(Archived) Hey Technical/Scientific Folks! Brainstorm: Evernote Technical

[ctishman 0]

So this has been rattling around in my head for a long while now, and if I've thought of it, I'm sure somebody smarter has thought of it first, but I couldn't find more than a few dissatisfied grumblings here and there, some of which are my own.

We've got Evernote versions for food, for blogging, for friends, for drawing, for many things, but there isn't a really good note-taking solution aimed squarely at the scientists, engineers, tradespeople, technicians and students of the sciences. There are programs that go halfway, even those that do a decent job, but I've yet to find one built with our specific needs in mind, and what I'd like to do is formalize ideas for such a program and put them somewhere centralized -- a wish-list for a dream version of the program, due out approximately never.

Add your suggestions!

EvernoteTechnical Wish List

1) More robust text input. This is a big one for me, as I'm taking notes for my EET program at the moment, and keep running into situations where I just wish I could do what I wanted to with Evernote, but the program doesn't do that. In particular:

• Superscript/Subscript (Baseline changes) in the OS clients. I use these all day long, all the time, and when I want to enter one, I have to save my note, sync it, log into the website, click the little subscript button and click back out again. It'd be so much better just to click the button in the program.
  
• Equation Editor or TeX support. This is sort of rolled into the one above, but would be a real boon to those of us writing formulas and such as part of our daily work.
  

2) Citation Support. APA/MLA/Turabian, etc. The ability to carry your notebook or iPhone into a library and take down information about sources for later reference or inclusion in a bibliography would be invaluable to me. We don't need EndNote-style full freight citation and bibliography generation, just a way to take down info in a more organized fashion.

3) Wolfram Integration. This is sort of a far-off dreamland idea, but roundtripping information to/from Alpha would be awesome. It'd offload a lot of the hardcore scientific stuff on a company who specializes in doing that as well as driving them traffic and exposure.

What else've you all got?

[jbenson2 2,147]

It's interesting to read about wishes from other groups. The scientists need advanced equation creation. The photographers would love to have graphic editing in Evernote. The marketing people need more powerful integration with PowerPoint type presentation software. The sales folk need tie-ins to SalesForce.com and other enterprise software. The professional writers want version control and locked down final edits.The business community wants instant shared collaboration capability.

From my perspective as a regular Evernote user:

Please focus on the basics (search and speed) before making the leap into quantum mechanics.

[TechBarber 100]

It's interesting to read about wishes from other groups. The scientists need advanced equation creation. The photographers would love to have graphic editing in Evernote. The marketing people need more powerful integration with PowerPoint type presentation software. The sales folk need tie-ins to SalesForce.com and other enterprise software. The professional writers want version control and locked down final edits.The business community wants instant shared collaboration capability.

From my perspective as a regular Evernote user:

Please focus on the basics (search and speed) before making the leap into quantum mechanics.

That's what is so great about Evernote; it's diversity. You can put whatever you like into it. Just don't expect it to link to every database and system out there. You can't link Excel to other systems, but you can store technical, scientific, sales numbers etc.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I agree that I like that EN is generalized. If I need a more specific app for some reason, there's usually one out there. I use ACDSee Photo Manager for cataloging my photos & videos, iTunes for managing my music library & Quicken to pay our bills & balance our accounts. There is no single app that will do everything that everyone wants it to do. Evernote's niche is being available on so many platforms as well as being a database in they sky. Supposedly, they are trying to have feature parity across all platforms. Which means each new thing they add needs to be reasonably added to all platforms/devices. Please don't bulk up EN with specialized features.

[rdhyee 14]

It'd be interesting to figure out whether the Evernote platform provides all the pieces needed to layer on technical functionality. I've used Evernote Food and see some promise. However, I am concerned that the relatively limited rich text editing functionality for notes might pose a limit (even though the underlying ENML might be rich enough to encompass a wider range of content, such as mathematical equations and citations.)