(Archived) Feature request: simple text editing

[engengeng 0]

I always have SO many problems with the simplest text editing features of evernote. There always seems to be a lot of hidden junk code.

Examples:

* Using the unordered list function is out of the question because the list always gets corrupted and then I have double bullet points that I can't get rid of.

* Copy and pasting in and out of evernote always has to go through TextWrangler

* Simplify Formatting doesn't work for me.

* Command-Shift-V is only half a solution

Solutions:

Could you please make "make plain-text" an option?

Or give me an HTML 'view' so I can look at the invisible code and fix it myself?

[jefito 5,598]

You should be able to export to Evernote's format (.enex) and load it into a text editor; at least you can do this on the Windows desktop client.

~Jeff

[engengeng 0]

Thanks for the suggestion, Jeff. But to me, the point of Evernote is to use it as my catch-all text editor. If I have to go to another program to fix bugs in this one, it defeats the purpose of using Evernote.

Really. It's 2010. Basic text editing should not be voodoo.

[jefito 5,598]

Thanks for the suggestion, Jeff. But to me, the point of Evernote is to use it as my catch-all text editor. If I have to go to another program to fix bugs in this one, it defeats the purpose of using Evernote.

*shrug* It's what you can do today. I never said that it was pretty or the way things should be.

Really. It's 2010. Basic text editing should not be voodoo.

It might be easier were it only basic text-editing, but the editor needs to mix pure text editing with editing of HTML/rich text, and I'm guessing that's where the main source of the voodoo is.

~Jeff

[hodnettd 0]

...but the editor needs to mix pure text editing with editing of HTML/rich text, and I'm guessing that's where the main source of the voodoo is.

Yes, that's an extremely well known source of problems and Microsoft Word still struggles with that problem from time to time.

I think what we're really asking is, why does the editor need to mix the two modes? After reading through some of the forum posts, I get the sensation that a lot of Evernote's formatting problems would be resolved if we could switch between two modes - a typewriter ANSI plain text mode that applies no formatting and separately, a rich text mode that recognizes and applies the HTML (and other markup languages).

The default, of course, should be the rich text mode so that people don't run into problems when clipping pages from external sources.

If we switch to plain text mode and there's an element on that page that cannot be rendered in plain text, such as a table, then yes, we actually do want to see the original markup code that defines the table, i.e., all the ugly DIV, TABLE, and SPAN tags in their glory. If the page has photos or video, then I think we're all willing to accept placeholders and take our chances.

Engengeng isn't asking for a bug fix per se. He's asking for the ability to view a note with no formatting applied whatsoever, as a new feature. And I agree with him, if this is something easy to implement, being able to toggle between the two modes will be worth its weight in gold.

As a plus, you may actually get some useful bug reports and test cases when trying to fix the formatting errors in the rich text mode.

[mdave 1]

Please.

[mr_buckworth 0]

What I don't get is why the editor can't evaluate the content of the data being pasted and say "ZOMG!!! MARKUP!!!" and handle it differently than plain text.

It's not that we don't like the product, because we do, it's just that to me, you should be able, by now, to master a few key core use cases and it's simply not happening.