Using Evernote as My Primary Word Processor?

[beagley 0]

After using Evernote for about ten minutes on my Mac, I thought: Why wouldn't I use this as my primary Word Processor? After playing around for a while now, I'm even more intrigued.

I've been using Google Docs as my primary Word Processor for about six months. Evernote has everything that I care about in Google Docs and also has a nice, stable, offline client, and smooth and easy support for a multitude of non-text formats. Not to mention all of Evernote's other nifty features... and why would I want to use two programs?

It is important to point out that I work in plain text (or RTF at most) for all of my work, and do "final formatting" later in a layout program or OpenOffice. But for the real WRITING? Evernote might fit the bill.

Anyone care to speculate on the advantages/disadvantages of using Evernote as a Word Processor?

Synching Question:

I am wondering what will happen if I edit a note on my Mac or my PC, while offline, then edit the same note elsewhere online, and then bring my Mac online and try to synch... I can test that, and do other somersaults, but does anyone know off-hand exactly how Evernote handles "concurrency"? Is it a simple, "Last Online Save Wins" system, or during a Synch does it do some comparisons?

Feature Wishes, with Word-Processing in Mind:

• *A full-screen editing view
  *Sub-notebooks within notebooks, and/or folders in which I can put Notebooks when I have too many.
  *Save-As for a single note to txt or RTF

-d

p.s.

Tiny suggestion: the "Updated" column in the various list views should probably be named "Date Modified", like it is in the OS?

EDIT:

Sorry, this is in the wrong forum... when I started composing, I couldn't see the other forums! Weird...

[ThomasStraten 0]

Dear Beagley,

About the sync problem, you will always loose something if you are unable to sync the last change...then go on working on another machine, then sync again. I don't see a way the responsible of the sync (the system responsible I mean) could check what to keep. It does not work as an incremental sync process. How could he check and know about all of your machines? And besides, you might have added something to a note on the Mac, deleted then added something on the pc, added again something to the mac (but where is the pc data if not sync'd ?) and so forth. Even if it was possible, I would not recommend this kind of working, it might get you in trouble.

About the Word processing...

The main goal of something like EN is database. You can of course add some facilities for writing as existing on the EN 2.2.1 version. That would be nice indeed. But the main reason of existence of EN is clipping, notetaking, organizing, sharing.

On the good side, I do use EN to write a lot of notes that will eventually go in my final work. But I would never use EN as Word processor as it lacks too much of what makes a good word processor (which is an entirely different kind of aplication).

I strongly encourage the notetaking, it is wonderful as an aid. You might keep some ideas to develop, some paragraphs you may want to add, some quotations and your impressions or coments or criticism. And keep that organized for a long run book writing. To be able to recall that info when needed, get back an old quote you had forgotten etc... is the beauty of EN.

But it is, and probably will remain, a database. The cost to add so many features you would desire in a word processor is too high and not productive (as Word processors exist!).

And I don't think long notes are helpful. I do prefer (but it is my way of working) to have smaller notes, and lots of them. My clippings sometimes are bigger (article I need to read for instance). But generally, these articles are mostly kept on my disk and I refer to them in EN with a small note and the link (mostly because I use another system to "question" my data and make deep searching.)

As EN Beta 3 seem to have problems with the local links it would not be helful now. (EN 2.2.1 would).

Perhaps later. But I don't think of EN as Word processor anyway.

Hope it helps

Tom

[engberg 89]

In general, we didn't build Evernote as a word processor, so it may not give you a lot of the formatting and editing options you'd expect from a full document application. But for documents that look a lot like "notes", it might do what you want.

Synching Question:

I am wondering what will happen if I edit a note on my Mac or my PC, while offline, then edit the same note elsewhere online, and then bring my Mac online and try to synch... I can test that, and do other somersaults, but does anyone know off-hand exactly how Evernote handles "concurrency"? Is it a simple, "Last Online Save Wins" system, or during a Synch does it do some comparisons?

Synchronization is handled at the note level, and each client keeps track of the last update version number for each note when it syncs. If one client submits a change to a note, then the service is updated. If another client tried to edit the same note while offline at the same time and then sync, the second client would see that the server has been updated already, and it would store the conflicting version locally so that you can resolve the problem. I.e.it's more "First Online Save Wins" for conflict resolution.

This happens at the level of individual notes, so you can edit 5 notes on one offline laptop and then 3 different notes on another offline laptop and they should both sync fine. You only create a local synchronization conflict if you edit the same note on two different offline computers.

[Bobster 1]

I love using EN for making notes wherever i am and then cutting and pasting into other work as required. Unfortunately if it is more than just a few lines this is really inconvenient because as a word processor EN is pretty ordinary and the spell checker is utterly hopeless. If i am using my computer i find myself doing the note in Word then cutting and pasting into EN so it will be easily available on other devices which somewhat defeats the purpose of EN. 

If i am using an pad or a phone to do some work because it is all i have with me, i have to get on the computer, cut the EN document, paste it into Word to edit and spell-check then paste it back into EN! So much for EN being a timer saver!

It doesn't have to be sophisticated but  at the very least give us a decent spell-check and format painter, preferable the same as Word uses. 

[Wordsgood 526]

Beagley. If you want to word process anything other than plain text - with zero formatting except maybe paragraph breaks & *nothing else* that you can count on not messing up if you copy a Note's text anywhere outside Evernote - and plan to *never, ever* print directly from Evernote, the sure go for it.

But if you want even basic, *reliable* word processing abilities, do youtself a favour and look elsewhere. Evernote is a great place to store data of many types, and EN staff keep popping in every now and then to assure us they are working on improvements to the much maligned Text Editor. But they also make it clear that Evernote never was, is, or will be, a full-on note-takimg software despite the nane.

After using Evernote for about ten minutes on my Mac, I thought: Why wouldn't I use this as my primary Word Processor? After playing around for a while now, I'm even more intrigued.

I've been using Google Docs as my primary Word Processor for about six months. Evernote has everything that I care about in Google Docs and also has a nice, stable, offline client, and smooth and easy support for a multitude of non-text formats. Not to mention all of Evernote's other nifty features... and why would I want to use two programs?

It is important to point out that I work in plain text (or RTF at most) for all of my work, and do "final formatting" later in a layout program or OpenOffice. But for the real WRITING? Evernote might fit the bill.

Anyone care to speculate on the advantages/disadvantages of using Evernote as a Word Processor?

Synching Question:

I am wondering what will happen if I edit a note on my Mac or my PC, while offline, then edit the same note elsewhere online, and then bring my Mac online and try to synch... I can test that, and do other somersaults, but does anyone know off-hand exactly how Evernote handles "concurrency"? Is it a simple, "Last Online Save Wins" system, or during a Synch does it do some comparisons?

Feature Wishes, with Word-Processing in Mind:

*A full-screen editing view

*Sub-notebooks within notebooks, and/or folders in which I can put Notebooks when I have too many.

*Save-As for a single note to txt or RTF

-d

p.s.

Tiny suggestion: the "Updated" column in the various list views should probably be named "Date Modified", like it is in the OS?

EDIT:

Sorry, this is in the wrong forum... when I started composing, I couldn't see the other forums! Weird...

[pingorchi 0]

在 2008/5/21 在 PM5點57分, engberg說:

In general, we didn't build Evernote as a word processor, so it may not give you a lot of the formatting and editing options you'd expect from a full document application. But for documents that look a lot like "notes", it might do what you want.

Synchronization is handled at the note level, and each client keeps track of the last update version number for each note when it syncs. If one client submits a change to a note, then the service is updated. If another client tried to edit the same note while offline at the same time and then sync, the second client would see that the server has been updated already, and it would store the conflicting version locally so that you can resolve the problem. I.e.it's more "First Online Save Wins" for conflict resolution.

This happens at the level of individual notes, so you can edit 5 notes on one offline laptop and then 3 different notes on another offline laptop and they should both sync fine. You only create a local synchronization conflict if you edit the same note on two different offline computers.

I agree this is not a word processor, and you make too much of a function of this.

 

I try paper, evernote is a lot convenience is most of the ways, but paper fix the word size into 3, no color change, all data input there are stable.  I just wish evernote can give a stable word processing, especially when copy and paste other text from internet.

[Vidalia 23]

There are several differences between a notes app vs a word processor.

Word processor = good for long documents, formatting is important, printing is must, you search within a single document, mainly for sharing formally with others

Notes app = good for many short documents, formatting is basic, printing not important, you search across ALL notes, mainly for your personal use

Rather than using a notes app as word processor, the other way round i.e. using a word processor (like Word) as notes app is more useful. You can search inside all DOCX files at once (using many 3rd party apps) and you will get tons of features. Nowadays Word is cross platform and you can edit your files in mobile too.

[PinkElephant 8,077]

@VidaliaHi there, the original Post is from 2008, and the last one before yours is from 2017.

For me a case of the RIP section in the forum ...