of tom-ui, provided under:

• tom-ui Releases

The Tom package already contains the tom command line interface.

2.2. Ubuntu Linux 20.04

This may also work for other versions of Ubuntu, and for other Linux distributions based on Debian.

1. Download the latest .deb package of tom provided under tom Releases.

2. Download the latest .deb package of tom-ui provided under tom-ui Releases.

3. Install the packages of both tom, tom-ui and all their dependencies with a command like this:

   sudo apt install ./tom_0.12.2_Linux-amd64.deb ./tom-ui_0.12.2-ubuntu-20.04_amd64.deb

   It is important to reference the .deb files with their paths (and if only ./) as otherwise apt will interpret the arguments as package names and try to find them in online repositories.

2.3. Any platform

For any supported platform, you can always build tom-ui from source using cmake. See DEVELOPMENT.md for details.

3. Features

3.1. Tray icon

Under Linux, the tray icon will display the status: "red square" means a timer is active.

On right click, the tray icon displays the recently used projects for a quick start of a new activity.

3.2. Project tree

You can:

• Create, edit and delete subprojects from the context menu of a project tree entry.

• Create, edit and delete projects from the "Project" menu (this is redundant to the above, as a project is also a subproject of the "All projects" entry).

• Move projects and subprojects around by drag & drop to change the project tree hierarchy.

• Start a timer for the currently selected (sub-)project by pressing the toolbar button or selecting "Project → Start timer" from the menu.

3.3. Timeframe list

The lower part of the window shows the timeframes belonging to the currently selected (sub-)project. You can:

• Move a timeframe to a different (sub-)project by drag & drop into the project tree.

• Change the start or end time of a timeframe by clicking on a value of the currently selected timeframe.

• Add a note to a timeframe by clicking in the "Notes" column of the currently selected timeframe.

3.4. Project quickstart window

You can use the global keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + P to show the project quickstart window.

From there, you can quickly start a project timer by typing a part of a project name and choosing a suggested project.

Alternatively, you can also show the project quickstart window by choosing "Project → Lookup project …" in the menu.

Finally, if you notice you can't find the right project with the quickstart window, there is a button in its bottom right to show the main window and thus, the full project tree.

3.5. Reports

[TODO]

3.6. Data import

You can take over time-tracking data from various other applications into tom-ui using the "Import" menu. Choose:

• "Mac Time Tracker CSV" to import a CSV file exported by Max Time Tracker. [TODO: link]

• "Fanurio CSV" to import a CSV file exported from the time-tracking and billing software Fanurio.

• "Watson frames.json" to import the frames.json file of the command-line time-tracker Watson. Under Linux, that file is typically found at ~/.config/watson/frames.

3.7. Command line interface

Since tom-ui is just a frontend for tom, you can use tom to control your time-tracking from the command line. Also while tom-ui is running at the same time. For example, a typical session could be:

tom create project acme
tom start acme
…
tom stop
tom report --month 0

For details, see the tom documentation.

4. Useful resources

• FreeDesktop Icon Naming Specification, a list of theme icon names that can be relied on in FreeDesktop compatible environments like KDE and Gnome

• Configuring the content of the Mac OS X application bundle file Info.plist with cmake

5. License

To be decided, probably GPL.

Software and assets included from third parties:

• from Emerald Icon Theme

  • images/icons/document-new.svg
  • images/icons/edit-delete.svg
  • images/icons/window.svg
  • images/icons/document-save.svg