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REQUEST: Support for LaTeX formulas


iliyan

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I am leaving just for the lack of this feature.

I am a researcher, and this has become unacceptable, especially since this thread is 11 years old. After years of premium, I come to the conclusion that evernote is not for people in academics.

Adieu

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I'm a happy Evernote user, but I miss a feature many people have asked for and will greatly appreciate - support for LaTeX formulas. If may sound complicated, but integration should be actually extremely simple. Here's how it could work:

1) Similarly to URL-to-hyperlink conversion, a LaTeX formula could be automatically generated by converting text surrounded by specific characters ($ in LaTeX). For example, I can type "Today we will discuss how equations of the form $ax^2 + bx + c = 0$ can be solved"

I guess a question would be how you would disambiguate between this use of '$' delimiters and other uses of '$' that don't designate LaTex, in a backward compatible way?

So adding LaTeX math support boild down to implementing a simple UI feature! Now it sounds simple, but this could be a selling point to a huge amount of people (especially in academia). I'm not aware of any good note taking tool that has seamless formula integration and synchronization.

Even in the current Evernote state the functionality can be emulated by dragging LaTeX formula images to Evernote. However, this is tedious and does not facilitate modifications. Therefore, it would be good after the image has been acquired, the source text to be saved along for future modifications.

I would think that this makes things not-so-simple. Probably means storing the original source into an 'alt' attribute, and then you need to interpret all of those for the special LaTeX delimiters too.

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I'm a happy Evernote user, but I miss a feature many people have asked for and will greatly appreciate - support for LaTeX formulas. If may sound complicated, but integration should be actually extremely simple. Here's how it could work:

1) Similarly to URL-to-hyperlink conversion, a LaTeX formula could be automatically generated by converting text surrounded by specific characters ($ in LaTeX). For example, I can type "Today we will discuss how equations of the form $ax^2 + bx + c = 0$ can be solved"

I think this is an EXCELLENT idea! It has many potential applications.

I guess a question would be how you would disambiguate between this use of '$' delimiters and other uses of '$' that don't designate LaTex, in a backward compatible way?

.

If by "disambiguate" (I've noticed you love to use those big words :wink: ) you mean distinguish, seems like this would be simple enough. Perhaps the "$" symbol is not the best delimiter, but it is easy enough to come up with a delimiter that would work.

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This is a superb idea. I dont think Evernote realise how commercially viable this would be. There are hundreds of thousands of academics and scientists around the world that would be happy to pay a lot of $$$ to get LaTex into Evernote. I've worked in academia then industry for 25 years and the single thing that would have improved the way I work is LaTeX in Evernote! 

Private and corporate individuals would pay for this!!

Evernote: please please consider this idea - even as a beta project.

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Hi all,

Latex support would be great. I tried notion and the possibility of writing symbols and equations inline is amazing. I never thought this would be a big thing to me, but after trying it for a few days, I changed my opinion. I was used to sketch my equations with Evernotes build in sketching tool. Bur when you just need some symbols the inline solution of notion is much better.  It's doesn't interrupt typing and you can use it on desktop. This makes it very handy when you are just want to write down some ideas to solve a problem. 

 

 

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That's cute, jbenson. I'm certainly nerdy enough to get the joke. :)

Even so, I'd rate this as an interesting idea rather than great, and I have some doubts as to how widespread demand for this would be. Not that it's wholly conclusive, but i founds only three threads in the forum from a search of 'latex', plus some google hits.

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Indeed, the delimiter can be configured (I actually don't want it to be $ as in LaTeX), and the original code can be stored in an ALT attribute in the image. I know this is not a very common request, but IMO the best feature of LaTeX is its math typesetting system. LaTeX is almost exclusively for scientific publications, as well as for books that contain formulas.

My main argument is that a very simple to implement UI feature can unleash great possibilities and expand your user base. I will personally take care of spreading the word :) And this will be a unique feature of Evernote. It's simple, but the ability to take notes with nice formatting and include formulas in them would be greatly appreciated by scientific people.

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Thanks for the suggestion.

Things like this are a little more complicated in Evernote because we store note data in a form of HTML that is then "rendered" for viewing separately on every platform: web (4 different browsers), mac, windows, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Palm WebOS, WinPhone7, etc...

So any little tricky special syntax that we add needs to have corresponding rendering code added to every single client, or else we'll receive anger from the users of each platform because we (e.g.) failed to add LaTeX support on BlackBerry, so their notes are unreadable.

This is why we tend to prefer using existing web-friendly renderings like JPEG, GIF, PDF, etc. rather than ad-hoc markup within the notes for each separate community and feature.

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Thanks for the suggestion.

Things like this are a little more complicated in Evernote because we store note data in a form of HTML that is then "rendered" for viewing separately on every platform: web (4 different browsers), mac, windows, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Palm WebOS, WinPhone7, etc...

So any little tricky special syntax that we add needs to have corresponding rendering code added to every single client, or else we'll receive anger from the users of each platform because we (e.g.) failed to add LaTeX support on BlackBerry, so their notes are unreadable.

This is why we tend to prefer using existing web-friendly renderings like JPEG, GIF, PDF, etc. rather than ad-hoc markup within the notes for each separate community and feature.

That's not a problem at all, you've misunderstood my idea. The only thing needed is an option in the context menu that converts the selected text to an "existing web-friendly renderings like JPEG, GIF, PDF, etc." by using a web service that interprets the text as LateX (or MathML). That's everything!

Now, if the stored image has an ALT attribute that contains the original piece of text the user had selected, then it would also be possible to modify that text and redo the web-service query to update the image. To the rest of Evernote this is just a simple image. No markup, special handling, nothing!

I wouldn't have asked for this feature if I wasn't convinced it was super simple to do.

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Attached is a screenshot. What I currently can do is go to the web site of the service, type in my formula in their text field and then drag the image to Evernote. This obviously works but it's very inconvenient. Very nice to have would be to be just able to select a piece of text, right lick and choose "Convert to a math formula" which would just automate this process. For modification, you could right click on the image and choose an option that will replace the image with the original text stored in the ALT attribute or popup a small text box where you could edit the text and Evernote would regenerate the image.

The result is quite good IMO. Also, imagine if you had notes sharing between people (which is probably e feature you're already considering) how useful this can be for education and collaboration! And in its most basic version, this purely UI feature is really a few lines of code to implement.

post-33304-131906072022_thumb.png

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So any little tricky special syntax...

That's not a problem at all, you've misunderstood my idea. The only thing needed is an option in the context menu that converts the selected text to an "existing web-friendly renderings like JPEG, GIF, PDF, etc." by using a web service that interprets the text as LateX (or MathML). That's everything!

To be fair to Dave, your original proposal was automatic conversion of '$' delimited text into LaTex generated images. By changing the requirements to a right-click option after Dave replied to you is just moving the goalposts. BTW, I do think that a user-initiated approach is better in the context of Evernote.

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To be fair to Dave, your original proposal was automatic conversion of '$' delimited text into LaTex generated images. By changing the requirements to a right-click option after Dave replied to you is just moving the goalposts. BTW, I do think that a user-initiated approach is better in the context of Evernote.

OK, in the original suggestion I proposed both an automatic and a manual ways of doing the conversion, I'm sorry. Of course, an automatic way (by having the user explicitly specify the delimiter) would be very convenient and still easy to implement, I believe. But I'm totally fine with having a manual option only.

Ok. So I'm going to suggest MathML as a "more in spirit with the Evernote world" thing - being XML (and we've now established LaTeX isn't).

I don't see your point. MathML is an XML format for representing formulas with structure, so it can be interpreted. You don't write MathML manually - you use other tools to construct a formula which is then saved in MathML format. You don't want to complicate Evernote at this point with such things. LaTeX is the language you want people to write their formulas and it's the easiest thing to do, as my post above shows. And storing in in plain text in the ALT (or some custom) attribute of the image is just enough.

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The point about MathML is that it, being XML-based, can be readily checked for correctness against a DTD or schema - something .ENEX import already does. I would hope that'd be a big help in this.

And, yes, I know the format alone isn't enough: As has been stated, authoring tools are required.

One other thing: I would expect most browsers by now to be able to render MathML. Maybe that's naive. :-)

Martin

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The point about MathML is that it, being XML-based, can be readily checked for correctness against a DTD or schema - something .ENEX import already does. I would hope that'd be a big help in this.

And, yes, I know the format alone isn't enough: As has been stated, authoring tools are required.

One other thing: I would expect most browsers by now to be able to render MathML. Maybe that's naive. :-)

Martin

I see your point and if HTML packages have built-in MathML support that Evernote can just use, that's ok. But first I think that's not the case, and second - going for this means you won't see any math support in Evernote any time soon probably. My suggestion was to do something that's super easy and does the job to 95%. And I'm sure math support is not a priority for the Evernote team. My main wish is to get at least some support as soon as possible, hence my proposal.

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My suggestion was to do something that's super easy and does the job to 95%. And I'm sure math support is not a priority for the Evernote team. My main wish is to get at least some support as soon as possible, hence my proposal.

I'm still not sure where you get the notion that this is all so easy for Evernote to implement.

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My suggestion was to do something that's super easy and does the job to 95%. And I'm sure math support is not a priority for the Evernote team. My main wish is to get at least some support as soon as possible, hence my proposal.

I'm still not sure where you get the notion that this is all so easy for Evernote to implement.

Because what I'm suggesting is just another way of plugging an image into an Evernote note. This image just happens to represent some formula. As I showed above, it can be done even in the current version, just that the user has to do it manually. Implementing a function that grabs the selection in the document, makes an HTTP GET request to some URL (that includes that selected text) which returns an image file, and finally replaces that text in the document with the obtained image, this should not be too hard to do, right? If I had access to the source code, I would probably be able to implement this feature for the Windows client in less than an hour. Error handling (checking whether the text is a valid LaTeX markup) is already handled by the web service. Is it not really a purely UI feature what I'm suggesting?

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Is it not really a purely UI feature what I'm suggesting?

Except that you left out the actual UI work, before you pitched it over the wall to QA. :D

Off the top of my head (and guessing at the behind-the-scenes machinery):

* adding the right-click menu item for "Convert to LaTeX image", and its converse (but only when the alt text indicates it's a LaTeX image), and hooking up the handler code

* fetching the LaTex conversion URL service from the preferences (and adding UI to set and maintain that in Options)

* handling any errors from the HTTP GET operation (which itself can fail) and any appropriate user notification

* converting the image to whatever internal format Evernote uses and storing it in the appropriate place

* Making sure that the Undo's are handled correctly

* Adding the unit tests (if they're used)

* Handling undos if anything special needs to be done

* Handle the converse of the convert-to-LaTeX operation: replace element (however its represented in Evernote) with its alt text string

* Write up the test cases for the QA engineers

* handle any other host of seemingly trivial but time-sucking tasks that need to be done

Anyways, I know what you're saying. This is not in the realm of rocket science in terms of complexity. It would be an interesting addition. But the question always remains for the developers: is it worth whatever effort it takes for the expected benefit? That's a question that I usually step away from, because I'm not privy to any of Evernote's internal plans.

So good luck...

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OK, I see your point. I guess it's now time for the decision makers to consider whether it will be worth the effort. I did what I could to advertise the idea and its utility, and now I can only cross my fingers :D

Thanks for the time and consideration so far!

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yes ! It is a very nice suggestion.

I think there're many people want evernote can use Latex, it is extremely useful for students and scientists.

I hope this will come true in future.

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Thanks for the suggestion.

Things like this are a little more complicated in Evernote because we store note data in a form of HTML that is then "rendered" for viewing separately on every platform: web (4 different browsers), mac, windows, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Palm WebOS, WinPhone7, etc...

So any little tricky special syntax that we add needs to have corresponding rendering code added to every single client, or else we'll receive anger from the users of each platform because we (e.g.) failed to add LaTeX support on BlackBerry, so their notes are unreadable.

This is why we tend to prefer using existing web-friendly renderings like JPEG, GIF, PDF, etc. rather than ad-hoc markup within the notes for each separate community and feature.

+1 for latex .. Nerds lives will be much simpler with it :)

As for implementing it, wordpress already has done it and it renders on all platforms! The disambiguation is solved by using a slightly complicated (but usable) tag: $latex \alpha^2=\gamma $

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+1 For Latex Support!!!!

Also: Could we also add support for the following!? i.e. code snippet formatting?


for(int i=0;i++){

cout<<"+1 For Latex Support"<
if(mLatexSupportAdded == true){break;}
else {mNTimesIgnoredBecasueImAGeek == i;}

}

cout << "Thanks for the Latex Support!!!"

Pretty Please... :D

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The new Evernote Peek iPad app seems like it would be a fun and useful way to study. However, does Evernote provide any way for students of physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, computer science, &c. to typeset the formulas they are studying? LaTeX via something like MathJax would fit the bill, as it is standardized, commonly used, and encodes content for all those disciplines.

A similar web-based flash card study app Anki (http://ankisrs.net/shots.html) has support for LaTeX.

With the iPad study app, Evernote seems to be trying to attract students who will become knowledge workers and will depend on something like Evernote to manage their information.

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Also: Could we also add support for the following!? i.e. code snippet formatting?


for(int i=0;i++){

cout<<"+1 For Latex Support"<
if(mLatexSupportAdded == true){break;}
else {mNTimesIgnoredBecasueImAGeek == i;}

}

cout << "Thanks for the Latex Support!!!"

Erm... Syntax error, line 1: expected ';' before ')'

Maybe you need syntax checking too... :)

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LaTeX and/or MathML would be killer in evernote. Most hardcore math users (scientists, students, teachers...) would probably opt for LaTeX because the expressions are much (MUCH) shorter than MathML, but one could argue either way. But having math, real math in notes is central to people who use math.

As for implementation, don't reinvent the wheel. Check out mathjax (http://www.mathjax.org/). Open source. JavaScript. Handles LaTeX or MathML and interprets it to html for webservers. Even available as a WordPress plugin. The heavy lifting is done. You run it on your server, it reads the math codes between your delimiters, it spits back inline images of the math. Loverly. You can leave the actual creation of the codes to the user. If they are sophisticated users, they just type in the codes as they go. If they are writing complex expressions with unfamiliar math or are more casual users they use any of the many good button oriented editors available free or for fair fees. Or dump the codes out of their favorite math programs.

Could happen. Really could...

Getting off my soapbox now. Thanks for listening.

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As just a modern university student, I think this is a must for students. It is entirely too difficult to substitute mathematics notes and if you want to be taken as a serious note taking application, having some kind of mathematics capability is a must.

Thanks and I really hope you decide to implement this. It would be IMMENSELY useful.

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I won't make any arguments for whether implementing this would be easy or not, but I will say that I would love it if it was. I need equations a lot and usually have to use either Google docs or *gasp!* Microsoft Word to make them. Having LaTeX equations would make Evernote more of an all in one note taking application.

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I found a way to display MathJax in an EverNote note -- but the trick is to display it in WordPress. WordPress has plugins for both EverNote (plugin is called EverPress) and MathJax. Set the EverPress plugin to link to a shared notebook in your EverNote account (and whatever other settings you want for displaying notes). When you want to include some MathJax in a note, you need to double-escape the LaTeX commands -- so, for example, instead of "\(\int e^x\, dx=e^x+C\)" in your note, write it as "\\(\\int e^x\\, dx=e^x+C\\)". Then when the note displays in WordPress (with the MathJax plugin), the LaTeX will be correctly typeset in the WordPress page. Until someone finds a way to get the EverNote site to actually use MathJax, this looks like the best option available.

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BTW -- even though I found a workaround (above) for getting MathJax to display in an EverNote note via the WordPress plugin, this doesn't really answer the problem of getting math to display in a note on the EverNote site. I agree with previous comments that MathJax is probably the easiest way to implement this. This can't be done by a normal EverNote user because ENML doesn't support a

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There is another workaround available for getting math into an EverNote note: Google Infographics math formulas -- see the page at this link:

http://code.google.com/apis/chart/infog ... mulas.html

This option has a lot of disadvantages, though -- between the potential server latency issues of dealing with the Google servers and the massive inconvenience of URL-encoding the TeX expression, it's just a pain to use. But since ENML does support the tag, it works. The Google charts server processes the TeX into a PNG image, which is included in the note with the tag.

I still vote for MathJax installed on the EverNote server -- I'm just trying to give options until that happens.

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LaTeX is the language of choice for physicists, mathematicians, many engineers and economists. The original language was written by Donald Knuth and has remained the top choice for mathematical typesetting for close to 30 years.

Is there something about Evernote versus Wordpress that gives Wordpress a better ability to do this?

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As a PhD student, Latex support in Evernote would make it a fully capable lab research notebook for me, whereas now I only use it for simple web clipping. I really hope the evernote team takes a serious look at this

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Is there something about Evernote versus Wordpress that gives Wordpress a better ability to do this?

A couple of things that I can think of. First, Wordpress is a publishing solution. Evenote is primarily a note storage and retrieval system, and only secondarily (or tertially?) a publishing system. Second, if could just be a prioritization thing. That's not to say that it won't happen; it just may not happen soon.

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After reading this forum post (I also would very much appreciate some kind of native math input support), I figured I'd write a utility in the spirit of the OP's suggestion that might make getting images of equations into Evernote as simple as possible. It's just an executable and a DLL. You can get it here. Let me know what you think!

Edit: I should note that it requires the .NET Framework 4.0 full

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After reading this forum post (I also would very much appreciate some kind of native math input support), I figured I'd write a utility in the spirit of the OP's suggestion that might make getting images of equations into Evernote as simple as possible. It's just an executable and a DLL. You can get it here. Let me know what you think!

Evernoted. Thanks.

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Hey,

I've been a paying Evernote user for many years. I am even the source of these stickers in the store: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0037/3252/products/notrude_large.jpg?100006. That said, both the lack of equation support has proven to be a serious hindrance in my use of Evernote for serious work. I'd love to see this feature addressed in the short term.

Later,

Jeff

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My weird filter just shorted. Started wondering what other niche text only formats could be of use.

ABC Notation for songs came to mind (I have an old notebook filled with these).

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I know this is really annoying, but I found some way to do this. There is an alternative to evernote called "Nevernote" or "NixNote" which synchronizes with evernote. I found out about it on an evernote page telling linux users to use it instead. It has LaTeX support built into it in the linux version. Not too sure about the windows version. When I open the notes up on Evernote they look exactly the same as I had typed them out on nixnote. I know its annoying, but it helps when I have to type out really long equations and stuff.

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+1

I would really, really love this feature. The lack of a good way to include equations is really holding me back from making the most out of Evernote. Right now, Evernote is a fun tool for my home life but pretty useless for my working life.

Please consider it!

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Hi all LaTeX fanatics.

There is a new option to use LaTeX in your notes.

Eatags is an application that improves your notes with some automated actions. If you want to create a Table of Contents for your note you tag it with eat.tag . After synchronizing the note the Table of Contents will appear.

If you tag a note with eat.latex after synchronizing it your latex code will be converted to an image. Type $$\int x^2$$ for example.

Please register to Eatags.com for testing.

PS: Eatags has been developed as part of Evernote DevCup. Just to mention it is a concept proof that will improve with coming versions.

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+1 for LaTeX in EverNote.

As far as widespread use, I will admit that teachers, professors,and grad-students are (currently) the primary users of LaTeX. However, it is important to note that they use LaTeX because it is the most efficient method that they have found to write mathematical equations in electronic form. If EverNote hopes to become an integral part of a student's note-taking arsenal, there HAS to be a mechanism to quickly and efficiently construct equations since math is a crucial part of almost ANY educational program. Otherwise, there's always going to be this notepad that gets carried around for taking the notes that EverNote can't handle. And if I have to carry the notepad anyways...

EverNote *needs* a LaTex plugin (or something equivalent)

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@jbenson2 - It is certainly not a must-have feature for non-student Evernote users. If non-students make up the majority of Evernote users, then I completely agree with you.

However, my point was that in 2009 (http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2009.html) over 1/4 of the US population were students (77 million) and if EverNote wants *THEM* to adopt their app for notetaking purposes, they need to consider LaTex, or some equivalent.

I would also add that even if students do make up the majority of EverNote users, I would argue that they are *NOT* using Evernote to take notes in class. This seems to me to be a pretty obvious business opportunity that would be worth pursuing.

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Just out of curiosity, what percentage of students *actually* need LaTex, particularly for notetaking pusposes (which is actually only a part of what Evernote is designed for), and what do you base your figure on?

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@jbenson2 - It is certainly not a must-have feature for non-student Evernote users. If non-students make up the majority of Evernote users, then I completely agree with you.

However, my point was that in 2009 (http://www.census.go...ol/cps2009.html) over 1/4 of the US population were students (77 million) and if EverNote wants *THEM* to adopt their app for notetaking purposes, they need to consider LaTex, or some equivalent.

I would also add that even if students do make up the majority of EverNote users, I would argue that they are *NOT* using Evernote to take notes in class. This seems to me to be a pretty obvious business opportunity that would be worth pursuing.

Personally, I don't think your numbers argument is very persuasive. I am familiar with LaTeX, and some of my colleagues at university use it, but I think it is restricted almost entirely to the sciences, and even there, only a small subset of students/researchers/faculty use it. I have never encountered anyone in K-12 using it, but I wouldn't be surprised to find pockets of enthusiasts here and there.

If you accept that we are mainly talking about university students, then the percentage of the US population (last I checked) was under 6%. That is less than 15 million students.

If you accept that LaTeX is restricted primarily to the hard sciences, I think we are talking about less than 200,000 students (last I checked) graduating with BAs each year. And, less than 10,000 with PhDs.

I am not saying that LaTeX support would be "bad" or "good", but if you are basing your argument on numbers of students, then I think you are on rather weak ground. In addition, using the numbers argument, I think we could make a far more persuasive case for including some basic word processing features like highlighters, margin support, etc.

Personally, I need neither LaTeX nor Word Processing support. I just want plain text (we do not have that with Evernote). But, just like you, I am on weak ground with the numbers argument, because there are probably not very many students passionate about plain text :)

In the end, Evernote needs (in my opinion) to go where the numbers are, and they have to develop features that will impact millions of users, not just a few thousand. What to do? Encourage third party developers to make integrations (the Evernote API is open, easily understood, and well-supported by staff dedicated to helping out developers). If you are right about your numbers, and totally disagree with me on mine, then you will have an idea worth lots of money. In addition, I bet it will support plain text, so both of us benefit :)

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First time poster and soon to be paying evernote customer (moleskin evernote notebook on order).

More importantly an engineer. This is a +++++++1! feature. Please, please, please. This is a feature that holds some of my collegues back from using evernote. Please don't limit the argument of use to just academics. This would be a fantastic addition.

And let me add - this is not for publishing needs but for Note taking. Need to be able to refer back to equations and methods. A perfect Evernote capability.

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+1

The important thing to consider is not just the number of people who need it, but also the seriousness of the need for the people who do need it. Currently there is no way to make notes including mathematical equations. It is not just that people want "latex" support - they *need* math support, and latex support is just one of the most popular markups for mathematical equations.

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Personally, I don't think your numbers argument is very persuasive. I am familiar with LaTeX, and some of my colleagues at university use it, but I think it is restricted almost entirely to the sciences, and even there, only a small subset of students/researchers/faculty use it. I have never encountered anyone in K-12 using it, but I wouldn't be surprised to find pockets of enthusiasts here and there.

If you accept that we are mainly talking about university students, then the percentage of the US population (last I checked) was under 6%. That is less than 15 million students.

If you accept that LaTeX is restricted primarily to the hard sciences, I think we are talking about less than 200,000 students (last I checked) graduating with BAs each year. And, less than 10,000 with PhDs.

The USA might be the centre of the world (it depends how you draw your maps) but it is not the only country in the world. There are millions of students, mathematicians, statisticians, scientists, engineers and computer scientists around the world who use mathematical equations. Mathematics is *the* universal language and needs to be supported. Its not about latex - latex just happens to be one of the most popular ways to write maths equations.

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The important thing to consider is not just the number of people who need it, but also the seriousness of the need for the people who do need it.

Let C be the set of Evernote customers

Let F the set of requested Evernote features

Given: f1 and f2 are members of F

Let c1 and c2 be sets of members of C such that each member of c1 really really seriously needs f1 and each member of c2 really really seriously needs f2.

Is it in general possible to say that f1 is more important than f2?

If it is possible (and I don't believe it is) then that's just a baseline on prioritization. Even so, there's the question of whether feature popularity has much pull relative to Evernote's own vision for what they are trying to accomplish (I think there's some, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of popularity counter, i.e., +1's don't really seem to matter all that much). Beyond that is p(f), the price of implementing feature f. If it's high, then that would probably tend to lower f's priority.

Its not about latex - latex just happens to be one of the most popular ways to write maths equations.

What other ways are there? Are there any that are more popular or widely used?

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The USA might be the centre of the world (it depends how you draw your maps) but it is not the only country in the world. There are millions of students, mathematicians, statisticians, scientists, engineers and computer scientists around the world who use mathematical equations. Mathematics is *the* universal language and needs to be supported. Its not about latex - latex just happens to be one of the most popular ways to write maths equations.

I have no idea where the center of the surface of a sphere is. I have some ideas about where I think the political/economic "center" of the world is, especially if we consider the accumulation of capital. However, I do not have the expertise to evaluate any claims about universal anything: languages, grammars, or other weighty topics of cosmic significance. In the context of this thread about LaTeX I was merely commenting on the suggestion that Evernote ought to incorporate this particular functionality into the app.

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Let C be the set of Evernote customers

Let F the set of requested Evernote features

Given: f1 and f2 are members of F

Let c1 and c2 be sets of members of C such that each member of c1 really really seriously needs f1 and each member of c2 really really seriously needs f2.

Is it in general possible to say that f1 is more important than f2?

If it is possible (and I don't believe it is) then that's just a baseline on prioritization. Even so, there's the question of whether feature popularity has much pull relative to Evernote's own vision for what they are trying to accomplish (I think there's some, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of popularity counter, i.e., +1's don't really seem to matter all that much). Beyond that is p(f), the price of implementing feature f. If it's high, then that would probably tend to lower f's priority.

What other ways are there? Are there any that are more popular or widely used?

We are responsible for WIRIS EDITOR. I would say we will make the best to make p(f) , the associated cost, reasonable to make it possible. ;-)

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The USA might be the centre of the world (it depends how you draw your maps) but it is not the only country in the world. There are millions of students, mathematicians, statisticians, scientists, engineers and computer scientists around the world who use mathematical equations. Mathematics is *the* universal language and needs to be supported. Its not about latex - latex just happens to be one of the most popular ways to write maths equations.

I have no idea where the center of the surface of a sphere is. I have some ideas about where I think the political/economic "center" of the world is, especially if we consider the accumulation of capital.

Oh dear, GM... time for a bit of education (courtesy of The West Wing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM

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The USA might be the centre of the world (it depends how you draw your maps) but it is not the only country in the world. There are millions of students, mathematicians, statisticians, scientists, engineers and computer scientists around the world who use mathematical equations. Mathematics is *the* universal language and needs to be supported. Its not about latex - latex just happens to be one of the most popular ways to write maths equations.

I have no idea where the center of the surface of a sphere is. I have some ideas about where I think the political/economic "center" of the world is, especially if we consider the accumulation of capital.

Oh dear, GM... time for a bit of education (courtesy of The West Wing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM

LOL. Thanks for that clip!

Actually, maps are a big part of my life. In fact, the first Evernote shared notebook that I joined was made by a Japanese colleague who shared maps of archaeological sites in a province in Japan with me. I am working with a colleague this month on overlaying sixteenth-century domainal boundaries onto a topographical map of Japan, and finding in the process that some of the maps I have used from previous scholarship are wildly inaccurate in places.

Anyhow, I think I'll do something similar to that West Wing presentation with maps in my classes next time I teach. I have a bunch of premodern maps of East Asia (and the world, for that matter) that would freak you out (in the words of the West Wing actors)! Video to come someday, when we all learn via the iTunes University chip implanted in our ikids at birth.

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Actually, maps are a big part of my life.

The clip is particularly meaningful to me, as I spent a significant part of my professional career writing software for computer mapping, including different projections. In fact, I spent a fair amount of time last year working on fixing problems with map rotations of raster imagery.

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+1 for this feature as an economics student! I'd also like to point out that the greatest products create their own demand. perhaps there are many uni students who'd never consider taking computer-based notes who might if it become viable for them

I have no idea where the center of the surface of a sphere is. I have some ideas about where I think the political/economic "center" of the world is, especially if we consider the accumulation of capital.

as a point of interest, this is something I studied recently in my graduate economics course. the economic centre of the world in 2008 was slightly east of Helsinki/Budapest. this uses valid (in my opinion) projection techniques to project a point inside the earth onto the surface. the actual point inside the earth: 73 lat, 31 projected lat, 27 long, and 0.54 earth radiuses inside

it's shifted steadily east from 1950, when it was roughly between london and new york

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+1 for this feature as an economics student! I'd also like to point out that the greatest products create their own demand. perhaps there are many uni students who'd never consider taking computer-based notes who might if it become viable for them

I have no idea where the center of the surface of a sphere is. I have some ideas about where I think the political/economic "center" of the world is, especially if we consider the accumulation of capital.

as a point of interest, this is something I studied recently in my graduate economics course. the economic centre of the world in 2008 was slightly east of Helsinki/Budapest. this uses valid (in my opinion) projection techniques to project a point inside the earth onto the surface. the actual point inside the earth: 73 lat, 31 projected lat, 27 long, and 0.54 earth radiuses inside

it's shifted steadily east from 1950, when it was roughly between london and new york

Have you seen the recent McKinsey Global Institute's report?

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/urbanization/urban_world_cities_and_the_rise_of_the_consuming_class

It sounds like you are talking about somewhat similar methodologies for producing the data. It's an interesting thought experiment, but I am still a little unsure about how to interpret the results, because it is based so heavily around geography and GDP, and I am not sure if this is taking adequate account of capital flows. Maybe a future research project :)

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+1 for this feature as an economics student! I'd also like to point out that the greatest products create their own demand. perhaps there are many uni students who'd never consider taking computer-based notes who might if it become viable for them

I have no idea where the center of the surface of a sphere is. I have some ideas about where I think the political/economic "center" of the world is, especially if we consider the accumulation of capital.

as a point of interest, this is something I studied recently in my graduate economics course. the economic centre of the world in 2008 was slightly east of Helsinki/Budapest. this uses valid (in my opinion) projection techniques to project a point inside the earth onto the surface. the actual point inside the earth: 73 lat, 31 projected lat, 27 long, and 0.54 earth radiuses inside

it's shifted steadily east from 1950, when it was roughly between london and new york

Have you seen the recent McKinsey Global Institute's report?

http://www.mckinsey....consuming_class

It sounds like you are talking about somewhat similar methodologies for producing the data. It's an interesting thought experiment, but I am still a little unsure about how to interpret the results, because it is based so heavily around geography and GDP, and I am not sure if this is taking adequate account of capital flows. Maybe a future research project :)

I'm actually talking about:

Quah, Danny. “”, Global Policy, vol. 2. issue 1, pp. 3–9, January 2011

The global economy’s shifting centre of gravity

It's based around GDP measures. it incorporates rural areas as well as urban ones. I found the key strength of it lay in the valid projection onto the 2d surface of the earth

you're right about capital flows, but they'd be predictors of the future, and then you get the debate on how much they predict and how far into the future. GDP is a 'safe' bet for looking at current conditions

edit: unfortunately I haven't got time to read the report you linked right now, but the summary seemed interesting and the gist was pretty similar, i would think any report like this will basically find the centre shifting east ;)

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It seems like this feature will never happen. :( The Evernote developers don't say anything about this anymore and the "Evernote Evangelists" are just acting like Evernote should never ever change and every missing feature is just a useless toy for a handful "nerds".

I am missing LaTeX support in Evernote and characterizing it as a "nerd"-feature is not a way to excuse its absence. Putting your notes in a digital form into the cloud is already a very nerdy approach and therefore we should welcome such additional "nerd"-features.

Currently Evernote is not working as a note-taking application for mathematics and I think a good note-taking application should be able to handle every kind of noteworthy content.

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It seems like this feature will never happen. :( The Evernote developers don't say anything about this anymore and the "Evernote Evangelists" are just acting like Evernote should never ever change and every missing feature is just a useless toy for a handful "nerds".

I am missing LaTeX support in Evernote and characterizing it as a "nerd"-feature is not a way to excuse its absence. Putting your notes in a digital form into the cloud is already a very nerdy approach and therefore we should welcome such additional "nerd"-features.

Currently Evernote is not working as a note-taking application for mathematics and I think a good note-taking application should be able to handle every kind of noteworthy content.

Oh, please. You are absolutely wrong that the evangelists thing EN should never change. Please re-read & comprehend the posts.

The fact that you are "missing LaTeX support in Evernote: is no more important than many other users' "missing features". The likelihood of Evernote incorporating every users' feature request is zero. EN makes their choices based on several factors including difficulty of implementing across all the platforms EN lives on, ROI and priority. Some users will always be unhappy/disappointed.

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It seems like this feature will never happen. :( The Evernote developers don't say anything about this anymore and the "Evernote Evangelists" are just acting like Evernote should never ever change and every missing feature is just a useless toy for a handful "nerds".

This is a gross mischaracterization of what I and other Evangelists are saying. All of the Evangelists that I know of have their own ideas of what could change in Evernote to improve it, and we say these things publicly. My opinion is that LaTex is a valid request, but that its target audience is probably too small -- despite its genuine utility for that audience -- to make it a high priority, That's just a guess, as Evernote doesn't reveal its feature roadmaps to users like you and me.

I am missing LaTeX support in Evernote and characterizing it as a "nerd"-feature is not a way to excuse its absence. Putting your notes in a digital form into the cloud is already a very nerdy approach and therefore we should welcome such additional "nerd"-features.

"Nerd"-iness has zero to do with any of this. The real truth is described by a simple math that you don't need LaTex to render: Evernote does not have enough development resources to implement all useful suggestions. Hence, there is no LaTex at this time. Or improved search facilities (my hobby-horse). Or Markdown. Etc., etc.

Of course, if you have some concrete numbers on the size of the LaTex-using population vs. the size of the general computer using population that would make your case stronger, then by all means, produce them.

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Much like Markdown, given that Evernote have just released major updates to the OS X and iOS clients, I'm pretty sure that it's safe to assume that this isn't on the short to medium term horizon.

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I'll add to the requests for some kind of formula / equation support. I'm trying to switch to Evernote (from Open Office) for my note taking this semester (going back for an MS in CS), and just ran into a brick wall for my set theory notes.

*edit*

But huge kudos to the Evernote crew for their excellent unicode support. I'm able to do a kludge via pasting in quite a few of the symbols I need (I've made a small text document cheat sheet of the common ones I use). Not the most efficient way to do notes, but that and the eat.latex tag may make this workable. A few weeks will tell.

Edited by Kathy A.
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Again to point out some things that seem to get lost here....

It's the need for an equation editor. I think Latex is mentioned here as a possible example solution; the problem is the missing functionality: an equation editor. Evernote's "competition" includes MS/OO Equation Editor, or as I am forced to do it now.... pencil and paper.

The lack of Latex or simple equation editor means I and any other engineer (professional and student) need to keep another means for note taking.

Evernote... great for taking notes .... except for science and math. (Ironically I can use subscripts and superscripts here, but not in Evernote.)

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Again to point out some things that seem to get lost here....

It's the need for an equation editor. I think Latex is mentioned here as a possible example solution; the problem is the missing functionality: an equation editor. Evernote's "competition" includes MS/OO Equation Editor, or as I am forced to do it now.... pencil and paper.

These points are not lost; they are by now belabored -- everyone here (including Evernote) understands the desire for this feature, whether it be via LaTex or some other means. And I agree that it's valid to request such a feature. But Evernote has chosen other features as higher priority.

The lack of Latex or simple equation editor means I and any other engineer (professional and student) need to keep another means for note taking.

Unfortunately so.

Evernote... great for taking notes .... except for science and math. (Ironically I can use subscripts and superscripts here, but not in Evernote.)

I suppose that's ironic (though the forum software is a totally separate program, written by a different company), but did you know that you actually can also do subscript/superscript in the Evernote web client?

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Math Jax is a good tool for rendering. However, the discussion in this topic is more about how to edit math formulas rather than how to render them.

Sure, but in the absence of any actual support in an Evernote client for LaTeX, the hunt is on for feasible workarounds.
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@Ramon - Well, you do need to write *and* display it. It's my understanding that Evernote is using some sort of XML to store the data combined with Webkit parts to render the text.  As someone extremely unqualified to discuss this, it seems that it could be a usable way to display the stored text. 

 

The lack of math support is really starting to bug me now that I'm taking some classes where I need to make note of equations.

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@jefito @BostonEnginerd we combined our technology with Eatags.com to offer LaTeX support. http://eatags.com

Looks cool; hopefully it the LaTeX fans here will find it useful. Congratulations.

Side note: I watched the video, and the last tag phrase was "Use your Evernote as always, get more things done than never" -- "never" seems like a typo for "ever", maybe?

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Hi,

 

I'm a student who takes a lot of science classes. 

 

In physics, we have to notate vectors differently than regular letters; they need an arrow above them.

 

I use a lot of stackexchange forums, and there they use something called LaTex to format answers in a way that is nice scientifically. Wikipedia of course uses the same things. I'm willing to do more research into this, but I'm asking this as just a starter question before I look into anything anymore than I have to.

 

For a stackexchange example, this thread shows nicely formatted chemical formulas by the original text being parsed through LaTex.

 

I can't continue writing a vector as A because that means the magnitude of vector A, so I need to have really good scientific formatting for things I want to type.

 

Is there any way to do this in Evernote?

Edited by jefito
Merged with LaTex topic
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@Ramon from WIRIS math

 

This is the functionality I have been wanting for quite some time. I am a career engineer and not a student. However, I still frequently use notes in Evernote requiring Latex style editing. My only comment is for the people at eatags -- it was very hard to navigate the site and figure out exactly how to incorporate the functionality into Evernote.

 

@doctordoder

 

Take a look at eatags. It does what you say is required.

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eatags are a possible workaround, but I don't have too good experience with them for two reasons:

  • once the formula is translated to an image, one can no longer edit it
  • the image is not very pretty and is quite a lot displaced (it's position is one line above where it's supposed to be) I'm using Evernote in a browser, people with native app may have a different experience. 

In plain html I have good experience with writing math using standard tex notation (like $\sqrt{5}$) and adding a javascript that uses MathJax to replace this with the proper formula.

 

For me at least, this would be the optimal behaviour: for editing, just use plain old tex notation, for view use MathJax. 

 

Now's the time for a question: is it possible to do this in Evernote using some sort of workaround (browser extesion, etc.)? Is there any chance that some functionality like this will be added to the "official Evernote"?

 

Thanks for comments. 

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In the hopes that native LaTeX support may be inspired by enough demand  shown on this forum I will add my voice. For those of us working in industry giving another party such as eatags.com access to our notes and/or formulas is not an acceptable solution. Evernote needs to have native LaTeX capability for industrial lab-notebook use. I.e., one should be able to type in something like $\frac{a}{b}$ and have it rendered in proper math text/fonts in Evernote, and to be able to click on the rendered text to edit it (in LaTeX). There are so many good features in Evernote, but that one missing feature is enough to make Evernote unusable to me. I would be glad to be a paying customer if this capability were included.

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I'm waiting for a math editor and a linux client to start to use evernote.. at the moment I'm writing notes with lyx that is a nice GUI to latex and has got a wonderful math editor. Of course I'm missing a lot of features and in particular handwritten notes,

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I am adding my voice to the latex support.  It is a must for engineering, science and math learning.  having this feature will make me a paying customers for life.  I want to add that having a third party plugin to access the evernote and render the formula is not acceptable, esp considering that much of the appeal of evernote is its promise of never reading (mining) user data for whatever reasons.   This promise is pretty significant.

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I am adding my voice to the latex support.  It is a must for engineering, science and math learning.  having this feature will make me a paying customers for life.  I want to add that having a third party plugin to access the evernote and render the formula is not acceptable, esp considering that much of the appeal of evernote is its promise of never reading (mining) user data for whatever reasons.   This promise is pretty significant.

 

I completely agree - third party plugins are unacceptable for this feature.  Evernote documents are fluid... so locking an equation to an external service renders the latex as static, which to me goes against the evernote fluidity.

 

I too would pay for an in-Evernote latex equation editing feature!

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