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Rightnote and Evernote
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Posted by WSP
Apr 13, 2013 at 02:54 AM
Last year there was some discussion here about Rightnote’s ability to sync with Evernote, and I noticed today that in the latest version of Rightnote that there is now some improvement in that service. The main things I spotted immediately were that notes now sync in both directions, and RN is at last able to search for text in pasted images that have been OCR’ed in EN.
I did a small test. I think the linking is much better than last year, but it’s still not quite ready for prime time. Syncing is as slow as molasses; searching in images does not give you a highlighted word or phrase; and I couldn’t make links that were imported from EN work in RN.
Still, it’s worth keeping an eye on this. The developer seems to be moving in the right direction. As he points out, linking RN and EN gives you the best of two worlds: the organizational strengths of RN, and the ubiquity on all devices of EN.
Bill
Posted by Vincek
Apr 15, 2013 at 07:41 PM
WSP wrote:
Last year there was some discussion here about Rightnote’s ability to
>sync with Evernote, and I noticed today that in the latest version of
>Rightnote that there is now some improvement in that service. The main
>things I spotted immediately were that notes now sync in both
>directions, and RN is at last able to search for text in pasted images
>that have been OCR’ed in EN.
>
>I did a small test. I think the linking is much better than last year,
>but it’s still not quite ready for prime time.
WSP and others (Alexander, Stephen Zeoli, Dr. Andus, Franz Greiser, MadAboutDana)
Is Rightnote a possible solution to the lack of synthesis and interoperabiity discussed in other recent posts?
Information conveniently captured in Evernote; now what?
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4813
Escaping From the Brain
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4818/0/escaping-from-the-brain
>
Posted by WSP
Apr 16, 2013 at 12:05 AM
Potentially, yes, but as I said earlier, Rightnote is not quite there yet.
I’m following these developments with considerable interest. I don’t expect Rightnote ever to offer a full-scale synthesis of data, but it should be able to provide at least the standard outlining capabilities of a good two-pane note-taker.
Like many others, I find Evernote excellent for gathering and storing information but comparatively weak in organizing it. I am hoping that some other developer(s) will take up the slack.
Bill
Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 16, 2013 at 08:41 PM
Vincek wrote:
>Is Rightnote a possible solution to the lack of synthesis and
>interoperabiity discussed in other recent posts?
Well, does RN provide analytical tools? I’m sceptical about hierarchical trees in general as the ultimate solution for database organisation. Hierarchy is important as one particular form of analysis, but it has limitations once you’re dealing with masses of data.
I suspect that once you have a huge amount of data, probably the 20/80 rule kicks in, where 20% is important, while the rest can be tagged as #Garbage. :)
Also, what is the rate of new notes being created? If the flow is very fast, then some specialist tool is needed that can just hoover up info and sort them out into folders more or less automatically, based on some rules. Is that what Zoot does?
Posted by Vincek
Apr 16, 2013 at 10:19 PM
I just spent (wasted) several hours trying out RightNote. In fairness to the developer, it gets very good reviews from almost all users, and I can see that it could work well as a standalone or primary program.
But it doesn’t fill the GREAT BIG HOLE in my workflow—items 2 & 3:
1) Capture (Many options. For me, Evernote)
2) Filter
3) Synthesize
4) Produce (Many options. For me, Scrivener)
i.e., the issues previously raised and discussed in the post:
Information conveniently captured in Evernote; now what?
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4813
...or put another way, IMHO and for MY workflow, RightNote is not a suitable front-end program to pull and organize data from Evernote.
As WSP points out, yes there is some interfacing capability between RightNote and Evernote, but it’s not ready for prime time. I’d call it kludgy.
I have 3,100 notes in Evernote. About 2/3 are filed in about two dozen different notebooks; the remaining items are in a category I think of as a junk drawer—it’s where I throw stuff that doesn’t have a natural, discrete place to go.
For those not familiar with Evernote, one of the biggest complaints is that Evernote only allows for 2 levels of structure in Notebooks. Not enough for me. Some argue that tags can make up the differences, but I say “no way” (this is really a separate discussion).
RightNote’s hierarchy capabilities are much more refined. Using their terminology, you can create multiple levels of hierarchy using notebooks, pages, sibling notes, and child notes.
RightNote has the ability to pull from multiple Evernote notebooks, but you can only use one Evernote notebook per each RightNote notebook. This is a deal killer given that 2/3 of my notes in Evernote are already reasonably filed into notebooks.
A possible workaround is to create multiple notebooks in RightNote, but the program requires you to open Notebooks separately. Then you are able to access different Evernote notebooks aligned with a distinct Rightnote notebook, but again this is kludgy and the process of transferring notes is technically possible but time consuming and confusing. I don’t see an easy way to have 2 notebooks open at once, and besides I want to have all my research and notes organized in 1 notebook, not many.
Dr. Andus asked about RightNote analytical capabilities. They are fairly limited—I’d still have to do most of the synthesis in my head.
Very frustrating. With 55M Evernote users, you’d think either Evernote or an outside developer would create a front end that allows for better, more detailed organizing and synthesis of Evernote data. But not yet, so I wait….