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the two designs make no sense at all


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I've been using EN for awhile and there are two designs which I think doesn't make sense at all despite its other advantages.

 

FIRST is the tag system. When searching a tag with its children tags, it shows only the notes with the tag been searched instead of all notes tagged with it and its all children tags. Let me say more about why it's wrong.

 

Tags have two features:

 

1. Different from the notebook system, a note can be assigned multiple tags.

2. Tags can be organized as an hierarchy.

 

This means tags can be used as a referring to the concepts of real world (as concepts are structured as hierarchy too). For example:

  • Photograph
    • Landscape
    • Portrait
    • B&W

Then when we use it to organize photos, we can tag those general photos with 'photograph' and those more specific with 'Landscape', 'Portrait', etc. It's very natural.

 

If we want to view all photos, it's also natural to search tag 'Photograph' or click it at the tag list. But here comes the problem, EN shows only the notes tagged with 'Photograph'.

 

Now if I want to view all photos, I'll have to search all the tags under Photograph which is really stupid. Or in order to do so, I'll have to tag all photos with 'Photograph' then tag some again with 'Landscape' etc. So it gets more stupid when a photo is tagged with two tags both indicate it's a photo. 

 

SECOND is the 'select to start editing' setting.

 

I think for most of us, it is only when we create a new note that we actually need to edit the note instantly. In other conditions, which happens more often, we just need to take a quick look at the note or to copy something from it. So it's very weird every time when I select a note in order to view it then it enters 'editing mode' with the cursor blinks. Sometimes it even highlights the title of the note in which case if I press any key on the keyboard by mistake the title would be gone. It's not friendly at all. And it may happen more often when copying something from it (with large paragraph of text selected as highlighted).

 

So the way I see it, either should the note be added with a 'start to edit' button or should it be added with a 'lock/unlock' button to prevent changes by mistake. In a word, we need a 'view only mode' which is only one click away from editing. This 'one click' is not such a burden for editing (I think) and could make our notes way more secure.

 

 

I've been using Devonthink at the same time who has the 'lock/unlock' button which is really handy. But sadly it organizes tags the same way as EN does which makes me confused big time.

 

What do you think, guys?

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aha, I've found some more similar complaints. One of them even used the same example as I did.


 


Looks like people complaint about this each year since 2011:


 


https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/15173-shouldnt-selecting-a-parent-tag-search-child-tags/


https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/23514-organizing-tags-subtags-parent-tags-and-child-tags/


https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/50676-feature-suggestion-option-for-nested-tags-to-filter-by-parent-tag/


https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/69028-how-to-make-nested-tags-show-their-parent-tag/


 


And every time the official answers is: "not every one want this". I was wondering what it based on.


 


So how about taking a vote? Or just add an option in preferences so everyone could be happy.


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  • Level 5*

Last I looked,  Evernote wasn't even close to a democracy.  Their product,  their rules - and while it is sensible for a software house to take careful note of what its customers want,  there are three possibilities.

  1. Work on this is already going ahead.  Evernote won't (usually) announce anything except via release notes.
  2. It's not technically possible to achieve this without a major restructure of Evernote's current code or architecture.  (With 100M+ users,  you do the math)
  3. Although there have been requests for this,  there are a number of other features that have much higher priority.  Tags will get some love in a year or two.  Maybe.
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  • Level 5*

If that use case its critical to you, then some of those very same links will almost certainly provide a suggested workaround: if you want to express a hierarchy using tags, and be able to search it hierarchically, then you can express it in the tag names:

 

Photograph

Photograph-Landscape

Photograph-Portrait

Photograph-Landscape-BW

Photograph-Landscape-Color

Photograph-Portrait-BW

Photograph-Portrait-Color

etc.

 

Then in searching, you take advantage of tag wildcards to do your filtering, e.g. "tag:Portrait-Landscape*"should return all notes tagged with "Portrait-Landscape", "Portrait-Landscape-BW", "Portrait-Landscape-Color" and so forth.

 

Of course, this is not a great example, as you really don't have a hierarchy here, given the fact that Portrait/Landscape and Color/BW are independent attributes, but hey, it's your example.

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  • Level 5*

 

  1. It's not technically possible to achieve this without a major restructure of Evernote's current code or architecture.  (With 100M+ users,  you do the math)

 

Gaz, I'm not sure how you would know this.  IMO, it could (might) be achieved with just a change in the Search engine and syntax.

So, if I entered into the Search box  "tag:photograph+" the "+" symbol would tell the Search engine to find all Notes that contained ANY of the tags in that tag hierarchy, starting with the parent.

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  • Level 5*

I think this is an excellent idea, and would greatly improve our ability to organize and find notes in Evernote.

For one thing, this would eliminate a lot of redundant tagging.

 

No one knows what features Evernote will implement next.  The continue to surprise us, like with the just released Work Chat and Evernote Context features.

 

I've been using EN for awhile and there are two designs which I think doesn't make sense at all despite its other advantages.

 

FIRST is the tag system. When searching a tag with its children tags, it shows only the notes with the tag been searched instead of all notes tagged with it and its all children tags. Let me say more about why it's wrong.

 

Tags have two features:

 

1. Different from the notebook system, a note can be assigned multiple tags.

2. Tags can be organized as an hierarchy.

 

This means tags can be used as a referring to the concepts of real world (as concepts are structured as hierarchy too). For example:

  • Photograph
    • Landscape
    • Portrait
    • B&W

Then when we use it to organize photos, we can tag those general photos with 'photograph' and those more specific with 'Landscape', 'Portrait', etc. It's very natural.

 

If we want to view all photos, it's also natural to search tag 'Photograph' or click it at the tag list. But here comes the problem, EN shows only the notes tagged with 'Photograph'.

 

Now if I want to view all photos, I'll have to search all the tags under Photograph which is really stupid. Or in order to do so, I'll have to tag all photos with 'Photograph' then tag some again with 'Landscape' etc. So it gets more stupid when a photo is tagged with two tags both indicate it's a photo. 

 

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