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Needed Penultimate Capabilities


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Hi,

Brand new Evernote user here. I recently have been setting things up and determined that I just wanted to draw on my notes. By default, drawing in notes do this drawing to text thing, which works fine enough, but not what I was looking for all of the time. Enter Penultimate.

This application does exactly what I am looking for. It is very basic, but it gets the job done, and the interface between the two, while quirky, works perfectly. Yea.

That all said, I do have a few Penultimate issues that would make it much, much more usable. 

  1. Why does Penultimate ignore the OS Pencil settings?
    • I have it set so that double tapping on the pencil, will change too eraser. Penultimate ignores that. 
    • I have it set so that when the pencil is used, it ignores fingers for drawing and only uses it for zoom. I have little lines all over the page where it thinks I am writing with my finger when I am trying to zoom or move the canvas. This just seems like a very easy change, and I find it odd that these settings are ignored. Especially when Penultimate will open the pencil settings from directly within the app
  2. Why can I not change the color of my notebooks? I have like 10, I would very much like to say this notebook is red, and this is blue, etc.

Thats really it. Its a simple app, but one that would do well with a little more effort.

- Paul

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Penultimate is an app that was developed independently from EN years ago. EN then purchased it (probably the whole company) to add some handwriting capabilities to their portfolio.

Since then, Penultimate is practically a zombie. There is no development, as far as I can tell as a (non) user. It just gets enough attention to keep it afloat with iOS changes.

The stylus mentioned in its settings is not on sale any more - this should tell it all. They don’t even remove this dead weed - probably there is nobody left who could touch the old code any more.

Forget your idea !

Get a decent handwriting app - there is much better stuff out there. Personally I use GoodNotes 5, good comments gets Notability, NoteShelf and MyScript Nebo as well.

Test them, stick to the one you like.

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Thank you for the info! 

Thats a shame, they are still marketing it as a product you get when you sign up. Anyway, thats fine, there are indeed many other apps, but do they integrate with Evernote like Penultimate does?

I like how I can make a note in Penultimate, and it just shows up in my Evernote Notebook within 5 seconds.

- Paul

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There is AFAIK none that will integrate as seamlessly. Noteshelf is able to use an EN account to sync handwritten notes, so it probably get as close as it can possibly get.

For me this is only one aspect of handwritten note taking. There are few apps where it is so important that the look & feel matches your personal preferences. If with a handwriting app you feel good using it, you will use it. I would put this aspect above most others.

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  • 3 weeks later...

After nearly 6 years, I've moved on. The advice from others in this forum led me to Notability which I'm really liking.

One question was about integration. Notability easy lets you set up a target folder in Google Drive where the document is stored as a PDF. This alone saves me a lot of time as I don't need to Print/save as PDF from Evernote to send a copy to someone or to print. 

And, the lasso feature, grabbing a bit of text or image you outline? In PU, there were always bits left behind/missing.  That was the bug that bothered me most, but they never fixed. 

I still use the paid level of Evernote, but Penultimate is behind me. 

Good luck finding what fits you best. 

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