Dave Luce

"Tasks" remain the starving step-children of Evernote. Editing is hard and they cannot be individually tagged. I propose a capability for Evernote's tasks, leapfrogging Nozbe, Todoist and Notional. I would add a local variable to a note, then add the capability to use it in the note's tasks' properties. Consider a note listing the tasks for an international trip. I would gradually build a generic PrePlan note with all the tasks that have caused me trouble in the past. Each needs context, and a reminder, for efficient execution. The context for each task, like "Buy Travel insurance", would be tagged as "At Computer", or "While Shopping". The context would reappear in the specific plan, each time I plan a trip. The reminders should be scheduled relative to the WheelsUp date. I would specify each task reminder within this note as "Days_before", or "Weekdays_before", "WheelsUp". Other options would include "Days_After" and "Weekdays_After" When I set up a trip, I would copy (or instantiate, if it were a template) the generic PrePlan note to my trip's notebook. At the start of the note, I would define a "WheelsUp" date, which would establish the dates of the reminders for each task in the rest of the note. The grammar might be "Set_Variable ", "WheelsUp" "To" "1/10/2022". For the rest of the note, recurrence of the name "WheelsUp" would be transformed to the date. Similar variables could be used to differentiate "Author's Tour" from "Wildlife Safari", omitting irrelevant tasks and packing. The capability to set variables would be useful in many situations; it might even help to have variables whose scope extends across notes to entire notebooks or stacks. Questions of sequence, collision and syntax probably would make such semi-global variables hard to use, and probably not worth their maintenance.

Steele askeed for use cases. Adding a switch to "lock" a note from inadvertent editing would avoid: Undetected accidental editing errors Resetting the "date updated" on a note, when I touch it without actually intending to change it; the notebook then loses its characteristic sequence, which is often useful for sorting. Losing the verifiability of my record. If I use a note to track the sequence a set of events, I would like to rely on its integrity after I put it into my Evernote database. Of course this need relates to the desire to archive notes when deisred (mentioned elsewhere in the feature requests).

For an application which is supposed to manage information, summarizing it is quite difficult. I accomplished the simple task of printing a hierarchical list of my notebooks by expanding the notebook stacks one at a time, capturing a sequence of screens into notes, combining notes and exporting the combination to a pdf. There should be a better way. Evernote gurus have long extolled the virtues of using tags instead of constructing another nested level (of notebook dividers) to build sophisticated networks of notes (which they can). ON the other hand the primitive output capacity--to print or pdf--of the application means that one cannot record or use the higher relationship between notes except as a clumsy tool for inter-screen navigation.

As the system of notes, tasks and tags becomes more complicated, I need to see the structure in the Stacks, Notebooks and Notes. With a large history of notes and projects, the structure should be exportable to a pdf, showing at least the Notebooks bar on the left side of the screen. Once this is available, the tags associated with each note should also be displayable on a pdf.

Another gutless update. The release notes say that I can insert a link to a note into email, but the brilliant minds at evernote designed it so that the link is INTO EVERNOTE! A link into Evernote has no use for communicating, unless the addressee happens to use the app themselves. I don't even know if a random user can receive and follow such inserted link, or if they must have access to MY account to follow it. THis is another useless capability added to the application, after many of the truly useful ones have been thrown away.