Formatting paragraph styles, and markdown support

[Grümpf 5]

Hi,

 

Evernote has recently been updated to remove paragraph formatting styles. I was using this feature a lot and it made my notes visually meaningful very quickly. It was rather inconsistent between platforms, I agree, but still, at least it was practical.

 

Now, to accomplish the same thing, I need to select the text I want formatted, select a font, select a size, select a style (italicized, bold or underlined) and hope I'll remember it on the next heading. I hate that! It slows me down and takes me away from writing the note to formatting it.

 

So I've turned to the next best thing: markdown. Markdown is actually very good in helping format my thoughts while I'm writing them, which is the whole point. Now the problem is, Evernote doesn't render markdown, so I need to take my note to a third party app to convert it, and then paste it where I need to use it (like back in Evernote!). Very dumb process.

 

I think I'm not the only one missing paragraph formatting styles and/or markdown support, here. I saw other threads talking about alternative (and sometimes complicated) work-around to this issue. I just don't see why this could be so hard to integrate.

 

Thanks for listening.

François

[gazumped 11,661]

I believe Evernote is currently looking at improving the note editor - no idea what the next version might include,  but hopefully there will be better formatting.  At some stage...

[jefito 5,589]

Which Evernote client are you referring to? The Windows client has never had formatting styles, at least since at least version 3.5 and beyond.

[Grümpf 5]

The Windows Evernote client used to have it, and so did the iOS client. I don't remember which version at was at however but I remember I was shocked by that change.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

The Windows Evernote client used to have it, and so did the iOS client. I don't remember which version at was at however but I remember I was shocked by that change.

I think we lost paragraph styles on iOS with the iOS 7 version back in October of 2013. I usually work in plain text using markdown. If I need something formatted, I run it through another app, generate the html, and copy/paste that into Evernote. It is definitely not ideal, but it saves me the headaches I get with formatting quirks/bugs.

[jefito 5,589]

The Windows Evernote client used to have it, and so did the iOS client. I don't remember which version at was at however but I remember I was shocked by that change.

I don't recall any Windows Evernote client since (and including) the version 3.5 having any such facility (maybe even v3, for that matter). Before that, it was a different world (and program) altogether.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

The Windows Evernote client used to have it, and so did the iOS client. I don't remember which version at was at however but I remember I was shocked by that change.

I don't recall any Windows Evernote client since (and including) the version 3.5 having any such facility (maybe even v3, for that matter). Before that, it was a different world (and program) altogether.

I can't remember seeing it anywhere but iOS, ether, but I could be wrong, as I spend most of my time with Mac.

[Martin Packer 162]

@GrumpyMonkey Tell me more about pasting HTML into Evernote: In which client can you do that? I know enscript on Windows will take HTML (though it's been a long time).

 

As it happens my GreaseMonkey prototype lets me flirt with replacing the note's HTML in the Web Editor. (And when it does it the resulting note is cleaned up by Evernote to remove attributes and elements that aren't supported.)

[jefito 5,589]

As it happens my GreaseMonkey prototype lets me flirt with replacing the note's HTML in the Web Editor. (And when it does it the resulting note is cleaned up by Evernote to remove attributes and elements that aren't supported.)

You are such a tease, Martin.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

@GrumpyMonkey Tell me more about pasting HTML into Evernote: In which client can you do that? I know enscript on Windows will take HTML (though it's been a long time).

 

As it happens my GreaseMonkey prototype lets me flirt with replacing the note's HTML in the Web Editor. (And when it does it the resulting note is cleaned up by Evernote to remove attributes and elements that aren't supported.)

Copy/paste on the Mac. More specifically, open a note in an app called nvALT (I have my account mirrored here), open the preview window showing the html version, copy, and then paste. One could open the source code and copy / paste that into an enex file, but I haven't found that to be necessary. I haven't got terribly complex formatting (it is markdown, after all).

However, for complex pages, copy/paste often fails in spectacularly ugly ways. A nice workaround is to put the page online and use the web clipper to get it into Evernote. That is what I do with my shared notebook (see the link in my signature).

[Martin Packer 162]

Thanks @GrumpyMonkey! I have Mac but might not have the data on the Mac, but rather on my work Linux PC. Hence my concentration on the Web Client.

 

I'm actually not sure one should encourage arbitrary HTML injection into the Web Editor - but it's been interesting to see the (benign) behaviour when you do.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks @GrumpyMonkey! I have Mac but might not have the data on the Mac, but rather on my work Linux PC. Hence my concentration on the Web Client.

 

I'm actually not sure one should encourage arbitrary HTML injection into the Web Editor - but it's been interesting to see the (benign) behaviour when you do.

Relatively benign... it turns out that I have somehow managed to mess up margins on a bunch of notes. I think it was when I copied from Word or Pages into the app, though.

[Grümpf 5]

Thanks for the nice posts guys, but the topic is getting lost a bit, here.

 

What I would like to see is simple paragraph formatting of notes in Evernote's editor.

 

It just so happens that markdown is designed for that exact purpose, which would make it a sensible choice in implementing a quick way of doing it (I also use it already in my notes). However, my point was not to redevelop the whole thing as the functionalities were there and have been removed. That was, to me, a bad idea and I simply wish them back!

 

Thanks for listening!

François

[coldsnailnet 1]

However, my point was not to redevelop the whole thing as the functionalities were there and have been removed. That was, to me, a bad idea and I simply wish them back!

 

Thanks for listening!

François

I'm with Francois on this, 

 

i've been using iOS and the latest version of Evernote for it up until last week when I thought that I would finally upgrade, and then i discover that those quick styles have now gone ('Subsection' was great for making a quick easy-to-spot heading).

 

Not only that - the indent buttons no longer work when you are not in a list! You used to be able to indent text (instead of having to insert a number of spaces) but now you can't!

Why is this gone? It doesn't make sense!

 

James

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

However, my point was not to redevelop the whole thing as the functionalities were there and have been removed. That was, to me, a bad idea and I simply wish them back!

 

Thanks for listening!

François

I'm with Francois on this, 

 

i've been using iOS and the latest version of Evernote for it up until last week when I thought that I would finally upgrade, and then i discover that those quick styles have now gone ('Subsection' was great for making a quick easy-to-spot heading).

 

Not only that - the indent buttons no longer work when you are not in a list! You used to be able to indent text (instead of having to insert a number of spaces) but now you can't!

Why is this gone? It doesn't make sense!

 

James

Indeed. The indent feature has been lost. I don't know why. The paragraphs and stuff weren't in any other client, so their disappearance doesn't surprise me.

[Martin Packer 162]

Maybe an aside, maybe not: Evernote seems to do formatting with fonts and divs, rather than h1, h2, p, etc. It does, at least, use li within ul and ol lists.

 

A strange use of HTML in the datastream that, IMHO, limits its ability to do structure and outlining.

 

It IS accepting of p and h1, h2 etc as experiments have shown - but doesn't emit it.

[markg 26]

If it's of interest I've just posted an article on 3 ways to use Markdown with Evernote and a YouTube video. Hope it's helpful.

[Martin Packer 162]

@markg Nice site.

[Paul Vincent 2]

Have to agree. EN would be so much more useful with Styles. Hard to see why this wasn't taken care of a long time ago.

[lucasoldaini 5]

Markdown would be the best feature evernote could ever add. 

[abberdab 7]

Yes! Markdown support and custom stylesheets please. Stylesheets could be ignored, of course, as needed in various platforms, but I want my notes to be simple semantic HTML under the hood. h1, h2, p, ul, ol, etc. Even formatting as stripped down as what you see in Quip or similar would be welcome.

[Miguel Regedor 1]

For previewing notes written in markdown (sort of real time), you can check this post: Evermark

 

Note: currently working for mac osx, but should be possible to port for windows.

[mhelephant 10]

I guess I must send a comment on this issue about once every year. Here we go again.

 

Evernote, WHEN will you add text/paragraph styles to the app? It's so tedious to have to hand-enter text parameters, especially for common formats like subheads.

 

Markdown support would be one way to do it. Why not go that route, Markdown is so popular now? 

 

I appreciate that HTML isn't very kind towards people who love to format things cleanly. But other apps' writers master it. I expect an app of the quality of Evernote - and with so many users - to master it too. Come on.

[Olaf Giermann 0]

On 3. Juli 2015 at 3:33 PM, mhelephant said:

I guess I must send a comment on this issue about once every year. Here we go again.

 

Evernote, WHEN will you add text/paragraph styles to the app? It's so tedious to have to hand-enter text parameters, especially for common formats like subheads.

 

Markdown support would be one way to do it. Why not go that route, Markdown is so popular now? 

 

I appreciate that HTML isn't very kind towards people who love to format things cleanly. But other apps' writers master it. I expect an app of the quality of Evernote - and with so many users - to master it too. Come on.

+1

Having no styles and no markdowns is a workflow bummer!