al3x/simple-backup — Issue #1: Evernote export requires basic HTML formatting
Author: eykanal
Created: 2011-12-13 15:06:19+00:00
State: open

Simplenote stores in plain text, with no formatting. Whitespace is dictated by newlines. Sample note in Simplenote:

Note title

This is a test

This is also a test

Evernote stores text in html format, as can be seen by examining the export files (`.enex` files). The above note looks as follows (some whitespace added):

I like pickles

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE en-note SYSTEM "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/enml2.dtd">
<en-note style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">
This is a test
<div><br/></div><div>This is also a test</div><div><br/></div></en-note>
20111213T144218Z

The upshot is that, if I try to import the note without HTML delimiters into evernote, the note will invariably look like this:

Note title This is a test This is also a test

With no intelligent line breaks or anything.

The point of all this is to convey the message that the Evernote exporter needs to apply some basic HTML formatting to exported notes---maybe Markdown, maybe something simpler---in order for notes to be readable in Evernote. As it is, long notes turn into walls of text, which makes the export practically useless for Evernote.