Editing: Rich Text WYSIWYG vs Markdown
While this thread is, in general, about the new EN Editor as exposed in EN Mac 6.2 Beta 1, the conversation seems to be dominated by posts about "Markdown".
My main concern at this point is that I hope Evernote developers do not become consumed by the new "Markdown" feature to the extent of ignoring most other features that have been requested for years, and hopefully are in the queue.
Evernote was designed from the beginning, and still is, to provide a rich text WYSIWYG editor.
I think that is what the large majority of Evernote users want. If I'm wrong, hopefully someone from Evernote will correct me.
I understand that if you are using a plain text editor (not Evernote), that Markdown provides a simple, dumbed-downed, simple, alternative to HTML code to produce a nice, formatted, page when displayed by a browser, or Markdown preview app.
But if I am using a rich text, or HTML WYSIWYG, editor, what is the benefit of using Markdown in the content creation? It seems to me that it will require a lot more typing, remembering the Markdown codes, and I still have to view in preview mode to make sure I have entered the correct codes.
So, where's the benefit? What's the purpose?
With a rich text editor I have most of my formatting commands available as a keyboard shortcut.
Most of these are very well known, and even work cross-platform.
I see instantly, in real time, how the formatted textd will appear.
So why would I want to learn a new set of formatting codes, called "Markdown"?
There are many apps available for writers, many or most that support Markdown.
Frankly, I don't see Evernote as a strong writers tool (sorry Evernote managers/devs).
IMO, as I see it, Evernote is primarily a PIM (Personal Information Manager).
You can easily use it to create new notes by typing, web clipping, email-to-account, and even pasting the clipboard.
So, if one can easily, and reliably, create well formatted notes using the rich text editor, why would you want to use Markdown to create the Note, IF, you can easily export (copy) selected text, or the entire note, as plain text Markdown?
The advantage for me in using Evernote, is the notebook and tagging system. I couldn't care less about WYSIWYG. My preference would be to type my notes in Markdown. I've been looking around, and I haven't seen anything that will give me that structure I want with a nice simple Markdown experience. I hear Evernote and others talking about how the WYSIWYG editor is the core of the product, but my impression is that it's the part that is constantly being changed and hammered with criticism about how bad it is. In my experience, the notebooks/tags/collections "just work", and that's what I like about Evernote. That's what I feel the core of Evernote is.
This is just awful how entering Markdown automatically converts the text you're typing. As several others have stated, I signed up to beta test because of the mention of Markdown in that blog post. Now I basically have no choice but uninstall the beta. Even if you do Format -> Make Plain Text, the note still converts Markdown to styled elements when you type. So I guess "Make Plain Text" doesn't mean what I think it means. And if you enter Markdown and let Evernote convert on the fly, and then you attempt to "Make Plain Text" when you're finished, you don't get what you typed in either (I'm looking at you unordered lists...). So without the ability to turn off the auto-formatting, I have to sadly go back to the stable version and abandon the beta test. I just hope that's not a painful process.