Handwriting workflows

Yep. Zoomnotes is really nice. I used it a lot about two years ago.
christopher-mayo.com/?p=1400

But, it doesn’t have OCR, right? And, the palm rejection on Goodnotes seems slightly better (both are in a completely different league from Apple’s abyssmal Notes app). Plus, Goodnotes, overall, is a little easier for me to use. I think if I were taking lecture notes, or recording meetings, I’d be more tempted by Zoomnotes, which has support for that kind of stuff.

I’ll take a look at Nebo. I don’t necessarily need a lot of functions, just the ones I use :slight_smile:

No, ZoomNotes doesn’t do handwriting recognition – or OCR. I’ve never had a problem with palm rejection on ZoomNotes – or any other app for that matter – when using the Pencil on the iPad Pro. In fact I never use any app’s palm rejection because the Pencil does this automatically in any app. The only thing about the Pencil is it ships with some fiddly little bits (extra cap, Lightning extender) which I promptly lost when I stuffed them someway in a case and forgot where.

Seriously?! As you can see in my PDF, I’ve got stuff all over the place. Maybe it is how I write. I didn’t think palm rejection would be an issue, because it was the Pencil, but I really have trouble with it in Apple Notes, where I get random marks, that stupid ruler popping up every few seconds, and the page moving around all the time. It is terrible. Without GoodNotes, I might have just returned it.

I have a holder (see the PDF) that keeps the Pencil safe (it is basically made to be forgotten, sat on, or lost when it rolls away. The cap is quite scary, but so far it has not gotten lost. The connector thingy goes in a little ziplock bag that goes in the little murse (man purse) I carry around all the time (a small messenger bag), so I think that will be alright.

Ah, I don’t use Apple Notes, so I had not used the pencil there. In every other app, palm rejection with the Pencil has been no problem.

Apple Notes is getting pretty cool, but it is still half-baked, so I can’t really recommend it. Apple seems to care about their software in fits and spurts.

Evernote is the other app that is frustrating. It just doesn’t do handwriting well, and never has, despite the hype about penultimate, which i never understood.

one reason i’d recommend that devonthink stay away from handwriting entirely on dttg, or keep it pretty basic is because there are already great apps like zoomnotes and goodnotes out there. dt is very unlikely to come close to these, much less surpass them, so if they just keep it so stuff can easily be imported into dttg from them (they play very friendly with dt now), i think that is sufficient. after all, evernote, onenote, and apple notes operate on a different principle (note “containers” in .enml or some other format that hold different data types within a single note). this approach can be really nice sometimes, but other times it has major drawbacks (data that gets locked in, or is corrupted).

This new app from the makers of My Script Styles seem very promising for handwritten workflows.
myscript.com/nebo/

Yes, I mentioned Nebo, above, on August 20.

It is an interesting concept. Reminds me of Quiver, in that we can create blocks of different sorts of content, which are combined in the note: images, handwriting/sketches, diagrams (with rudimentary shape recognition), and “math” (also very rudimentary). Nebo added PDF export recently so it now plays better with DEVONthink to Go. It’s not particularly easy to avoid having too many PDF pages since there seems to be no way to scale down drawings or handwriting sections. MyScript is pretty good at handwriting recognition – but there’s no method to train it to avoid errors if your handwriting is lest than schoolroom-perfect.

Arrogantly, the app demands an account – the reasons for which are not explained clearly. I used a throw-away Google account because I dislike being asked for PII without the ability to opt out (short of messing around in the Google account settings) or make informed decisions to opt in.

I still want an iPad Pro and pencil - but this seems like a possible cheaper solution for the moment : digitaltrends.com/mobile/wac … omni-news/

It would be insanely great if there would be better Apple Pencil Support in DTTG2. E.g. I’d like to annotate PDFs within DTTG2, but the Apple Pencil support is still not as good as e. g. in GoodNotes (especially noticeable when drawing short lines and points). So I end up copying all PDFs that I want to annotate to GoodNotes (or PDF Expert by Readdle) and when I’m finished with annotating I#M copying the file back to DTTG2 – where it ends as a duplicate in the inbox. I then have to move this file to the original group … lot’s of tapping that could be avoided if only Apple Pencil support would be better in DTTG2.

As a bonus, it would be great to have a noew note type for handwriting with the Apple Pencil – if only a blank pdf. So the use of external handwriting apps could be reduced and everything is kept together within DTTG2.

@FROBGOBLIN: I know from one of your blog posts that you are usig GoodNotes. What is your workflow? Do you keep separate notes in DTTG2 (typed) and GoodNotes (handwritten)? Or do you move files around?

FWIW, I’m a long-time OneNote user. The problem with paper notes is being unable to find anything.

OneNote does an excellent job of indexing recognised text and making all notes searchable. I suspect the algorithm behind it matches several variations of what a scrawl could represent. The mac version does 90% of the PC version but unfortunately doesn’t let you extract recognised text (works on PC, so it may still happen).

All notes are on OneDrive and sync across. So I can write on my iPad and find my notes on my Mac. It also indexes text in images, so if I paste a screenshot from my mac it will also show up in search results on my iPad.

I have been using Nebo for a while, and the writing/inking experience is the best I’ve ever seen, and the handwriting recognition is simply extraordinary. It also easily creates headings, bullet points, and offers other simple but clever functionality including sketches etc in the same page.

Easy to send to DTTG as a text file (if you have text only), but if you add drawings, coloured text, headings etc, then just as easy to send as a PDF. You can also export to Word for further editing, with all formatting, drawings etc beautifully in place.

If you handwrite notes and sketches, and use DTTG, then this is an exceptional workflow.

But it only works on an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.

Absolutely, I’ve been playing with it too and it is phenomenal.
But unfortunately the lack of organisational features or sync capabilities make it a non-starter :cry:

With OneNote I can paste a screenshot from my Mac (or from anywhere via browser), and typically 30 seconds later I can scribble on it with my iPad. To me that is more useful than turning my writing into text, so I’m sticking with OneNote … for now…

How about handwriting done with Apple Pencil on iPadPro? I don’t think Ink works in this case - correct?

Correct. Ink is an OS X / macOS app.

In DTTG2 on iOS, the Apple Pencil is supported for annotating PDFs but not ad-hoc note taking, at this point (ie. there’s no sketch or scratchpad file format).

As the PDF support is based on a third-party library we’re more than happy to make them aware of your suggestions. Could you please elaborate more where exactly the pencil support when annotating PDFs need enhancement?

I wondered about this as well.

I don’t have anything definitive to add, other that a vague recollection that part of their business was providing their ‘toolset’ as it were, to other developers/companies interested in writing-to-text conversions…

Similar, I guess, to how companies provide their PDF frameworks to others, at a cost, for use in 3rd part apps…

I’m hoping this is the case here - that they use ‘us’ to improve the software that is sold on to others, sans our data… :confused:

I probably should check up on this - but my mind is put somewhat at ease in that I’m fairly sure no-one would benefit much from what I write, devoid on context, and my use of 1Password means that critical information is not relayed with a 3rd party keyboard…

I want to make sure I understand something. I have taken to making notes in the margins of PDFs. I then use Evernotes Scannable app for ios to “scan it” then I send it to Devonthink. I could swear that when I run a search in Devonthink, that my handwritten note is searchable. Am I mistaken??

That might be well correct. Evernote has handwriting recognition.

I’m no expert with Scannable or Evernote, but my understanding is that neither app has OCR capabilities. Scannable takes a photo of your text and then offers you the choice of sharing it with another app or saving it to Evernote. If you share it, then it is moved over there (in PDF or PNG format). That’s it. If you save it to Evernote, it will go into the app, and then when you sync with the cloud, the file will be sent to Evernote’s servers (now run by Google), the item will be OCR’d (images will get a range of OCR possibilities embedded into the note’s .enml code or a version of the PDF with a text layer will be created). In short, to get the OCR, you need to go through Evernote’s servers (as far as I know). I don’t think you can get the image OCR (actually, a bunch of OCR possibilities, not a single text) out of Evernote. Test it on your device, though, and see what happens.

In my experience, Evernote is one of the better services out there for making sense of handwriting on dead trees, but if you don’t mind using the Apple Pencil, GoodNotes does a far better job with text on the iPad.

With Goodnotes, in order to get Devonthink’s “smart” functions to work (AI functions) I would have to convert handwriting to text correct?