Hi Dane, I have Evernote, but the app that I really use extensively on my iOS devices is Simplenote. This is almost certainly a reflection of way I use my devices and the combination of apps that I have. Basically, what I care most about is text content -- I don't need to format my notes with bold, italic, etc. and I don't need lots of options to change the displayed font size. (These might be a consideration for a low vision user who wants control of these features in a note-taking app.) The seamless automatic sync between multiple iOS devices, secure account content, and the ability to access the Simplenote content from any computer (not just my own) is what makes this work for me. Evernote has a lot of very good features, including web scrapbooking, and a lot of people who work with image data or formatted text content really like it.
The feature that I really like in Simplenote is the ability to search within individual notes. Notesy lets you search recent notes and the full set of notes. Simplenote lets you search within your list of notes and followup your search within selected notes that match your terms. Most notetaking apps that implement searching do so by highlighting text, and that doesn't work for VoiceOver users. With Simplenote, when you search within a selected note for matches, the program moves the line with the matching text to the top of the screen. So if you move your finger down from the top of the screen you will be on the line of your search. Note that if your note only consists of a few lines of text that would normally all be displayed on the screen, Simplenote will not shift the text. (Specifically, if your search term is on the second line of your note, and moving it to the top would have the consequence of making the first line not displayed, when all visible content can fit on the screen unshifted, Simplenote will not shift text.) This method of locating search term matches doesn't work if you try to command from the keyboard, but it provides a very simple way to find matches in notes by touching the screen just below the heading bar. I like the fact that I can "pin" the most frequently used notes to the top of the list. Also, if I want to share content with a group of people I can use a sharing function to turn a note into a web page, and email the link. (This is a feature of the premium subscription, the other features are all part of the basic, free app.) If this is only something that is of temporary use, I can unshare the note when it's no longer needed. I have occasionally used the feature to retrieve backups of notes I accidentally deleted from their daily backups. I think this is also part of the free app, but the period over which backups are kept is longer for the premium subscription. Premium subscribers can also maintain their own RSS feed (not something I use). And you can turn on automatic Dropbox synching with a Premium subscription. This is really useful. In the context of the earlier discussion on iPad printing, I could print any of my synched notes. I don't dispute the value of Evernote, and it's particularly valuable for people who work with images, while Simplenote is speedy and optimized for text. Evernote web clipping is useful, but I often want to go back to full articles, and I'll use Instapaper for that. (The reading format is much more accessible, too.) I should probably revisit the desktop interface of Evernote, which originally had a few accessibility glitches. As for the OCR functions, since they rely on being able to take a good image for OCR, I prefer to use Prizmo, which will give me on-the-spot feedback about whether the picture I took was good enough for OCR. If you want to read more details about searching for text in Simplenote, I'll point you to a Mail Archive link for a post I wrote back in December 2010 on another list: • Finding and navigating to text in documents on the iDevices [was Re: finding text and getting to it quickly] http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg35583.html I should probably add that premium subscriptions for Simplenote are now $19.99 a year. When I first got one, mainly to show support for the developers, especially after they made the base app free, a premium subscription was $4.99. And when I renewed at the beginning of the year, I think it was $11.99. They've added lots of great capabilities, though, and I use this app all the time. Simplenote also supports TextExpander, which was wonderful for typing accented text in other languages (among other things), when we only had the virtual keyboard. It's still a great utility for improving your productivity in text apps like Simplenote. I use the free Notational Velocity app to access the notes on the Mac Desktop. I think the free, basic app is worth using by itself, and comes with a secure account for syncing your notes. Both Simplenote and Evernote are universal apps that work on iPhone and iPad. • Simplenote by Codality (basic app is free and ad-supported, $4.99 to remove ads, $19.99 for a premium subscription) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simplenote/id289429962?mt=8 • Evernote (free) by Evernote http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/evernote/id281796108?mt=8 HTH. Cheers, Esther On Sep 30, 2011, at 08:19, Dane Trethowan wrote: > Hi! > > You mentioned Evernote in some of the Air Print compatible apps for > Iphone/ipad, have you ever used this? I used Evernote ever so briefly on the > Mac platform and it was one of those projects I must continue to investigate, > if you get an Evernote Pro account OCR can be performed on images you upload > thus turning the images into text files or notes, I'd have to read the whole > Evernote thing again as OCR is just one of the many features that this > service provides apart from the obvious, keeping track of your notes, saving > web pages for your convenience and so on. > > > On 29/09/2011, at 7:13 AM, Esther wrote: > >> Hi Dane, >> >> Airprint works with a variety of apps on your iPad, including Safari, Pages, >> Keynote, Numbers, iBooks (for PDF files -- not ePub), Instapaper, Evernote, >> Readdle Docs for iPad, Nebulous Notes (the note-taking app I posted about >> last week when it went free), Elements, and others. HP has a list of >> Airprint compatible apps in PDF format that you can download, but it's >> somewhat old: >> >> http://www.hp.com/sbso/printing/mac/list-airprint-compatible-apps.pdf >> >> There are also some apps that are supposed to enable printing to >> non-Airprint printers. I took a chance on an app called Print Agent Pro for >> iPad by Dar-Soft that has been see-sawing in price between the regular $5.99 >> and $2.99 sale price over much of August and September. This app lets me >> send text documents in my Dropbox app to Print Agent Pro, and then use the >> print dialogue within the Print Agent Pro app to send it to an Airprint >> compatible printer. >> >> There may be better solutions, and Readdle's Printer Pro app is supposed to >> be very good. (But I missed that sale.) Here's the page listing Printer >> apps for the iPad from AppAdvice: >> >> http://appadvice.com/appguides/show/printing >> >> There's a free Lite version of Readdle's Printer app that people without >> Airprint compatible printers can use to check out whether their printers >> are supported. Readdle's Printer Pro also has the ability to print files >> from Dropbox, MobileMe, Google Docs and the photo gallery, and there's >> supposed to be a version for the iPhone, too. You might want to look into >> that, for general iPad printing. >> >> HTH. Cheers, >> >> Esther >> >> >> On Sep 28, 2011, at 07:47, Dane Trethowan wrote: >> >>> Hi! >>> >>> Yep, I managed to print an email from my in-box on my Ipad and the process >>> was dead easy, just select the Airplay compatible printer - in my case the >>> HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus - make adjustments to number of copies, pages >>> etc and double-tap the "Print" button. >>> >>> So now to the question, if I wanted to print a text document from my Ipad >>> which app could I use? As far as I'm aware Mail is the only app on the Ipad >>> which can use the Air Print facility, is this correct? >>> >>> I did try to send a message to this list earlier on the same subject but I >>> don't think the message reached its target so sorry if I'm repeating myself >>> <smile>. >>> >> <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! 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