Coming from OneNote lot's of questions

Support
1

Operating system

Windows

Joplin version

2.14.20

Sync target

File system

Editor

Rich Text Editor

What issue do you have?

Hi there,

This is about my 4th "attempt" to migrate from OneNote to Joplin.

Having a bit more success this time. All my questions, for now, are relating to the Windows version.

Firstly, to get it out of the way, I have no interest in "Markdown". Everything I do will be in the Rich Text Editor. I've installed the "Rich Markdown" plugin, although I have no earthly idea what it's doing for (to) me...

Couple of questions for now:

1 - Entering text in the Rich Text Editor results in double line spacing. If I edit the text in a text editor, I can delete the double spacing. This is more than a little arcane. How can I set Joplin to not do double spacing?

2 - Copying text from my text editor and inserting into the Rich Text Editor result in no carriage returns. Is there a setting for Joplin to recognize the CR's?

3 - How do I change fonts in the Rich Text Editor?

I'm using NotePad++ as my text.

My major heartburn with Joplin at this juncture is the lack of pdf preview in the Rich Text Editor. That's a major fail in my little mind. For now I'll have to toggle to MarkDown mode.

Thanks in advance

chris

1 Like
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Welcome, thanks for your attempt

you can insert single new line via shift+enter. Double new line via "enter" ensures editor understands the formatting you're after.

For example:

this is a line with quote formatting
this is single line right after quote, not formatted as a quote but understood as a quote

because there's no new line gap the formatting all squashed together. So, to prevent it, editor surrounds paragraphs with this "buffer" spacing automatically to prevent potential confusion down the line

could you share the sample text?

do you mean having global font of the editor changed or parts of text in a specific note?

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You may already know this, but for this reason Joplin may not be your best option. It really is a Markdown note taking application. If that's not what you want, it may not be the app for you.

If you never plan on using the Markdown editor then there is no need for this plugin, AFAIK.

Yeah, I really don't think Joplin is the solution you are looking for. I've always figured that the whole rich text editor is just a patch on top of Markdown that never will provide a true Rich Text experience.

But maybe there is indeed something about Joplin that makes it the right solution despite all this.

4

@graphit0 already posted an excellent response so I won't repeat it.

I moved to Joplin from Evernote and also spent some time using Microsoft OneNote.

Joplin For Better or Worse is a markdown note-taking app.

If you are needing to move from OneNote to someplace else then Joplin is in my opinion the best choice even though it has differences that you have pointed out that you're uncomfortable with.

In order to work smoothly you need to accept that some of the time you will need to use the markdown editor.

Having HTML support in addition would complicate the product and wysiwig fonts of all sizes and forms would complicate things too much as well.

I I'm still a paid customer of Evernote for the remainder of 2024 and so I'm using both products but Joplin is growing on me rapidly.

My personal suggestion would be to stick it out for a while and give Joplin a serious go because there's nothing out there I can think of that's any better.

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Hello @doobes
I'm like you, and I'm often frustrated by the limitation of markdown.
I'm still questioning my use of Joplin.
I've considered Trilium, but the main developer stopped to work on it and I don't know if it is a long term choice (too bad because from my standpoint, it is the best).
I've suggested at the guys at only office to add a "one note" equivalent to their office suite, but so far nothing.

6

Sorry for evaporating.

I've been standing up a Joplin server on a RaspberryPi. It's working, although not entirely how I would like. But that's the topic for another message.

I'll play with some of the formatting ideas provided. Thanks for those.

And as to the nay sayers, well that's nice....

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Here is an example of pasting text in from NotePad++ (Windows) into the RTE

image
image1644×869 69.8 KB

If I paste it into the Markdown editor it formats correctly.

How do I change that?

8

Fellow RTE user here! I also came to Joplin from OneNote. Please don't give up yet, Joplin (with RTE) is amazing with lots of power that you can tap. However, I will focus on an easy solution for one of your concerns.

To change the font, you will find options under Settings -> Appearance. You can also get more granular control by creating a file called userstyle.css. The userstyle.css can be created in ~/.config/joplin-desktop on MacOS and C:\users.config\joplin-desktop for Windows. Start with something like the CSS below and tweak as necessary to get the results you want. Download, install, and define fonts like "SF Mono Regular" and "Google Sans" for a cleaner look. Remember to restart Joplin after each CSS update.

/* 2024-04-10 */

p {
 font-size: 14px;
   font-family: "Google Sans", "Segoe UI", Frutiger, "Frutiger Linotype", "Dejavu Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif;

/* within a paragraph */
 line-height: 1.4em;
/* between a paragraph, but also impacts "fake" lists */
 margin-bottom: 1.4em;
}
ul.joplin-checklist {
 font-size: 14px;
}
ul li {
 font-size: 14px;
 margin-top: 0em;
 margin-bottom: 0em;
}
ol li {
 font-size: 14px;
 margin-top: 0em;
 margin-bottom: 0em;
}
ul {
 font-size: 14px;
 list-style-type: square;
 margin-top: 0em;
 margin-bottom: 0em;
}
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Regarding your issue #2, the pasting from your text editor into Joplin RTE, I have found that pasting into a raw text editor, then copying/pasting into your destination can sometimes fix this, but you will likely lose all of your formatting. You could do a find for every carriage return and insert a   so the editor recognizes the return upon pasting. There are lots of hacks you could use to get around this issue but they require more knowledge of your exact situation.

11

I hope my comment didn't read as nay saying. I was just trying to point out that Joplin is really a Markdown app with a RTE workaround.

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Hai der!

Well,

That was an interesting adventure.

So, I got a wild hair (?) that I would stand up a Joplin Server instance on a Raspberry Pi for synchronization purposes. Lot's of interesting things learned, some of which are relevant to this discussion.

If you are interested here are a couple of links:

Server setup silly questions

Server Hanging

Anyway, all that is behind me now.

I had used the OneNote md Exporter dohicky to export a bunch of OneNote stuff for import.

And that's when the fight started as they say.

Somewhere in the mess of exported OneNote stuff was a turd that would choke Joplin and the server instantiation. Took me about a month to figure out what was going on.

This was particularly problematic on the Windows version as the sync would stall and then I would just close it out. Unfortunately there were still a myriad of Joplin instances running that had to be manually stopped. The Linux version was significantly better behaved.

So, what all this has reinforced, is it's the fools folly, at this juncture, to attempt to import from OneNote. Truth be told, it's not that problematic, as a lot of the stuff I had in OneNote was now OBE (Overcome by Events) and no longer relevant.

I've only got one Windows box at present having converted everything else to Linux. The goal was to rid myself of OneDrive and it's accompanying chuff. I'll prolly go ahead and get rid of it and the stand alone OneNote install. As I'm not going to be entering anything into OneNote I can use either the web version or the UWA tool.

Now, I've gone ahead and built the usestyle.css file and that makes things much less unattractive. I have realized that it's best to enter/manipulate text in the MU pane. I'm not liking it any more, but it's serviceable.

There as some things about Joplin that I like a lot more than OneNote, so kudo's to the dev's.

At this juncture the biggest caveat is the non-display of pdf files in the RTE. Man that's a MAJOR shortfall. I'm crossing my fingers that this can be rectified.

Thank all, who opined, while not optimum, Joplin suits my needs fairly well at this juncture.

cheers

1 Like
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Well,

That didn't take long.

Dunno how or why but I stumbled onto Trilium (and now TriliumNext)

Oh my. This is what I'm looking for. No MarkDown, all Rich Text. Beautiful, glorious rich text, with all that I'm looking for, and frankly a lot more.

Yes I know, the original dev (singular) is abandoning the project. Doesn't matter to me as it's perfect for my needs as it stands. And hopefully the Trilium Next contingent can get their heads together suitably to advance the project. I've actually volunteered to be on the team, but as I'm definitely not a dev (and don't play one on TV), I'll be in a supporting role for testing and docs and such. That I can do.

Whilst I figure out how to set up a Trilium server, I'll keep my Joplin server going, but frankly it's days are numbered.

Thanks to all those who provided support to this brain damaged old fart, I really appreciate it.

cheers,

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It's normal and expected to be choice hopping for a while once you broke free from closed systems. Hope it serves you well.

While you're still here, as a final thank you, you might write down Joplin points for improvements / stuff you value the most after you figured Joplin out and who knows maybe one day we'll see you again :wink:

Cheers

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