Code block language formatting

[Tyocca 39]

Hello,

I love the code block feature that was added. However, I think it has some down falls.

Mostly, I think it is lacking in text formatting. An amazing feature would be for Evernote to recognize some popular coding languages and be able to color code variables and other identifiers. At the very least, I wish the code block kept my formatting when I copied and paste from a text editor.

I often copy and paste code from SQL management Studio hoping for the color coding to stay, which it does not. If I copy into a normal section, it is fine but, the code block removes the color formatting. (I have tried pasting with match style, does not work). 

I think this would make Evernote more robust and be able to reach a larger audience. Mainly, extend reach to developers who would like a place to effectively store their code for reuse.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this idea!

[findmory 0]

Is it my imagination or did code block formatting suddenly disappear from the web client??

[linusan 8]

I believe this "feature" never left beta stadium and wasn't developed any further since its release? I wonder if anyone on the Evernote developer team uses Evernote to keep his programming related notes. What this feature clearly needs:

• support of native input when the cursor is inside the code block (jump 2 or 4 spaces when pressing tab, auto indent braces and blocks, auto insert closing tags, etc.
• some kind of colorization wouldn't hurt (by this I don't even mean language specific colorization, just any colors for the beginning).
• get rid of the weird extra top margin which gets inserted along the code block.

[Tom E 4]

I use Code Block all the time for storing snippets of code.  Even though it is very basic, it is still very useful to me as a programmer.

The biggest flaw that needs fixing is that quotes copied from source code into Evernote frequently get converted into the more stylistic, 'directional' quotation marks, even when posted into a code block.  (At least they do for me on the Mac client.)  This renders the code unusable without manually fixing all the quotes.

[Illydth 8]

I have specifically logged in to this form as a first time poster just to respond to this.

HTML 1.0, released in 1993 had 42 TOTAL tags supported in the language.

PRE was one of those.

How the heck hard can it be to create a button to create a code snippit section in Evernote that does not:

* Spell Correct

* Replace Quotes with stupid MS Word Style Quotes

* Replace Double Dashes with Em Dashes

* Etc.

This is a CODE BLOCK for Christ's sake.

This isn't about syntax highlighting, or turning Evernote into an IDE.  It's about simply storing what I want it to store in the format I asked it to store it in.  If I put the word "ansible" into Evernote it should not AUTOMATICALLY change it to "sensible" for me, it should NOT do it AGAIN after I CORRECT it, and it should not take me adding the word to the bloody dictionary before it will finally stop trying to auto-correct it in EVERY LINE.

I'm not sure who you think your audience is?  Almost every white collar job these days has it's hand in Big Data, Cloud or Web in some way, meaning the VAST MAJORITY of your customer base has SOME NEED to store SOMETHING that looks like an unformatted text string, likely containing words, phrases or symbols that do not translate into a dictionary word.  Again the VAST MAJORITY of these text strings have an importance to be stored AS IS, as copied into the program without ANY modification AT ALL.

1993 we had that capability on web pages.  Every WIKI, IDE, Forums Software and Text Editor in existence has AT MINIMUM this feature functionality.

I notice the box I am CURRENTLY TYING IN did not auto-correct any of the words i've put in, making EVEN IT be SIGNIFICANTLY more useful to the standard/average user of your software THAN YOUR ACTUAL SOFTWARE IS.

I am now ACTIVELY looking to get off your platform.  There are posts i've run across in the last 3 top hits on google dating back to 2016, I don't know how it's even possible after 4 years of customers complaining and in 2020 to have a text editor without basic functionality like "in this block of text, please don't change what I type" let alone "please recognize this block of text for what it is and highlight it appropriately".

Why do I get the feeling Evernote is a company of two people in a house somewhere who spend all day checking their monthly income statements.

[wil_case 2]

FYI to the Evernote folks; Paper for Dropbox has this feature. I am starting to use it more and more, which makes me start pushing over other things to Paper like projects and team note sharing.

 

I love me some Evernote, but you do have competition on your heels. 

[GeekInTheRough 4]

I didn't realize that this feature had been added! I use a MacOS and don't see the code block option in the client here (version 6.11.1 from app store), but when I log in to the web version, I see the curly brackets in the toolbar that do the code formatting. While this is a step in the right direction, I think it needs to go a couple steps further.... Many Blogs/CMS use a variety of syntax highlighters that recognize many different languages. Such a plug-in should be implemented across Evernote (Web, Windows, MacOS) so that we not only have a code block, but a nicely colored, easy to read code block.

In the past, I have been using www.tohtml.com - I paste in code blocks there, select the language style, then click Highlight... I then copy the highlighted text and paste it into Evernote. I'm attaching a screenshot of how this appears compared to using the Code Block from the Evernote Web Client. Screenshot taken from MacOS client.

[gnubyte 1]

16 minutes ago, DTLow said:

It's recognized Evernote's editor doesn't include a code syntax highlighting feature for program/script code; hence the above feature request.

I agree it's a critical feature for "programmers ...", however I'm thinking Evernote's note editor/format is not the best place to do coding or store code.

I use a code editor (Textastic) for my coding; storing the code as a text file which I add as an attachment to a note.  This editor has syntax highlighting.

In my use case, I am not storing code, I am storing commands for various command line interfaces that I need to remember...hence they are notes.

What is important to remember is that the platform should not discriminate the use case, but should instead provide the tools and let the users decide how to implement and use case...From what I have read in the few forums I have peaked at today it seems like people suggest the features and "Super Gurus" come in and dissect the request or act as fire control. 
Consider my upvote and comment as my form of "super support!" to help promote this feature by providing the developers some context. The other thing I am noticing is that new features seem to be slow to rollout. I looked into this same feature request nearly two years ago and there is still nothing on it. Yes, Evernote moved to the cloud this last year, a change that users cannot see upfront but takes time away from dev, but two years is a long time to wait on a feature.

 

In this quote, alone, this indicates how fast the industry moves...

On 11/28/2017 at 2:21 PM, wil_case said:

FYI to the Evernote folks; Paper for Dropbox has this feature. I am starting to use it more and more, which makes me start pushing over other things to Paper like projects and team note sharing.

 

I love me some Evernote, but you do have competition on your heels. 

The CEO's latest note seems all fluff, with no particular features highlighted that are rolling down the pipeline. Even in the first few comments, someone posted that it seemed very fluffy.

Implement new features, stop using 'Super gurus' to silence user requests, and actually invest back into the product, or I'll be on the bus out like this guy above.

[evernote_user_000 1]

On 3/28/2018 at 11:16 AM, findmory said:

Is it my imagination or did code block formatting suddenly disappear from the web client??

Also came here to ask this!

[Bill Butler 12]

On 3/28/2018 at 11:16 AM, findmory said:

Is it my imagination or did code block formatting suddenly disappear from the web client??

Ditto here. I use this all the time. Please bring it back.

[pulkitnt 3]

I think the extremely low traction on this thread indicates that not many programmers use Evernote for note taking! If Evernote could just incorporate this one feature(language formatting like https://typora.io/ ) it may appeal to a much larger audience!

[TaoistGemini 2]

On 9/23/2018 at 5:44 AM, pulkitnt said:

I think the extremely low traction on this thread indicates that not many programmers use Evernote for note taking! If Evernote could just incorporate this one feature(language formatting like https://typora.io/ ) it may appeal to a much larger audience!

I'd like to posit another direction regarding code block - that not all who use code are programmers!

I run a website, and as a solo-preneur, that means I need to find ways to code myself sometimes. 

I use Evernote for everything related to my business - I blog/write in Evernote, I keep track of business receipts, I log all my marketing in Evernote.  What I'd also like to do is keep track of snippets of code that I write for website themes, plugins, widgets, and CSS.  

The "wider audience" might not be the programmers - it might be the thousands and thousands of women like me who are already using Evernote for their #sidehustle and want another reason to stay with Evernote and another reason to pitch Evernote at places like BlogHer.  That isn't a small market-share.

[tkurt 0]

Syntax highlighter is vital for IT profesionals. Please, consider to implement such a useful feature. 

[dasjestyr 1]

Language highlighting is standard in most flavors of Markdown at this point (for web display) and EN seems to be a web implementation of most things (correct me if I'm wrong), so it shouldn't be too difficult to provide this feature. I think just about all of the lexers are open source. 

[slinkz 0]

On 3/28/2018 at 8:16 AM, findmory said:

Is it my imagination or did code block formatting suddenly disappear from the web client??

I came here to ask this.

[Lucas Rezende 1]

23 hours ago, pulkitnt said:

I think the extremely low traction on this thread indicates that not many programmers use Evernote for note taking! If Evernote could just incorporate this one feature(language formatting like https://typora.io/ ) it may appeal to a much larger audience!

I don't think the idea of this suggestion is to use Evernote for coding but to store code. I also use Evernote to store some helpful codes I use all the time and just wanted those codes to be presented in a more readable way. It is just syntax formatting and not auto-complete, debug, breakpoint, etc. 

Best, LR

[smgardner131 3]

 

Evernote is the tools I use for keeping notes on my work. Since I am a programmer, my notes include code snippets. The inability to correctly format and highlight means that my note taking for work will have to move to another tool. That will make it more likely that I will move ALL of my note taking to another tool. EN will no longer be useful and I will no longer pay for it.The same is true markdown editing. Virtually everything I write is in markdown, that is my work and non-work documents. Evernote, again, is losing its utility.

[janothan 6]

On 4/20/2019 at 6:50 PM, TaoistGemini said:

not all who use code are programmers!

I can only agree. You do not need a computer science degree for this feature.

These days, everybody might see the need to quickly save code parts.

In addition, I think that also a younger audience such as high school students might be interested in that feature given some code exposure in class. 

[Lucas Rezende 1]

So much time has passed and no indication that there will be a feature like that anytime soon. Already migrated to Notion which has this feature and much more. Thanks Evernote. 

[WTFaria 0]

Em 22/04/2019 at 11:18, Lucas Rezende disse:

So much time has passed and no indication that there will be a feature like that anytime soon. Already migrated to Notion which has this feature and much more. Thanks Evernote. 

I've been using Evernote to store my code snippets for years and came here with the same issue, looking for ways to do have some linting or a better formating.

Thanks for your answer, Lucas Rezende. I'm trying Notion and its insane!

[aaroncz 1]

Hi,

As described in the title, I think it will make Evernote more friendly to programmers if syntax highlighting for code blocks can be enabled. Enabling IntelliSense could be even better 😂 Also, "spelling errors" in code blocks should be hidden (such as the function name "testCodeBlock" will be underlined).

Thanks,

Aaron

[pyapple 1]

4 hours ago, Illydth said:

I have specifically logged in to this form as a first time poster just to respond to this.

HTML 1.0, released in 1993 had 42 TOTAL tags supported in the language.

PRE was one of those.

How the heck hard can it be to create a button to create a code snippit section in Evernote that does not:

* Spell Correct

* Replace Quotes with stupid MS Word Style Quotes

* Replace Double Dashes with Em Dashes

* Etc.

This is a CODE BLOCK for Christ's sake.

This isn't about syntax highlighting, or turning Evernote into an IDE.  It's about simply storing what I want it to store in the format I asked it to store it in.  If I put the word "ansible" into Evernote it should not AUTOMATICALLY change it to "sensible" for me, it should NOT do it AGAIN after I CORRECT it, and it should not take me adding the word to the bloody dictionary before it will finally stop trying to auto-correct it in EVERY LINE.

I'm not sure who you think your audience is?  Almost every white collar job these days has it's hand in Big Data, Cloud or Web in some way, meaning the VAST MAJORITY of your customer base has SOME NEED to store SOMETHING that looks like an unformatted text string, likely containing words, phrases or symbols that do not translate into a dictionary word.  Again the VAST MAJORITY of these text strings have an importance to be stored AS IS, as copied into the program without ANY modification AT ALL.

1993 we had that capability on web pages.  Every WIKI, IDE, Forums Software and Text Editor in existence has AT MINIMUM this feature functionality.

I notice the box I am CURRENTLY TYING IN did not auto-correct any of the words i've put in, making EVEN IT be SIGNIFICANTLY more useful to the standard/average user of your software THAN YOUR ACTUAL SOFTWARE IS.

I am now ACTIVELY looking to get off your platform.  There are posts i've run across in the last 3 top hits on google dating back to 2016, I don't know how it's even possible after 4 years of customers complaining and in 2020 to have a text editor without basic functionality like "in this block of text, please don't change what I type" let alone "please recognize this block of text for what it is and highlight it appropriately".

Why do I get the feeling Evernote is a company of two people in a house somewhere who spend all day checking their monthly income statements.

F*king well said, straight to the point.

[alexanrf 2]

def hello():
  print("Hello")

Seconding that getting some colour into the code blocks would be a nice feature. It's a bit striking that the forum supports it but the desktop app doesn't.

I see some comments about em dashes and formatted double quotes. On mac you can turn this off in 'System preferences' - 'Keyboard' - 'Text' - and disable: 'Use smart quotes and dashes'. Command line arguments where a nightmare until I found out about that.

[Jason Blum 1]

What's really perplexing about the absence of syntax highlighting is that it's such low-hanging fruit: https://highlightjs.org/usage/

[gappix 9]

Code block as it is now is... simply useless. 
Syntax highlighting (and a better formatting) is something vital.

ANY PROGRAMMER needs for a supporting note-app to store his own solutions, design patterns, a commented version of what found on StackOverflow... 
... without wasting time in clunchy (and often ugly) workarounds. 

Why ignoring all those potential premium customers? 🙃

[Mystic 16]

I would ask to add syntax highlighting here, but the developers don't give a damn, so I'll just wait for the competitors to fix all their flaws to migrate to them.

ps But now we have a useless home page, and how I lived without it before, lol

[gappix 9]

On 2/2/2021 at 3:16 AM, PinkElephant said:

Any programmer should know to use an editor specialized in this job - not a general note taking app. Personally I use CotEditor on my Mac for code, and save the file as an attachment into EN.

The code feature in EN allows to grab a text code-style, monospaced, variable length of lines etc., and store it directly into a note. It is not really made to be a programmers / programming tool. I find it useful to store content, like log files I want to keep.

I totally agree with you.
And, indeed, my point was different. 

I always tend to consider EN as a (potential) powerful knowledge tool: a fast virtual-second-memory which supports you in a wide range of activities (which is way more ambitious than a simple sketch/quicknotes/reminders organizing app).
A place where to store clean "pieces of knowledge" for fast future recall and use.
Also from your programming experiences: 

• elegant code-solutions to specific problems (with some pieces of code and commentary in between)   
• quick examples for design patterns
• personal cheatsheets for nonintuitive syntax when approaching a new language
• ... 

You can already do that, of course, saving code as plain monospaced text. 
Or storing source files.

Not really as knowledge-friendly as it would be with some syntax highlighting.... 🙃

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Who do you bump here ? Other users !

So no bumping around here, first because it makes no sense, and second because you don’t bump me …

If other editors are great, use them. EN is not build to be a programmers tool, and adding this would probably reduce its usability for all other users significantly. The code block is ok to save some code in a note (I use it to store that Linux code I really can’t remember), but that is it. The editor is not designed to write code, which is a completely different venture than storing it.

[bgblanch 0]

@Tyocca where is the code block feature?  I use the web version and don't see it in there.  I'm assuming you're referring to their application?

[Tyocca 39]

@bgblanch yes, I am talking about the desktop app. 

[janothan 6]

I would like to see the option to set a language and get the color coding and formatting automatically for that language.
For instance, if I set it to be SQL, it would automatically highlight keywords like "SELECT" and capitalize them.
If I set it to a programming language, it would be nice to get automatic indentation on top.

 

[rivareus24 0]

How does the "code block" feature work? Can i code in some programming languagues like Java, Visual Basic or Python? How does it work?

[janothan 6]

Quote

How does the "code block" feature work?

So far it is just a formatting thing, you click the "code block button" in the desktop version (looks like: { } ) or use CTRL + Shift + L.
You cannot set programming languages. It will just format the text differently.

[Hannibal1296 1]

I'm a college student studying Computer Engineering.

Sometimes, I want to make a note about code and keep it.

I recently knew that Evernote supports the code block which is awesome!

But what I hope is that it has several syntax like Java, Javacsript, etc. with colors.

I use Evernote for note-taking and Quiver (Mac app) for making a personal archive for code.

I think it will be great if Evernote also has this feature that I don't have to use two apps for studying.

If you put this feature in premium subscription, I think it can bring more students to Evernote !

 

[Lucas Rezende 1]

Hi everyone.

Any update about this code block thing? As mentioned above I would love to hear from Evernote developers if they use their own product to store codes such as Python, SQL, etc.

Let's pray for it.

[DTLow 5,736]

36 minutes ago, Lucas Rezende said:

Any update about this code block thing? As mentioned above I would love to hear from Evernote developers if they use their own product to store codes such as Python, SQL, etc.

 I’m a developer (not an Evernote employee).  I use Evernote to store my programming  code

I use text files attached/linked to a note and  a code editor app (Textastic) to update the code files.  This app provides syntax highlighting (Mac/iPad)

[Daniel B 1]

I use it too for code snippets. it would be great to have color formatting by language

[Victor V. 3]

Code block is nice. But it's monochromatic, this makes it feel like reading code in the 1990s (that's what my Dad said). Please Evernote team add syntax highlighting in the code block. This should not be hard to do. 

[penguinairlines 1]

Any update on this?

Editing in code blocks already works for the web/android version, as I can copy another code block, paste the new one, and edit the internal text from there.  It would be much nicer if Evernote could just add a button for this though...

Edit> Also accidentally making the code block the last line of the note is annoying to escape.  I'm fighting evernote by entering some lines above it, and then cutting and pasting the text in the blank lines to solve this problem.  I'm not a big fan of fighting my text editor this much.

[jefito 5,589]

4 hours ago, penguinairlines said:

Any update on this?

If there are updates, you'll see them in the release notes of your Evernote software., as usual.

I wouldn't expect having language color coding any time soon; as you can see, there are more important things that they need to focus on like editor stability; plus, I'm guessing that improvement that are aimed towards more general utility (like tables, styles, etc.t) would be more important to them than  improvements mainly aimed at software developers. Myself, if I want code highlighting (which is rare), I'll just use my IDE for that.

[J.Z. 16]

Please see similar threads here: 

 

[J.Z. 16]

But since it looks like there is this new feature request area and the other area/thread is mostly ignored I guess this is the new thread.  +1

[gnubyte 1]

On 7/11/2017 at 4:29 PM, GeekInTheRough said:

I didn't realize that this feature had been added! I use a MacOS and don't see the code block option in the client here (version 6.11.1 from app store), but when I log in to the web version, I see the curly brackets in the toolbar that do the code formatting. While this is a step in the right direction, I think it needs to go a couple steps further.... Many Blogs/CMS use a variety of syntax highlighters that recognize many different languages. Such a plug-in should be implemented across Evernote (Web, Windows, MacOS) so that we not only have a code block, but a nicely colored, easy to read code block.

In the past, I have been using www.tohtml.com - I paste in code blocks there, select the language style, then click Highlight... I then copy the highlighted text and paste it into Evernote. I'm attaching a screenshot of how this appears compared to using the Code Block from the Evernote Web Client. Screenshot taken from MacOS client.

Okay so this is great but it needs to be added to the OSX desktop and Windows desktop platforms as well, please :-)

Critical feature where many of the end users are programmers, sysadmins, scripters, etc.

[DTLow 5,736]

33 minutes ago, gnubyte said:

Critical feature where many of the end users are programmers, sysadmins, scripters, etc.

It's recognized Evernote's editor doesn't include a code syntax highlighting feature for program/script code; hence the above feature request.

I agree it's a critical feature for "programmers ...", however I'm thinking Evernote's note editor/format is not the best place to do coding or store code.

I use a code editor (Textastic) for my coding; storing the code as a text file which I add as an attachment to a note.  This editor has syntax highlighting.

[DTLow 5,736]

2 hours ago, gnubyte said:

Consider my upvote and comment as my form of "super support!"

Welcome to the user discussion forums. We're mostly a self moderated forum; Evernote employees pop in occasionally.

Voting buttons are in the upper left corner of the discussion  .
Note: User votes are just one of the factures Evernote uses in determining development priorities

Discussion comments are optional, but always welcome.

>>From what I have read in the few forums I have peaked at today it seems like people suggest the features ...

It works well for me, in both adding requests and adding my vote to other requests.

I also enjoy the comments in the discussion.  The exploring in more detail, and suggestions of work arounds and other approaches to incorporating the feature in my Evernote use.
Some users just want to state their opinion, and don't like feedback.

[jefito 5,589]

On 2/20/2018 at 12:11 PM, gnubyte said:

Implement new features, stop using 'Super gurus' to silence user requests, and actually invest back into the product, or I'll be on the bus out like this guy above.

'Super gurus''and 'gurus' are users just like you are,  not Evernote employees. They are typically ardent Evernote users who are also allowed to express their own opinions on the forums. Nobody, but nobody, is being silenced (modulo forum posting rules).

[gnubyte 1]

On 2/20/2018 at 12:17 PM, DTLow said:

Welcome to the user discussion forums. We're mostly a self moderated forum; Evernote employees pop in occasionally.

Voting buttons are in the upper left corner of the discussion  .
Note: User votes are just one of the factures Evernote uses in determining development priorities

Discussion comments are optional, but always welcome.

>>From what I have read in the few forums I have peaked at today it seems like people suggest the features ...

It works well for me, in both adding requests and adding my vote to other requests.

I also enjoy the comments in the discussion.  The exploring in more detail, and suggestions of work arounds and other approaches to incorporating the feature in my Evernote use.
Some users just want to state their opinion, and don't like feedback.

Its all out of scope/off topic at this point, and Im OK with the feedback you have given me, but I would love to see an actual representative of the product at this point speak to some of the new features that could be coming to Evernote?

[jefito 5,589]

4 hours ago, gnubyte said:

Its all out of scope/off topic at this point, and Im OK with the feedback you have given me, but I would love to see an actual representative of the product at this point speak to some of the new features that could be coming to Evernote?

We like to see more of them, too, but they don't generally do it too often. Usually following the beta releases will give you a flavor of what's coming up soon; for some of the clients there are forum topics so that you can read what's going on without actually using the beta. More long term plans tend not to be revealed.

[jumarko 14]

This may also be interesting for you: https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/106520-indent-and-code-block-issue/

[Vye 0]

First of all, I appreciate the code block feature. Since I work in IT, a good portion of my notes contain code snippets. I would love:

• Syntax highlighting for popular languages like Python, Bash, GoLang (in my case).
• Turn off spell check when in code block. It's painful to have my variable names capitalized or spelling changed.

[huwa59 0]

also would like to turn off spell check. I write creative essays with creative punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. Or is the spell check just a program of my computer applicable to many programs?  Thanks.

[pulkitnt 3]

FYI, After the 7.5 update for Mac, now we cannot paste code formatted from https://tohtml.com into code block, Evernote strips off all the HTML formatting now!

I wonder if they are treating this as a new feature!!

[jefito 5,589]

22 hours ago, pulkitnt said:

I think the extremely low traction on this thread indicates that not many programmers use Evernote for note taking! If Evernote could just incorporate this one feature(language formatting like https://typora.io/ ) it may appeal to a much larger audience!

I use it for note taking, research, organization, journaling, bug information gathering (includes screen shots, stack traces, etc.), and any number of other miscellaneous reasons every day in my software development job. And indeed, I sometimes store chunks of code there, but in general I don't write code in Evernote (I write it in the IDE, where there are much nicer tools available, most importantly auto-complete, which uses the current code context), so code formatting in Evernote doesn't really have much use for me. (At a guess, I'd bet that the Evernote developer team uses Evernote similarly). But yes, as a percentage of all Evernote users, the number of programmers is low, just as the percentage of software developers is low, relative to the general population, and Evernote is a general purpose tool.

[miguelatevernote 1]

I've found that the formatting pasted into Evernote (with or without code block) depends on the application that generated the format. So far, IntelliJ gives me the best formatting because it keeps both, the font colors and indentation. From VS Code I lose indentation and from Atom or TextMate I lose color. See the screenshot attached.

[jefito 5,589]

4 hours ago, Lucas Rezende said:

I don't think the idea of this suggestion is to use Evernote for coding but to store code. I also use Evernote to store some helpful codes I use all the time and just wanted those codes to be presented in a more readable way. It is just syntax formatting and not auto-complete, debug, breakpoint, etc. 

Even for storing code snippets (which I very rarely do), the code will auto-format when it's dropped into a file in the IDE. Since I tend to work in a single large code base, anything that I use often will already be available as a class/function there. It would be nice if formatting were preserved in code blocks, though, sure.  Anyways, I think that better formatting options (like predefined styles/heading/etc.) would be more generally useful than programmer-specific additions, because the latter is almost certainly a much smaller part of the Evernote user base, That might make it a lower priority than other feature, re your "traction" point.

[onenotefan 2]

Needs syntax highlight to store programming information, EN will get more sub by having this feature

[codingAlice 0]

On 2018. 9. 24. at 오후 11시 57분, miguelatevernote said:

I've found that the formatting pasted into Evernote (with or without code block) depends on the application that generated the format. So far, IntelliJ gives me the best formatting because it keeps both, the font colors and indentation. From VS Code I lose indentation and from Atom or TextMate I lose color. See the screenshot attached.

 How did you do this?? I use IntelliJ and when I use code block, the color gets removed, which is quite annoying. 

I like the code block format, but I hope the code block can maintain the original text format that I copied from. 

 

[WesRast 0]

On 12/2/2018 at 6:44 AM, codingAlice said:

 How did you do this?? I use IntelliJ and when I use code block, the color gets removed, which is quite annoying. 

I like the code block format, but I hope the code block can maintain the original text format that I copied from. 

 

I just tried this myself in Webstorm, and get the same result in the Evernote web client--all color is stripped out, though at least the indentation is kept. I'm not in a position to test the fat client at the moment, but I'm betting it has broader acceptance of HTML formatting. I've dealt with rich text editors on the web quite a bit, and they're quirky. It's likely the Evernote web team had some issue and had to blacklist a lot of the tags.

That said, Evernote's formatting is becoming a larger issue for me. I write a lot of technical documentation, and code blocks are absolutely necessary for me. I'd be happiest if Evernote just decided to give developers the ability to use Markdown instead of HTML. That would solve a lot of issues by itself.

[miguelatevernote 1]

On 12/2/2018 at 6:44 AM, codingAlice said:

 How did you do this?? I use IntelliJ and when I use code block, the color gets removed, which is quite annoying. 

I like the code block format, but I hope the code block can maintain the original text format that I copied from. 

 

@WesRast I can't get the colors anymore. It seems like it Evernote changed that with one of the application updates. If I really want to keep color and nice formatting, I'm going for github gists these days. 

[RhinoG 3]

The main thing preventing myself and other developers I know from using Evernote is the lack of support for syntax highlighting. The developer community is a large target market, and worth the cost of implementing this feature. I am aware that there are some third party tools that help accomplish this, but from what I have seen, they are not very good. What's interesting (observation, not a criticism), is there is syntax highlighting built into this forum editor but not the Evernote product.

Forum Syntax Highlighting:

const hello = 'there'

console.log(hello)

Product Code Block but no syntax highlighting:

This sounds trivial, but is the only reason I have heard why developers do not use Evernote. If I were the developer implementing this, I would estimate one week to implement and test this feature. 

Here are about 25 ways to accomplish this either for free or in a cost effective manner: https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/25-syntax-highlighters-tried-and-tested--cms-23931 

[gazumped 11,664]

If an app doesn't do what you need,  the logical step would be to find one that does...  I've seen other developers here quoting different preferred software for syntax highlighting.  In a different context,  and since Evernote doesn't do mindmaps or photograph edits I use Freeplane and Lightroom for some of my processing...

With a LOT of users spanning several operating systems and dozens of devices I'd imagine Evernote needs a powerful incentive to invest in changes to the editor - and there are a lot of users with different priorities who want their <insert preferred function here> implemented first,  not to mention getting all existing bugs and slowdowns fixed.

 

[DTLow 5,736]

On 2/23/2019 at 10:39 AM, RhinoG said:

This sounds trivial, but is the only reason I have heard why developers do not use Evernote. 

The need for syntax highlighting is not trivial; however as a developer I do not store my code in note format (enml/html)

My code is stored in a text file, as a file attachment to a note

The tools I use to edit the code provide syntax highlighting, for example Textastic.

Ccode snippets are inserted as screenshots in pdf format

[RhinoG 3]

That's a good point @gazumped. Thanks for the suggestions. I switched to Notion since they have note taking with syntax highlighting and tons of other features.

[jefito 5,589]

I have to say that I've been using use Evernote extensively in my full development work for over 10 years now, and have never missed syntax highlighting. What I do rely on: screen caps, which note generation, weekly journals issue tracking/progress, web clipping for saving development-related articles  for research. Evernote is great for this, and its tagging functionality really helps my organizational needs (often, a note is a member of several categories; multiple tags fill that bill). I do store code snippets in Evernote sometimes, but -- maybe because I started getting paid for this stuff in the early '80's (green screens were a thing back then, fixed fonts, no bold or italics) -- syntax highlighting isn't something that i really notice in the tools I use, Visual Studio, Notepad++, BeyondCompare being the biggies. In Visual Studio, what I do use a lot is Intellisense and syntax error display, functionality that would almost certainly be beyond what Evernote would provide. 

Nitpick: the forum does not have syntax highlighting. It does have rich text support in its code blocks, but it doesn't understand code that you add to it. For example, I typed the following into a forum code block. No highlighting. That being said, the old Evernote code blocks used to support text colors, but for some reason they don't now, which I think is unfortunate.

for ( auto& i : myContainer )
{
    i->display()
}

Anyways, hopefully Notion works well for you. I keep thinking that I need to look at it, but Evernote does pretty much all I need it to do, so learning -- and becoming fluent with -- a new system would probably take more effort than I need at the moment.

[Gérard T. 0]

On this forum another problem (Copy paste in code block double the empty lines ) was solved with the scripting language AutoHotKey,   I used the same script and added a few lines for colorization, of course it does not replace a real syntax highlighter but improves the readability of code, for example:

 

 

Here is the script, for python only, I let you adapt it to your needs.

 

evernote_code_hightlight.ahk

 

 

[tbernardi 1]

On 5/7/2020 at 3:19 PM, Illydth said:

I have specifically logged in to this form as a first time poster just to respond to this.

HTML 1.0, released in 1993 had 42 TOTAL tags supported in the language.

PRE was one of those.

How the heck hard can it be to create a button to create a code snippit section in Evernote that does not:

* Spell Correct

* Replace Quotes with stupid MS Word Style Quotes

* Replace Double Dashes with Em Dashes

* Etc.

This is a CODE BLOCK for Christ's sake.

This isn't about syntax highlighting, or turning Evernote into an IDE.  It's about simply storing what I want it to store in the format I asked it to store it in.  If I put the word "ansible" into Evernote it should not AUTOMATICALLY change it to "sensible" for me, it should NOT do it AGAIN after I CORRECT it, and it should not take me adding the word to the bloody dictionary before it will finally stop trying to auto-correct it in EVERY LINE.

I'm not sure who you think your audience is?  Almost every white collar job these days has it's hand in Big Data, Cloud or Web in some way, meaning the VAST MAJORITY of your customer base has SOME NEED to store SOMETHING that looks like an unformatted text string, likely containing words, phrases or symbols that do not translate into a dictionary word.  Again the VAST MAJORITY of these text strings have an importance to be stored AS IS, as copied into the program without ANY modification AT ALL.

1993 we had that capability on web pages.  Every WIKI, IDE, Forums Software and Text Editor in existence has AT MINIMUM this feature functionality.

I notice the box I am CURRENTLY TYING IN did not auto-correct any of the words i've put in, making EVEN IT be SIGNIFICANTLY more useful to the standard/average user of your software THAN YOUR ACTUAL SOFTWARE IS.

I am now ACTIVELY looking to get off your platform.  There are posts i've run across in the last 3 top hits on google dating back to 2016, I don't know how it's even possible after 4 years of customers complaining and in 2020 to have a text editor without basic functionality like "in this block of text, please don't change what I type" let alone "please recognize this block of text for what it is and highlight it appropriately".

Why do I get the feeling Evernote is a company of two people in a house somewhere who spend all day checking their monthly income statements.

OH-MY-GOD! How is this not done yet? This is the only reason why I dont go premium on this software, just not worth it!

[tbernardi 1]

On 2/28/2019 at 3:00 PM, RhinoG said:

That's a good point @gazumped. Thanks for the suggestions. I switched to Notion since they have note taking with syntax highlighting and tons of other features.

I am migrating to Notion and trying it right now!

[Ash McKenzie 3]

Please, please, please add code block formatting support 🙏 Notion is catching up!

[pyapple 1]

On 10/8/2020 at 3:59 PM, Ash McKenzie said:

Please, please, please add code block formatting support 🙏 Notion is catching up!

What does Evernote have that Notion doesn't have ?

[opaopa 0]

On 10/12/2020 at 1:59 PM, pyapple said:

What does Evernote have that Notion doesn't have ?

Document scanning from the phone with ability to search the test on the photo. Does Notion already have it?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Any programmer should know to use an editor specialized in this job - not a general note taking app. Personally I use CotEditor on my Mac for code, and save the file as an attachment into EN.

The code feature in EN allows to grab a text code-style, monospaced, variable length of lines etc., and store it directly into a note. It is not really made to be a programmers / programming tool. I find it useful to store content, like log files I want to keep.

[riteshpanchal 0]

One thing that I did and worked for me on MAC is following -

1. Print the source code on the terminal - "cat <source>"

2. Copy the source code.

3. Paste it in the code block.

 

It kept the formatting for me.

[PaulBrosefski 1]

When I think about this issue, I think of it more of a nice to have usability feature.  I would love to have this but I can see that Evernote is NOT a programmer code snippet tool.

I think what would really shine in this app is the use of markdown like features to designate the language for highlighting.  For instance, using the 3 back ticks with a language type at the end of the three ticks as a special built in function of EN that applies the syntax highlighting within that block only and keeps your spacing indentation foreach newline, only within that block.  For example:

```javascript

my code block

```

That would be really nice.  As a programmer, I honestly don't use Evernote to keep track of my code.  HOWEVER, I use it extensively for my note-taking, I use penultimate extensively for my mathematics.  I use notebooks, tags, all the nice features that EN has.  I do like the code block tool but now that I'm getting knee deep into some new books that include code, I'm suddenly finding myself in a position where I want to keep notes on the new things I'm learning within new languages I'm picking up as I learn a topic (like statistics and R).  Honestly, I would really like the code highlight feature when I'm learning new stuff from books.  That's where I see this feature in most demand for people like me.  Not as a code snippet tool, but to keep notes on the code I'm writing as I learn something new, or to annotate code blocks and write notes around them, like a design pattern in C# or the strange ~ operator in R that recently made me go "huh?".  I would want to have the code block highlighted and write in notes both in comment form in the block and in notes before and after the code block.  I can easily see myself doing this a lot.

Other than that, if a programmer is sitting here wanting to catalog their code snippets, I wouldn't recommend EN to do that at all.  It's the wrong tool for the job in my opinion.  Honestly I don't NEED this functionality of code highlighting, but it sure would be a nice feature for me.

[sany 2]

I am premium user , and I won't be renewing my evernote subscription.

I am not asking for syntax highlighting - just need a simple code block on my evernote desktop client.

function addCodeBlock(){
	veryEasy();
}

The irony is that this very comment forum software supports code block  for some reason , but evernote does not. 

The inability to copy images from evernote to 3rd party application is also very frustrating.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

For me the code block is behind the blue +, ready to insert. Basic, but working.

[linda123001923231 0]

Adjust bold, italics, colors in code block. That's enough. Tough?

[Drblack403 1]

Yes, please give this feature back to us. 

[neverjoshing 0]

Posting because it would be helpful and I think quite a few people would agree.

Almost all markdown compilers render language specific syntax highlighting, e.g.:

```ruby

# this is a ruby comment

def ruby_method

     # some code

end

```

or

```js

let jsVar = "I'm a string!"

console.log(jsVar)

```

See https://dillinger.io/ to play around and have fun.

As developers, we have IDE's and yes technically can work without this in our note-taking app as well; but it's just convenient to have; especially when you're drafting up a post to add to a Github issue or PR (which fully supports this and all other markdown features, btw).

I can live without it; but there are many things I use evernote for (studying/learning, reminders, drafting issues, drafting communication, drafting blog posts, etc) that would make things more convenient.

I don't claim to know the full story of Evernote, but the "shortcuts" (which happen to match markdown commands) seem to suggest it plays a part in the app as a whole.

The change for this request would probably only require a change to the "markdown compiler" that's already being used (or an additional one being added). Unless the compiler was built in-house, then I suppose I could see the reluctance, especially if the person/people who originally built it aren't on the team anymore.

Either way, I get the sense that Evernote isn't really marketed for devs (if it ever was); and it wouldn't be difficult to build my own version and host all my files on a free AWS S3 bucket or google drive. Then I wouldn't have a limit anymore on the number of devices I could access/write with.

My point is: it's easy enough to make an independent version that fully supports all markdown features. I just happened to make an evernote account years ago before I was a dev and it's just out of mere convenience that I keep using it.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Code block is not meant to be a full code editor. It is just meant as a convenient way to save and display code. Monospaced font, plain, simple layout, visual separation from note text. And that is it, and it does not intend to be more.

It is by no means meant to help with editing code. If you believe it should, you use the wrong product.

For code editing I use COT Editor, which is exclusive to the Mac. No idea for Windows, but I am sure there is a choice of apps to help on this.

[Boot17 1,449]

1 hour ago, neverjoshing said:

it wouldn't be difficult to build my own version

It wouldn't be difficult to build your own version of what... of Evernote?

[Maria AP 0]

I started using Carbon and saving images of the code...

please give us some basic syntax highlighting in the code block 🙏 why even call it a code block if it is just a text box?

 

also for people who end up in this thread, you might also want to checkout this thread:

Native markdown support

[PinkElephant 8,103]

EN has not build the editor to support real code editing.

It is a text box automatically formatted to show monospaced, grey background, that‘s it. It is made to save code, not to generate it.

Personally I doubt they will take the editor apart just to accommodate code editing. Use a specialized code editor if this is you use case.

[ChrisNZL 3]

Bumping.

Would be nice to have. Language-selection dropdown + syntax colouring is great in other editors...

[mdumreth 2]

In few days it will be 2023 and this feature is still missing

[PinkElephant 8,103]

My personal estimate is you will never see code formatting. Asking for something and then counting down the years is a futile exercise.

EN does not advertise it is build to structure code, and expecting it is nonsensical. There is no real gain for a note taking app in venturing down that road.

You can ask for everything. But for the time being choose another tool to keep you productive.

[mdumreth 2]

Whats the other option then? Notion is other good option but since they are not offering two factor Authentication i am not sure on that one.. 

 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Use an app build for code, and save the files into EN as an attachment.

On Macs COTeditor is an excellent, free option. It even allows to pick the programming language in document settings, to make the color coding code specific.

[jh1989 41]

Now that backlinks have been added this feature is my new number 1 that I would like to see added.

[Straddle 11]

I have been an Evernote user since 2010 and use it almost daily. I find the lack of syntax highlighting infuriating. I really wish this can be added. I am seriously considering switching to Upnote simply for this feature.

[abadiane 0]

On 11/23/2022 at 10:53 PM, mdumreth said:

In few days it will be 2023 and this feature is still missing

Right, this is a very useful feature.