29 replies to this topic

[Delaware]

This is my first post. Thank you for Evernote. I especially enjoy the ability to use it on my desktop, iPhone, and the Web. It would be much more useful if one could do Boolean searches, as InfoSelect offers.

[jefito]

Not all of us know about InfoSelect. Could you please provide some examples?

~Jeff

[engberg]

Thanks for the feedback. For Evernote's consumer service, we use global intersection of criteria (AND) by default, but you can switch the queries to use global union (OR). This is the same level of complexity offered by many other consumer applications such as iTunes smart folders. Most consumer applications don't mix in arbitrarily complex boolean logic because it is hard to make a good UI that shows the state of the query that has been executed. A global union or a global intersection tends to meet the needs of 99.5% of consumers without any complicated query-constructor UI, etc.

Thanks

[BurgersNFries]

Most consumer applications don't mix in arbitrarily complex boolean logic because it is hard to make a good UI that shows the state of the query that has been executed.

BTW, I LOVE the ribbon in the Win 3.5 client that shows what the query is. If something looks goofy, that's one of the first things I check, to make sure I'm looking for what I think I'm looking for.

[engberg]

Thanks - that was actually one of the things we spent the most time on when we were building the service, although we were stealing a lot of ideas from predecessors like the Flamenco folks at Berkeley:
http://orange.sims.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin ... l/Flamenco
http://flamenco.berkeley.edu/
After spending a lot of time on usability testing recently, I'm not completely convinced that the "search explanation" is completely intuitive for new users, but it's probably the one UI thing we did at launch that was trying to be a little innovative.

[crane]

This is the same level of complexity offered by many other consumer applications such as iTunes smart folders. Thanks

One thing I like about iTunes smart folders/playlists is that you can actually use other smartlists in queries. In other words, you can build arbitrarily complex search expressions, combining all three boolean operations, AND/OR/NOT.

[Delaware]

Thank you, engberg, for your prompt reply. Very impressive responsiveness. After reading your post, I tried entering a search of two words without the "and," and it worked! Problem solved! I hope this helps those who have trouble with the technical language, as I do.

[nmjk]

One thing I like about iTunes smart folders/playlists is that you can actually use other smartlists in queries. In other words, you can build arbitrarily complex search expressions, combining all three boolean operations, AND/OR/NOT.

This is what brought me to the forums today in the first place. The roadblocks I've hit with the lack of tag inheritance and the low complexity of boolean searching would be solved, so I hoped, by the ability to refer to other saved searches in the search grammar. I now consider this my #1 request because this ability would allow me to hack together pretty much everything else I need.

[hyloguy]

Dave Engberg said: "For Evernote's consumer service, we use global intersection of criteria (AND) by default, but you can switch the queries to use global union (OR)."

Dave, how do I do that? I see nothing in Preferences about switching the queries to use union instead of intersection.

EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out. I wanted to save a search that would match either one tag or another tag. Solution query:

any: tag:fitness tag:health

[paulingraham]

I just spent a half hour going nuts because I foolishly assumed I could mix logic in an Evernote search. Not so much. It’s amazing how often I’m frustrated by this limitation. I really should not have been so surprised I couldn’t do it in Evernote.

Grouping and mixed logic really needs to be there, in this and many other apps: the availability of the required syntax is invisible and harmless to beginners, but its absence is exasperating to those of us with the dazzling mental prowess required to understand something AND (this OR that).

[mentalplex]

Despite the snark, paulingraham is right.

I'm really not sure why it would be hard to make a good UI for more complex search queries. People do it all the time. The NCBI website is a good example. If you're worried about maintaining that slick, streamlined design, just use a dialogue box for the 'advanced search'. Users who want complex search options won't mind the added visual clutter of a dialogue box, and users who don't want the feature won't have to see it.

The comparison with "most consumer apps" doesn't make sense either. The iTunes comparison is especially weird. If you're not Rob Gordon from High Fidelity, the useful relationships between music files are simple. With Evernote's flexibility and notebook/tag organization, it's BUILT for creating a "life-database" with complex relationships between files. An application that builds a complex database but can't run complex searches just doesn't make sense. The power of the flexible design is wasted.

[rfbriggs]

Dave Engberg said: "For Evernote's consumer service, we use global intersection of criteria (AND) by default, but you can switch the queries to use global union (OR)."

Dave, how do I do that? I see nothing in Preferences about switching the queries to use union instead of intersection.

EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out. I wanted to save a search that would match either one tag or another tag. Solution query:

any: tag:fitness tag:health

Could someone please elaborate on how this is working? Here's what I'm trying to do:

I am trying to get my tax forms together for the year. I have all of my year-specific files tagged "2011". I also have tags for "taxes" and "donations". So what I tried to do was click on the 2011 tag in the browser, then do a search of "tag:donations OR tag:taxes". Didn't bring me back anything, even though each of those tags individually works within the 2011 tag.

Is this really not possible to do? Is there some other way to do the OR operation?

Thanks.

[BurgersNFries]

Dave Engberg said: "For Evernote's consumer service, we use global intersection of criteria (AND) by default, but you can switch the queries to use global union (OR)."

Dave, how do I do that? I see nothing in Preferences about switching the queries to use union instead of intersection.

EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out. I wanted to save a search that would match either one tag or another tag. Solution query:

any: tag:fitness tag:health

Could someone please elaborate on how this is working? Here's what I'm trying to do:

I am trying to get my tax forms together for the year. I have all of my year-specific files tagged "2011". I also have tags for "taxes" and "donations". So what I tried to do was click on the 2011 tag in the browser, then do a search of "tag:donations OR tag:taxes". Didn't bring me back anything, even though each of those tags individually works within the 2011 tag.

Is this really not possible to do? Is there some other way to do the OR operation?

Thanks.

You cannot combine ands & ors.

[jefito]

I am trying to get my tax forms together for the year. I have all of my year-specific files tagged "2011". I also have tags for "taxes" and "donations". So what I tried to do was click on the 2011 tag in the browser, then do a search of "tag:donations OR tag:taxes". Didn't bring me back anything, even though each of those tags individually works within the 2011 tag.

Is this really not possible to do? Is there some other way to do the OR operation?

BurgersNFries is correct. However, as a workaround, you could temporarily move all of your 2011 notes into a separate notebook, then do the following search on that notebook:

any: tag:taxes tag:donations

Another workaround might be to rename your tax-related tags to have a common prefix, say 'tax', so you have tags 'tax-taxes', 'tax-donations', etc. Then you can perform the following search:

tag:2011 tag:tax*

This will, in effect, find notes tagged with '2011' and any of your tax related tags.

[TekMason]

I'm honored to find out that I am part of a very exclusive group of people like mentaplex who have the "the dazzling mental prowess required to understand something AND (this OR that). " LOL.

I have to agree with paulingraham and mentalplex on the importance of providing grouping and mixed logic in searches/queries. IMHO, the UI design argument is a red herring. Allowing AND OR and brackets to be used/recognized within a query should not be a UI issue at all. It is a shame that we can not utilize the incredible power of Evernote's engine because of a restricted query functionality/syntax.

I was hoping to use EN for our entire IT Team to manage ToDo items and notes but I am not sure how I will be able to overcome the limited query functionality to achieve that.

TekMason

[jefito]

I haven't found ot to be as big a deal as you may think. Surely it would have been useful in some situations, but those situations are pretty rare for me. I'm not disagreeing that it would be a good thing to have, but I think that it would entail a pretty big change to the search grammar, which is all AND by default, but changes to all OR only in the presence of the any: search modifier. They'd need to come up with grouping, and they'd need to support it across all of their clients.

[TekMason]

Thanks for your quick reply jefito.

I guess I'm just thinking out of the box but if you're not living on the edge you're just taking up space
I am an EN noob so I don't really know how the guts of it work. Maybe the queries don't happen in the back end, like I initially thought they would. Regardless, all clients already understand AND and OR logic. I don't think the grouping really isn't much of a leap from what we already have, it could be treated as a query on a query. The possibilities of what you could do with this product with a robust query engine to compliment the power of the engine/db are almost limitless.

TekMason

[jbenson2]

In my opinion, changing the search code to allow "something AND (this OR that)" sets the bar rather high for Evernote.

Why?

For the past 2 years, Evernote has been unsuccessful in figuring out a considerably less demanding endeavor - how to add a Due Date column.

[Wern]

Jbenson,
we all know, due dates WILL be coming, but don't know when, sigh...

As for the "true Boolean logic" I think it will not happen any time soon, if at all, because:

• Boolean Logic is not easy to handle for beginners, especially if we have more than very few parameters
• EN's servers will be severely overtaxed by a true Boolean search, thus we'd "pay" for it with a much slower service
• All of this could only happen after a major re-write of the current search logic and allocation of considerable resources to make this happen.
• Other things are at the top of the list (i.e. due date)

Wern

[jefito]

I guess I'm just thinking out of the box but if you're not living on the edge you're just taking up space

??? argument by buzz-phrase?

I am an EN noob so I don't really know how the guts of it work. Maybe the queries don't happen in the back end, like I initially thought they would.

Queries happen locally on the desktop clients, as far as I know. Not sure about the mobile clients; I'd expect that they need to round-trip to the cloud.

Regardless, all clients already understand AND and OR logic. I don't think the grouping really isn't much of a leap from what we already have, it could be treated as a query on a query. The possibilities of what you could do with this product with a robust query engine to compliment the power of the engine/db are almost limitless.

There's a big difference between being able to use AND and OR logic (obviously they can), and making it accessible to users, particularly in light of the existing query syntax. The question in my mind would be how would they change the query syntax if they were interested in adding mixed AND/OR logic? What do you think?