Bug: Simplify Format not removing all oddness

[Andrew R 7]

I've recently noticed an uptick in editing quirks, and differences in the way that editing works between different Evernote client applications. As a heavy Evernote user, personally -- and of course selfishly -- I'd love to see more progress on editing stability and consistency than new features.  In particular the performance of "paste" is always an adventure.  

Here's an example.  When pasting a list of bullets copied from a PDF file today, whether using "Paste and Match Style" or just "Paste" then "Simplify formatting" parts of the text cannot be edited.  

Example:

1. from http://www.virginexperiencedays.co.uk/files/Christmas-gifting-survey-results.pdf copy the bullet points that start with "70% of people surveyed".
2. Paste into Evernote, either using Match Style, or Paste then Simplify Format.
3. Try and remove the line break between the first two bullets.  There's a hidden character or negative width.  Moving cursor around it will actually reverse direction.  Deleting the offending characters doesn't work -- this thing seems to move to affect the following text.  Not sure if there's any way to get rid of this.

(Sidenote: It would be great if format-free paste was the default for small snippets of text, since it's rare that I want to keep the original document (and even rarer that when I do it comes out looking anything like the original document)

 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

On 3/10/2016 at 9:35 AM, Andrew R said:

When pasting a list of bullets copied from a PDF file today, whether using "Paste and Match Style" or just "Paste" then "Simplify formatting" parts of the text cannot be edited.

Have you tried select all in the Note, and then apply Format > Make Plain Text ?

I just tried this on a complex web page that I had done a copy/paste, and it worked well.

I do use Simplify Formatting a lot, and find that it generally works well for me.

[Andrew R 7]

Usually that works for me but in this case it (a) converted to a font called "monospace" (my plaintext font is Courier) and (b) the strange formatting artefact remains.   If I try to type a "." after the words "High Street" I end up with "High Stree.t"    It's as though the insertion cursor is not reliably indicating where insertion will happen.     Odd that this persists even after converting to plain text.

[gazumped 11,661]

If you have a plain text editor on your device,  try copying and pasting the note contents into an editor document,  create a new note,  then copy the editor-based text and paste into that new note.  You may have a corrupted character in the original which is causing the problems.

[Andrew R 7]

That certainly eliminates it.  Guess my overriding question is if a little text editor can sort this out why can't Evernote.

[gazumped 11,661]

Fair question - my guess would be that the text editor solves it by not allowing any other character than standard text.  Evernote has to handle a lot more codes and characters,  and doesn't know which ones to throw away - you might require valid codes for layout or some such.  You'd have to ask Evernote for more on that..

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

5 minutes ago, gazumped said:

my guess would be that the text editor solves it by not allowing any other character than standard text.  Evernote has to handle a lot more codes and characters,  and doesn't know which ones to throw away - you might require valid codes for layout or some such.

I don't know why you bother guessing since you're  wrong most of the time.  Sounds like you're trying to defend Evernote without a basis for doing so.

The same way a plain text app uses only the plain text from the clipboard is the same way Evernote could do it.  When stuff is copied to the clipboard, there is almost always multiple versions/formats of the copied material, and in almost all cases it includes a plain text version.  All Evernote need to is provide a "plain text" paste, just like every other rich text app I have ever used.

[gazumped 11,661]

Please look up the meaning of the word 'guess',  and see my other comments on the relevance to comments to posts and your interpretations of what I mean.  No defence here,  no comment on what Evernote could or should do.  Just a g.u.e.s.s.

[DTLow 5,736]

11 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

I don't know why you bother guessing since you're  wrong most of the time.

Wow, That is so ... hostile

A lot of the time we're guessing on resolutions in these forums.  
I've found @Gazumped to have a good track record and I value his comments.

[jbenson2 2,147]

11 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

I don't know why you bother guessing since you're  wrong most of the time

That comment is uncalled for. You should back off.

I appreciate many of the comments made by Gaz. He is is entitled to stating his opinion or guess

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

10 hours ago, jbenson2 said:

I appreciate many of the comments made by Gaz. He is is entitled to stating his opinion or guess

I concede that the part about "since you're  wrong most of the time." was an overstatement.   For that, I apologize.

However, sometimes (don't know the %), statements made by @gazumped like the one above do not have a sound basis in IT, and could mislead people who do not already have a solid background in IT.  So, in those cases, I am also entitled to sharing my opinion that his statement is without merit.

IMO, all of us, especially the members with a lot of history and posts with Evernote, have a responsibility to be reasonably sure of our facts before posting in one of the Evernote product forums.  I'm sure none of you would want to mislead other users, or cause them to make bad decisions because you posted statements that are not factual.  If you want to shoot-the-breeze and wildly speculate, then go post in the Off Topic Discussions   forum.

If you know how PCs/Macs really work, how clipboards really work, then you will know that this statement is without merit:

22 hours ago, gazumped said:

my guess would be that the text editor solves it by not allowing any other character than standard text.  Evernote has to handle a lot more codes and characters,  and doesn't know which ones to throw away - you might require valid codes for layout or some such.