Inline Tags Workaround

[GoneAway 7]

Here with yet more complicated workarounds. Last time I presented my authotkey script which I should really organize and update since some things have changed, but for now I "discovered" something way more important in my opinion.

 

Now for the longest time I've really wished we had inline tagging workflowy style or at least the ability to more easily search for tags Calibre style (if you've never used calibre you can exclude a tag by clicking twice, three deselects) and link to tags. But alas we don't.... so like always... I looked for a workaround. Now I've know for a while you can use the _ as a character in search and this is the main workaround to inline tags. Nothing really knew there. I've thought of changing over to that system but I find it easy to miss and the underscore just does not say "tag" to my brain so I never truly tried it (I was so missing out).

 

So I got around to brainstorming and I was interested in making fonts a while back so I knew I could make any letter be anything I wanted so I thought why not turn the _ into a #. This is probably the hardest part and you don't really need to do it if the _ doesn't bother you, but by doing so I realized just what I was missing out on. Skip the next paragraph/s for more on that if you're not interested in a font change.

 

If you do know how to make a font (really you just need to know is enough about whatever font program you choose to copy/paste a character, export and install, nothing that complicated) and want to make a custom hashtag font it's pretty easy to make EN use it. Just changing the font in the prefs won't work for the whole UI. The trick is to go into Window's advanced theme settings to change the font throughout the computer. Of course now anywhere the default font is used you'll see a # instead of an underscore. I'm thinking of making it into the shape of a tag or a backwards # because now they're impossible to distinguish, not that I really need to, but I just might need to in windows explorer while changing file names and stuff like that.That's really the only minor inconvenience. But the visual problem can be solved if that bothers you like it did me. Oh and be sure to reboot otherwise EN won't register the change.

 

Problem 2 whether you do the font change or not, I'm used to hitting shift 3 to get a pound symbol. So here came authotkey to the rescue again. ^3::Send, _ solved that perfectly. I set it with a #IfWinActive to evernote's ahk class so it wouldn't do it anywhere else and it works perfectly.

 

So now I've got nice visually proper inline tagging, but even if you don't want to go out and do all that just switching to using an underscore opens up so many doors. Inline tagging of course, but even better it makes searching so so so much easier. Instead of a search looking like: all: tag:#included tag:"#included tag"-tag:#excluded which was just a pain to type out or the alternative which I used to do, selecting all the tags, going to the search explanation, copying, pasting then adding the dash to exclude certain tags, now I just type the following: #included "#included tag" -#excluded which autohotkey converts to _included "_included tag" -_excluded which with the font change reconverts again to looking like: #included "#included tag" -#excluded. Much much simpler and it can catch "inline tags" as well as regular tags. The only thing this doesn't work for unfortunately is for finding tags in scanned/handwritten documents. Also there's only really one type of tag. No other symbols work. But you could use multiple hashtags instead like ##tag. The number of underscores could indicate the level of importance or other stuff like that. Using a space also works. So # # could mean a to do (you would have to search for it with quotations though). Basically it allows even more creativity I think.

 

Now the inline tags might sound kind of pointless to some people, after all isn't the beauty of it to be able to select tags from the sidebar. Well yes, but for some of us there's just some notes we'd only like to pop up when searching for the tag. Like it might only be mildly related, or it might be a single thing inside a note that is related to that tag. But regardless, I encourage you to try it just for tags just for the fact that it makes searching sooooo much simpler. Typing tag: over and over again and remembering the colon and the placement of the quotation marks was just too much. This way it makes way more sense. It's like a simple google search. I don't have to bother about selecting anything. I think if I trim my tags down enough I might just get rid of the sidebar altogether. I could also potentially get autohotkey to type notebook: when I need to single out a notebook in a search (is it just me or was there a time when if you were in a notebook and you went to search it only searched in that one? maybe I'm just dreaming, but I really wish it'd do that).

 

Anyways hope someone finds some of this helpful and it shows just how useful such a feature could be.

[alphalpha 2]

I really want inline tagging so if you found a really good integrated solution I would love to know about it.

[DTLow 5,736]

4 hours ago, alphalpha said:

I really want inline tagging so if you found a really good integrated solution I would love to know about it.

This echoes  the post from @GoneAway above.

If you type "keyword=xxx" in your note, that is a form of tagging.
In fact, I just tagged this post, you can use the Search box above and find it.
Likewise you can use the Search box in Evernote, and even create a saved search in the shortcuts area.
So there you go ... inline tagging

[Zsolt.Juhasz 11]

Thanks for pointing this out.

But a real inline tagging would be the only perfect solution.

Example: I often try to set important informations inside a notes text an forgetting to tag them correctly: "plans to visit Amsterdam" should be more interactive by entering: "plans to visit #Amsterdam" where the key #Amsterdam ist automatically added to the tag list and remains highlighted in the text (to focus it later on while reading). The # should be used as a trigger (and will pop out a context menu after the first letter to choose your tag from, or create a new one) and the final text looks like this: "plans to visit Amsterdam" again, where the "Amsterdam" ist highlighted (as the tags in the toolbar, to be recognizable) and clickable (same interaction as with native tags). If I dont want to have a word to be tagged, I can use the backspace key to remove the tag function from the word and it remains "#Amsterdam"

Unfortunately, EN is unable to search for the # (or it just ignores it). AND, I really like the Tag-Overview, so an entered tag (keyword) should be added to the tags list, instead having it in the text only and I need to memorize them. Especially, if you have hundreds of them.

[CalS 5,280]

At this point the function doesn't exist, Captain Obvious here, so I guess if you can remember to type #Amsterdam can you remember to tag the note with Amsterdam?  And if it is that important to you you might consider posting the request in the feedback section of the forums.

FYI, underscore is searchable in note contents so _Amsterdam would return notes containing that text, but not notes containing just Amsterdam, unless you added that to an ANY search.  Still won't auto create a tag.

[Zsolt.Juhasz 11]

@csihilling: It was only a suggestion to improve the UX as other apps do this already (f.e. google keep). This kind of tag handling would make EN perfect. 

See this example in keep:

A new Note, with inline tags added while I wrote the text whis previously not existied tags.

A new note will comsume this new created tags automatically, when I'm writing a new note.

The Tag-List is also updated.

It's a perfect example how google does this (beside the fact: they dont have nested tags and notebooks) - but it would a easy to implement feature request to EN - As I hold 3700+ notes in it.

 

[CalS 5,280]

26 minutes ago, Zsolt.Juhasz said:

@csihilling: It was only a suggestion to improve the UX as other apps do this already (f.e. google keep).

Yes, I understood that thanks.  There's a section in the forums where you can post feature requests where they can be up or down voted.  Maybe try the post there and see what support it receives. 

[jbenson2 2,147]

On 12/9/2014 at 2:57 PM, GoneAway said:

Typing tag: over and over again and remembering the colon and the placement of the quotation marks was just too much.

Typing tag: does not bother me. It is second nature to me. But I hate quote marks. So I always create tags with one word; or the appearance of one word. This eliminates the need for quotation marks for my tag searches.

tag:hewlettpackard

tag:frequentflyer

 

[CalS 5,280]

1 minute ago, jbenson2 said:

Typing tag: does not bother me. It is second nature to me. But I hate quote marks. So I always create tags with one word; or the appearance of one word. This eliminates the need for quotation marks for my tag searches.

tag:hewlettpackard

tag:frequentflyer

 

I need a little help reading things, so it would be tag:hewlett.packard (or maybe tag:hp) and tag:frequent.flyer  

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

On 5/27/2016 at 9:46 AM, Zsolt.Juhasz said:

But a real inline tagging would be the only perfect solution.

If you are a Mac user, then a lot of this, maybe all, could be achieved using AppleScript/JXA.

[DTLow 5,736]

On June 7, 2016 at 4:00 PM, JMichaelTX said:

If you are a Mac user, then a lot of this, maybe all, could be achieved using AppleScript/JXA.

I think you have a good idea there.   I estimate 1 hour for coding

You can be in the search box or in a note.

Enter the shortcut keys, something like command-option-k,
and a dropdown appears of keywords,
select one, and "keyword:xxxx" is typed

I'd want the keyword list to be dynamic.  My approach is to create a note for each keyword, identified by tag !Keyword

I've documented my project here

 

Evernote_Insert_Keyword.scpt

[Zsolt.Juhasz 11]

Unfortunately I stuck to Windows. And as far as I saw screenshots from the Mac-Version: it looks like it is far more developed than its Win counterpart.

Would be great to have an official API to prodvide plugins - so everyone could customize EN for his needs.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

17 hours ago, Zsolt.Juhasz said:

Would be great to have an official API to prodvide plugins - so everyone could customize EN for his needs.

Evernote does have an official API, but it is for their Cloud access, so it does not help on the desktop.

 

[DTLow 5,736]

I have posted this as a feature request in a feedback forum.
Please indicate your support by uprooting the request