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10.29 Released and still no default font fix


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I have just moved to a new MacBook Air M1 and downloaded the latest version of EN - 10.29.  Many - not all - of my notes now have the font changed from sans to serif and the size to 16pt rather than the 18pt which is better on a Retina Display.  Preferences are reduced to the ridiculously simplistic, leaving a choice of the EN way or the highway.

Looking through the forums this has been a problem since early 2020 or so and has not been fixed; the long delay and  introduction of new features, suggests that EN either have no intention of fixing it or are unable to do so.  

Back in the days of V6-7, EN was a good usable app which was worth paying for and served me well.  The changes in the home screen to only display the latest notes rather than the list style of earlier versions, the lack of any preferences to make even modest changes to the defaults are increasingly making it unusable - at least for me.  Others may find the changes beneficial which is fair enough.

Is there any likelihood that changes to the default font size will be made?  Yes there are work rounds (templates) for new notes but the current situation means I have to go through existing notes and change them to 18 pt.  Long winded and sufficiently time consuming to make me look for alternatives.

In the meantime I'll go back to the legacy edition to buy some time but I doubt that option will remain for long.  

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  • Level 5

The standard font is Sans Serif, 16pt, on all devices.

If you want an answer from EN, issue a support ticket. I doubt however they will comment on this issue - they rarely comment on changes they are planning.

They answer, but when you strip it down you may be as informed as you are now.

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I got the idea that the standard was now 16pt, my beef is that there appears no simple way of changing it to apply to all notes.

Given this has been going on for around a couple of years it doesn't seem likely they are going to change it, so I think it's time to look elsewhere.  I'll go back to the legacy app as my sub is up in a couple of weeks.  That should give me time to look around.

Shame as I've been with EN for some years now and it was a good and useful app.  What it did it did well, but like many others it's gone the way of featureitis and failed to concentrate on what made it a good app. 

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  • Level 5

The font decision is deliberate. The intention is to have the same fonts on all devices.

There is no easy way to have another font set as default. You can set a template and use it to create new notes. You can create a „master note“, design it, pin it to shortcuts and duplicate it.

The trick is always to make the changes to a sample piece of text, that uses the standard text style. After it is changed, you select the standard style and redo it as the selection.

This will change all standard Text to the new format - but only inside of this note, and it’s offspring. So you save it, as template or a master note, and use it as your blueprint.

Changes to standard text style (and the header styles) do not apply globally - which probably is a good thing.

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Hi Pink Elephant.  Thanks for taking the time to respond.

To be clear, it's not the font itself that it the problem as I'm not one of those who think a note isn't complete without at least six fonts including Comic Sans for emphasis.  It's twofold:

1  Moving to V10 has meant all my existing notes have been changed with no clear path to do a batch change back.   I really care that the move has messed up my existing notes, at least on the Laptop.

2.  It's the SIZE of the font that is the problem.  Many of us have less than perfect eyesight and in my case have found that an 18 point font manages to hit the sweet spot for legibility on a Retina MacBook without being excessively large when viewed on a desktop machine.  I don't care that it's say Arial/Helvetica/Verdana whatever, I DO care that it's 16 point or take a hike.

For EN to do 1 without a solution shows contempt for customers.

Your solution offers a way out, but why not simply say "use this template as default for all new notes" and "apply this template to existing notes" or a selection thereof. I will give your suggestion a try, but I still see no way of applying it to my existing notes.

There's a thread elsewhere on here started by @Stathis  who comments, "...." performance/productivity aspects are must-haves and there is no point keeping a productivity app that kills your productivity...."

That is what is starting to happen to me with V10.  I'm only a plus user since I've found that fulfills my needs as a researcher, so I doubt I'll be missed if I do jump ship.  However I will renew my sub whilst looking around.  

PS:  Does V10 allow export in .enex format?  

 

 

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  • Level 5

The font decision is a quite basic one. If you are in one ecosystem, you don‘t notice. Basic Windows Fonts are on all PCs. But if you move to a Mac (or switch between the worlds), the Windows fonts are gone, replaced by a set of mac fonts. It gets worse with mobile. So EN took that decision that the new app will only use that small selection of fonts, but these will come with the app and be installed on all devices with the EN client.

Maybe they did not think of everything when deciding it, but this is the situation.

Probably they will allow one day a global setting for the text styles, then you could enlarge the fonts.

You can only contact them via support ticket to place your problem with them.

About exporting: v10 allows to export to ENEX, starting with individual notes. There is a cap of 50 on selecting notes. But you can export any notebook to one ENEX file, independent from its size (well, above some GB it will be split into several ENEX files).

Everything else makes no sense: The ENEX file format does not contain the notebook information. If you export „all“ which was possible with legacy, you end up with „all“ notes in one large single notebook, no way back.

So each export to ENEX should be done 1 notebook to 1 file, and the file named after the notebook. Doing this you can rebuild your notebook structure when reimporting, be it to EN or to another app.

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5 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

So each export to ENEX should be done 1 notebook to 1 file, and the file named after the notebook. Doing this you can rebuild your notebook structure when reimporting, be it to EN or to another app.

Which is what I've always done in the past: 1 notebook = 1 ENEX file.  So long as that is still possible I'm OK.

Like I said I'll renew in a couple of weeks but after that who knows...

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

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9 hours ago, Gizmo99 said:

2.  It's the SIZE of the font that is the problem.  Many of us have less than perfect eyesight

Why not using the zoom function ( CTRL + - ) The setting is persisted when exiting EN.

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@eric99:  That is worth knowing.  I did try it early on but for some reason I got the impression that it wasn't persistent.  If it is, that together with @PinkElephant's suggestion of a 'master' template, invoked as a shortcut might be a solution to the problem.

I'm not in a hurry to jump ship as I can revert to the legacy version in the interim.  In the meantime I'll take the time to explore workrounds.  

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9 hours ago, Gizmo99 said:

@eric99:  That is worth knowing.  I did try it early on but for some reason I got the impression that it wasn't persistent.unds.  

I tested this by fully closing EN (left menu file->close) . Maybe it doesn't save it when you just close the EN window and stop your computer...

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  • 2 months later...

The lack of an ability to specify the size of a font (e.g. 20pt instead on 16pt on Evernote 'normal' text) is driving me scatty. My eyesight is reasonably good, but I don't sit that close to my Mac that I can see 16pt. And every new release seems to make it less easy to change all the 'normal' text sizes on document manually.

Surely a single parameter for 'normal text size' would be very easy to implement, and not cost Evernote anything in additional storage, while allowing users to select a font size that suits them. Right?

Rob

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  • Level 5

The EN standard text style font default is 16pt, which is rather large. MS Word for example uses 10pt or 12pt as a default - 16pt there is already a header style.

That it looks small for you can have these reasons, among others:

You use a high screen resolution - could be 4K or even 5k on the iMacs. By crushing more pixels into the physical screen size, everything is displayed smaller. You can switch to a lower resolution, without loosing the crispy sharpness of the Macs display. It just means the screen will show less in total, but everything larger.

You don’t use the build in EN zoom ability. In EN it is in the view menu, there are keyboard shortcuts as well to zoom in and out.

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