Yes, thanks! The feedback is very useful. Knowing how people use apps is very important to aid our planning and app design.
2 Likes
I use GoodNotes4 for iPad with Apple Pencil too and the handwriting recognition is wondeful. I am looking forward to something like this in Agenda for iPad.
Thanks for the feedback!
The first release will not have handwriting recognition, I’m afraid. It will be basically a copy of the macOS app. But pencil support will probably be added at some point in some form. Not sure exactly what yet.
4 Likes
Out of curiosity, do you use any kind of integration between Agenda and Good Notes? Or are they two separate things within your system?
Sorry, I don’t know Good Notes. We don’t integrate with anything except Apple’s Calendar and notes app. We do provide support for sharing extensions, which allows Agenda content to be sent to other apps in your system. So it is quite possible that Agenda will work with Good Notes, but they are separate apps.
2 Likes
Since GoodNotes app relies on MyScript’s engine (which also powers MyScript Nebo app), a fast track to implement handwriting search recognition and text conversion in the iPad Agenda app could be to rely on the same technology. It works with many languages.
I remember using their software back in 2004 with Nokia digital pen and Oxford notebooks and (text) agenda. It was working really well.
4 Likes
Very excited to see that the iOS release is here, but Apple Pencil support should be a priority. I will continue to use GoodNotes until this feature is added; retention of information is much higher for handwritten notes than for typewritten notes. Handwriting recognition isn’t so important for me; I’ll conver my HW notes into action items later (and my handwriting is unrecognizable by most humans and all machines anyway).
Likewise, incorporation of images is important—esp. if you don’t have pencil support but even if you do. My work is very visual, and it’s often best to capture things drawn on a whiteboard or even on paper with the camber and insert the image into my notes. I bring these together two ideas simply to note that handwritten data from Apple Pencil may be something that you can incorporate into Agenda as an image, whether inline or as an attachment.
2 Likes
For me, the Pencil support would be very important as well. Handwriting is so much better to take lecture notes, explore ideas, do simple drawings and sketches, to explore ideas. And it least for me, the date-driven approach would be an ideal supplement for the stuff I have in Notability. For example, one could create a project for each lecture and a separate note in this project for each class, homework, exercise sheet, own
supplemental research and all that stuff would be ordered chronologically. Awesome!!!
Important things for me would be:
- Good graphic engine. Please respect pressure sensors, maybe even tilting (along with a setting to switch that off)
- Easy geometric forms. Notability has the ability to draw straight lines, but I’d really like support for circles, and maybe arrows as well. Premade 2D- and 3D coordinate systems would be incredible nice, too.
- Different colours
- An eraser, ideally one like in Notability that deletes a the whole content of an individual touch-down session, and one that just erases spatially.
- Nice-looking highlighters. The ones of Notability are awful, the Apple ones in the Notes app are great.
- Ability to reorder the canvas, move things around and resize them.
- Ability to export individual notes as pdf. At times I give university seminars and I liked to share my own notes afterwards as a pdf with my students.
- Import other pdfs and annotate them.
- Have squared and lined paper in different sizes as backgrounds, would be nice to switch that off later when the note is finished (only display in editing note).
- Handwriting recognition is a nice thing to have, but in my experience even the most advanced engine I know (Nebo) is not able to reliably transcribe my handwriting. For searching and indexing purposes it would be nice anyway.
These are just my dreams of a perfect note-taking app, and maybe other people have a different focus and needs, but from what I read, the needs of the various people here are pretty much aligned. I see that this is no 1.0 stuff, but it would make an incredible premium feature. If you do this well, Agenda could finally replace pretty much every note app I ever used (apart from Things).
4 Likes
Interesting views on the pencil. We certainly want to support it, but it would probably be just a way to make images. You could draw or write to make an image, and perhaps convert that into text.
What is quite unlikely I think is that Agenda evolves into a freehand note taking tool like notability. I think that is an entirely different type of app. Agenda will remain primarily text focussed, with the addition of image support, and hopefully drawing, but I think that is still quite a lot different to freehand notepads.
3 Likes
Thanks for the answer!
I personally disagree that it is a different kind of app, though. It would be so nice to have all notes in one place, properly organised. The Apple Notes app does a tremendous job integrating the pencil functionality, but it lacks in some other important points.
But I see that it would be a tremendous amount of work, on the cost of many other features, for a (probably) small group of users. Just as a question: Did you thought about teaming up with a freehand note developer for integrating that into Agenda? You could sell it as an extra plugin and it would require a lot less work.
In the moment, it seems to me that we either got a good organisation and traditional note taking (Agenda) or freehand-notes, but with lacking functionality. MyScript Nebo for example is absolutely impressing, but the app around it frankly feels like a quick tech-demo.
But regardless of what you decide, thanks a lot for this stunning app and your vivid response to feedback.
3 Likes
I think you can expect our handwriting/drawing to be similar to what Apple have done in Notes. You can draw and write, convert to text, or insert as image. I think going to a full freehand drawing tool would just be a different type of app. It wouldn’t have the same time line structure etc.
2 Likes
That sounds great! Do you plan to support restricting the drawing area or would it grow like in Notes? Right now I don’t see though, how that wouldn’t qualify as freehand-note app? What would be missing?
It would be awesome if the Apple Pencil could be included. So far I love using Agenda, but as an IT guy I find myself having to doodle designs at different times and this would mean I can fully move over to Agenda.
1 Like
When I think of a freehand drawing app, I think of something where you can draw on top of the text, and move things to ad hoc places on the screen etc. Agenda would be more like notes, where it would keep the same basic order of text, and allow insertion of images.
We haven’t decided exactly how the drawing will work yet, but will certainly consider what other’s have done before we do.
Agree… and with the latest release by Notability ~ it can now handle Handwriting Recognition and Search for any Handwritten Notes by Highlighting.
If Agenda looked into supporting this at a later date I would definately place Agenda up there with the favourites.
1 Like
I too am hoping for support of Apple Pencil in a later release. In the meetings I attend notetaking with pencil is less obtrusive than typing. I also agree that remembering is easier when using a pencil rather than typing.
Handwriting recognition for general input of notes by pencil would be great but best/priority use I’d think would be for marking up agenda notes, so highlighting, underlining and making comments. Allows for much richer and natural interaction with notes.
2 Likes
When adding a note. The window pops up with a gear at lower right hand corner. Recommend adding pencil icon. To open a panel window. To allow pencil writing notes. Also having capability to attach to same note. Having the writing be a separate window. Will enable complete use of iPad screen, like One note. You could also add pencil icon within project windows.
This would be fantastic. Export into agenda would be brill.
+1 for pencil use in Agenda, even if it is a small area that coverts handwriting to text Nebu does this very well but not as pretty as apple notes.
+1 for audio recording too.
One more +1 for pencil on iPad. Personally, don’t need drawing, but ability to use pencil to take notes or annotate typed page would be VERY useful. Thx.
2 Likes