GreyGray 15 Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 In my mind, there are probably four so so things that scare EN users a bit, and should be put on the top of the "fix it" list. First, encryption along with a lock screen on mobile apps. Second, data integrity, especially with a very routine downtime window, it seems likely for corruption if you are in the middle of the connection getting dropped. Can't EN have a staging area that (atomic) until the remote end says so, that note is not synced, and will remain in staging? If the remote database doesn't hear back from the client, delete the record, the next time EN can, it will sync. This worries me more for those on the go, you should be able to close your laptop at pretty much any time without worry. I don't worry about DropBox or my password manager, or any app for that matter, and they all cloud sync, I just close the lid and know it will deal with it on it's own. It may sometimes create a "conflict" file, but unless I dig and look for those, I would never know they even existed as each app has been made to clean up after itself and make sure you have no data loss of corruption. Is this an issue that is being looked at, or is this just how things are? Having a notice when you quit the app that it is still syncing is strange to me, why not pass that off to the background app, or a background app dedicated to syncing, so no matter what state the app is in, it will still sync, EN need not even be open? Third would be no ability to a true backup. I suppose a file system level backup is that, but to date, no one will tell me what files are for what and where they go let alone why. I could never reliably put the pieces back together. Right now you can export to a ENEX format, which has both tags and dates in it, the dates appear to be in Zulu time, which while I prefer epoch based times, I think from what I understand about time zones, Z time is a perfectly acceptable format that can be transposed from one to another easily. Plenty of libraries usually built in to help. The tags also seem to be in order, or perhaps reverse order, either way, there is an order to them. Oddly, on reimport, your tags are out of order, notebook data is not saved, so you have to export one at a time, and you lose the two time stamps. The issue of having to export each notebook one at a time is silly to me. That could be solved in a sort of hack way by upon selecting "backup" the app iterates over each notebook, adds a tag of the note book name plus a UID of some form, and that could be used to bring it back in correctly, then delete all tags that contain the UID. The rest is on the import side, get the importer to recognize the dates, get the importer to either reverse the tag list, or export it correctly to begin with. Even toss in an XML element of the notebook name and don't worry about iterating over the notebooks. I would further remove the option to toggle on and off the inclusion and exclusion of tags in the "import" and "export" menus, which would become "backup" and "restore". I can see no reason for them to not be always on, and thats less code to manage, which is always good, accidentally forgetting to toggle it on if it is not by default, will cause you trouble. A backup should mean that you can take your one true file to any machine, install EN, go to restore from backup, and be up and running. That is what a backup is to me. You should match some md5 hash check to make sure the backup and restore are identical. Evernote is moving into integration with services that auto download banking data, it seems EN really wants all our data in their app, which is just how I wanted it. However, I don't feel save putting that data up there unencrypted. So I thought, ok, I will just use a local notebook. For reasons I don't understand, local notebooks seem frowned upon. You can't convert a local notebook to an online one and vice versa, but certainly can manually in a few steps. Why the trepidation on local notebooks? Is it because there is higher than idea chance of data loss or corruption and using the cloud as a way to put your data back is their best option right now, something that of course would not work with local notebooks? Link to comment
Level 5* Metrodon 2,184 Posted August 24, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted August 24, 2015 1. Pay for an Evernote account and you can use a PIN code on your mobile device.2. Make sure you have pressed sync before you close the app/your device and you should always be in a state that the note will sync when the service is available. If you are seeing differently you should report a bug.3. File level backup is fine for most people and if you live in a Mac world you can use Time Machine. It doesn't take a huge amount of imagination to work out the Evernote file structure. It's also easy to find out where they go - it's been discussed on here a lot.4. Who frowns on local notebooks? It takes a couple of steps to move a local note to a sync'd one, most likely to reduce the risk of user error. Encryption has been discussed at great length on here for years - at the moment Evernote it seems value search more highly that encryption. Link to comment
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