ALLOW DUPLICATE NOTEBOOK NAMES!

[søphia 0]

For the love of all things organized, please let us duplcate notebook names. 

I have...

Work Stack
> Notes
> Projects
> To Dos

Personal Stack
> Personal Notes
> Personal Projects
> Personal To Dos
 

The problem with this is that shortcuts get cut off and, being dyslexic and not wanting too many words to skim through, I use 'personal' to produce a unique notebook name but as a pre-fix so I can ignore it. 

Can you just wrap the notbook UI with whatever we call it and on the back end identify it as

<stack>:<notebook>

or something?

Obviously you can keep the restriction of unique stack names but we're using those as groupings and notebooks as subgroupings. Let subgroups have unique names please!

[jefito 5,589]

3 hours ago, søphia said:

Can you just wrap the notbook UI with whatever we call it and on the back end identify it as

<stack>:<notebook>

or something?

Obviously you can keep the restriction of unique stack names but we're using those as groupings and notebooks as subgroupings. Let subgroups have unique names please!

The reason that there are unique stack names is only because (at least in the current Evernote world), a stack only exists as just a name attached to a notebook, so a stack is really just the set of notebooks that use a particular name. It's not a restriction at all; it's how stacks are defined. The rule for notebook names is: "A sequence of characters representing the name of the notebook. May be changed by clients, but the account may not contain two notebooks with names that are equal via a case-insensitive comparison. Can't begin or end with a space", and that applies in the back end, and that qualifies at a true restriction.

See http://dev.evernote.com/doc/reference/Types.html#Struct_Notebook

One way to handle your case might be to use "Work" and "Personal" tags to distinguish between your work and personal notes. Another is to do what I do: keep separate work and personal accounts (one is free, and one is premium) and share notebooks across as needed. You can have duplicate notebook names (e.g. "Projects") in that case, however, if that happens, search for all notes in notebook "Project" will return only notes for one of the "Project" notebook (probably the one in the local account, though I haven't tested that thoroughly), at least in the Evernote Windows client.

[kimaldis 1]

On 3/23/2018 at 6:00 PM, jefito said:

The reason that there are unique stack names is only because ...

Threre's always a reason...

Half-baked is a recurring thing in Evernote becuase forward thinking design hasn't ever been a thing with it.  You can see how it probably happened; you  design a fairly simple data structure then, as time goes by and needs expand, your lack of forthought restricts your ability to adapt to new needs so you hack in anything you can to paper over the cracks, make it look better without actually addressing the things that prompted the feature request in the first place. So you get nested tags that aren't really hierarchical so have none of the advantages of a hierarchical structure, likewise with notebook stacks. It's madness that an app the basic purpose of which is to let you organise your data uses a flat data structure and doesn't have even the most basic tools for organising data.

It can only get worse.

[DTLow 5,736]

4 hours ago, kimaldis said:

So you get nested tags that aren't really hierarchical so have none of the advantages of a hierarchical structure ... doesn't have even the most basic tools for organising data

Our Evernote data is organized in an SQLite database
Unlike Notebooks, the Tag element is "really hierarchical", and has the advantages of a hierarchical structure 
As you can see in the screenshot of the tag record, there is specification for a Parent Tag

 

 

>>It really isn't really hierarchical

It is hierarchical by definition
although Evernote imposes the duplicate name restriction for notebooks and tags

>>You'd also be able to specify tags with a full path and select a full tag branch.

That's just the UI
Personally, I don't use the tag tree (sidebar), and I don't want to specify the "full path"
I do make use of hierarchy navigation using scripting on a Mac; drilling down to lower levels

[kimaldis 1]

It really isn't really hierarchical. If it was you'd be able to have identically named tags in different parts of the tree. You'd also be able to specify tags with a full path and select a full tag branch. You can do none of these things. Tags in Evernote appear to be no more than the same visual decoration that notebooks stacks are. If you want to see it done properly, take a look at Bear.

[jefito 5,589]

37 minutes ago, kimaldis said:

It really isn't really hierarchical. If it was you'd be able to have identically named tags in different parts of the tree. You'd also be able to specify tags with a full path and select a full tag branch. You can do none of these things. Tags in Evernote appear to be no more than the same visual decoration that notebooks stacks are. If you want to see it done properly, take a look at Bear.

Sure it's hierarchical -- there's nothing in the definition of hierarchy (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy) that dictates that names of items need be or need not be unique.  Evernote's version just allows you to do hierarchical organization of your tag names. File systems are not the only hierarchies -- organizations of people can also be hierarchies, and that's pretty much analogous to Evernote's hierarchy.

I have mixed feelings about the tag structure allowing tag names to appear at different places in the hierarchy, but the way I use Evernote doesn't depend on the hierarchy at all, just the tag names, which can mean multiple things, much like words in language with more than one meaning, so I doubt that I'd take advantage of a your so-called 'proper' hierarchy anyways (I sure wouldn't want to specify paths in my tag names, yeesh). In other words, I use Evernote tags to describe notes (like keywords) and that usage doesn't depend at all on the tag hierarchy. If Evernote search allowed for what I call 'hierarchical tag search', i.e., find notes that have tag A or any of its children, then I'd consider using that, but otherwise not much use for the tag tree -- I rarely bother with organizing the tree and generally keep it closed in the UI.

I'd look at Bear if I had an Apple device, so sorry, but no thanks, Somewhat ironic that their opening web page claims "Use it everywhere", though. If you want to see cross platform done properly, don't bother taking a look a look at Bear (Evernote's not there on the 'properly' bit either, FWIW, but it is there).

Going back a bit:

4 hours ago, kimaldis said:

Threre's always a reason...

Half-baked is a recurring thing in Evernote becuase forward thinking design hasn't ever been a thing with it.  You can see how it probably happened; you  design a fairly simple data structure then, as time goes by and needs expand, your lack of forthought restricts your ability to adapt to new needs so you hack in anything you can to paper over the cracks, make it look better without actually addressing the things that prompted the feature request in the first place. So you get nested tags that aren't really hierarchical so have none of the advantages of a hierarchical structure, likewise with notebook stacks. It's madness that an app the basic purpose of which is to let you organise your data uses a flat data structure and doesn't have even the most basic tools for organising data.

It can only get worse.

I stated the reason as descriptive, not prescriptive; for the record, I've always thought that stacks were a bit of a quick hack. Useful enough for organizing the relatively few notebooks (20-odd?) that I have across two accounts, and stacks are recognized in search, so they're fine for my purposes, just not a grand evolution.

With respect to the original request, I doubt that stacks as implemented (so notebooks names need to be globally unique in an account), but I'd guess that you'll see nested notebooks before you see the tag hierarchy allow tags names to appear in multiple places. From my reading of he forums, I'm pretty sure that vastly more folks want the former than the latter, plus I'm pretty sure that Evernote does want to implement some kind of nested structure for notebooks. If nested notebooks become a thing, it may be possible that they also allow notebooks of the same name to occupy different slots in the hierarchy, but we'll see. They're battling other dragons at the moment (https://discussion.evernote.com/forum/306-behind-the-scenes-series/)..

[kimaldis 1]

It's semantics, really. Given a choice I'd choose hierarchical notebooks over hierarchical tags, probably. I've done a lot of work with hierarchies over the years, both as a user and as a developer; by definition a tree structure allows for non-unique node names because a node is not global, it occupies its own space and that's one of the big plusses of a tree. A structure like below is not uncommon but messy in Evernote:

• Project A
  • Notes
  • members

 

• Project B
  • Noters
  • Members

My real beef is that they're trying to make it do something that it's not. I think what you're talking about is arranging a flat tag list into a hiearchy. If that's the case then, again, it's not a hierarchical tag structure, it's a hierarchical view of a flat tag structure, which is a confusion. But like I said, semantics,

I'd be happy with true nested notebooks, though; Evernote desperately needs some kind of hierarchical structure.

[DTLow 5,736]

4 hours ago, kimaldis said:

Given a choice I'd choose hierarchical notebooks over hierarchical tags, probably.

Off topic, but is there a reason for your preference? 
In Evernote, Notebooks and Tags serve different purposes but can be interchangeable for organization

>>A structure like below is not uncommon but messy in Evernote:

My structure and naming would be

• Project A
  • Project A - Notes
  • Project A - Members
  • Project A - ...

or even better, dispense with the structure

• Project A
• Project B
• Notes
• Members

 

[kimaldis 1]

 Project A contains a notes section and and a members section. Storing and showing them as a tree is more representetive of the model I have in my head. Tags are labels, they can be applied to many things. They can be stored as a hierarchy but that hierarchy isn't a representation of the data, it's a representation of labels. I think this is also where EN hae come a bit unstuck in the past, when they'e suggested you use labels to organise notes. Tags are useful but I don't think primary organisation of the data is best use.

 

Yes, I understand how to use naming conventions to work around deficiencies in the design  but my experience tells me naming conventions should be a last resort. Better design would render it un-necessary. It's functional, but messy.

[DTLow 5,736]

25 minutes ago, kimaldis said:

Storing and showing them as a tree is more representetive of the model I have in my head.

Evernote provides the display of trees for both notebooks and tags

I'm happy to be not concerned with the "storing" part
Evernote note storage is flat; a single file folder on my Mac
- organization is maintained with the notebook/tag fields

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, kimaldis said:

It's semantics, really.

Seeing as now "semantics" means meaning, I usually think of semantics as actually being somewhat important.

1 hour ago, kimaldis said:

I've done a lot of work with hierarchies over the years, both as a user and as a developer; by definition a tree structure allows for non-unique node names because a node is not global, it occupies its own space and that's one of the big plusses of a tree.

Huh -- I've done a lot of work with hierarchies over the years as a user and a developer, and there is no "by definition" with respect to node names in a tree structure. They can be unique, or allow duplicates. It's really up to the intended usage, and the implementer. I couldn't find any definition of tree structure that forbids unique node names -- if you can reference one, I'd like to see it. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with "global"-ness of nodes (whatever that means); it's just a way of organizing whatever data you have in a way that's convenient.

2 hours ago, kimaldis said:

My real beef is that they're trying to make it do something that it's not. I think what you're talking about is arranging a flat tag list into a hiearchy. If that's the case then, again, it's not a hierarchical tag structure, it's a hierarchical view of a flat tag structure, which is a confusion. But like I said, semantics,

But we do that with hierarchies and other structures all the time. We arrange things that are not intrinsically hierarchical into hierarchies for whatever purpose suits. A dictionary is a very broad and shallow tree, organizing disparate words by first letter. An org chart organizes a collection of people into functional units in a tree. A disk file system organizes collections of sectors wherever they live on the disk into files, and collections of files into folders, etc. I could go on. There's nothing special about the "view-of" thing: in computers, nodes are not required to hold all of node data, it can hold references to node data, however it's stored. And in Evernote, a user generally interacts with the hierarchy of tags, not the flat collection; in UI where the hierarchy is not available, users are generally offered other ways to filter the tag list down. You seem to have a beef with something that really is at the heart of what computer software is intended to do: present data in some organized form. I don't get it.

[Ben Miller 0]

I was wanting to do a similar thing.  I wanted my notebooks and notes to follow the below.  Stack = Company, Notebook = State, Note = Project.

Company1 (stack)

Changes Pending (notebook)

Project1 (note)

Project2 (note)

Complete (notebook)

Project1 (note)

Project2 (note)

Company2 (stack)

Changes Pending (notebook)

Project1 (note)

Project2 (note)

Complete (notebook)

Project1 (note)

Project2 (note)

 

This thread helped me start thinking outside of the box though.  I'm still not sure I will like this, but I am going to try it.  Notebook = State, Note = Project, Tag = Company.  This should help prevent me from having to organize company structure as much and help me look at the bigger picture instead of getting hung up on a single Company (but still lets me filter to a specific company when needed).  

 

Changes Pending (notebook)

Project1 (note) [company tag]

Project2 (note) [company tag]

Complete (notebook)

Project3 (note) [company tag]

Project4 (note) [company tag]
 

Side Note - A downside to this method and another reason why the OP's idea might not be something you want to poopoo is that if I now want to share all of a single company's notes to said company.  I have no easy way to do that.  This is why Company = Notebook is a good method, but doesn't work for me.

I know that I could do Tag = State, but a tag is not something I HAVE to do, so I could forget and end up with an orphaned note.  I HAVE to put a note in a notebook, so it works better for State, in my workflow because I cannot then easily make a note with no State.