BACKGROUND: I was a long time user / fan of Bear and then simply got tired of waiting for any updates to bring Bear closer to other options. I explored Craft (did not like), UpNote (used for over a year), and now I have been using Notebooks for 6+ months because of it’s expansive ability to customize the text and have the PDF match. I really like the team and philosophy of Bear and with Bear 2.0 I would like to return. I find Bear “works” and is pleasant to use. ツ However, there are some “musts” that I am looking for to move me back to Bear and my primary note taking tool.
I am a Strategic Business Coach / Consultant and my core workflow is to work with clients, take notes, and then share those notes back to the client in a PDF form. Thus, the generation of PDFs is of high importance.
Below is a “wish list” of sorts of features that I really like in UpNote / Notebooks that I really would like to see in Bear 2.0.
In terms of NOTE TAKING … • Ability to center justify paragraphs, images, etc.
• Ability to highlight and change the color of text.
• Ability to utilize different fonts. • Ability to type notes in one size font (usually larger) and then print / export in a smaller size font.
• Ability to insert and resize images.
In terms of EXPORTING to PDF … • Ability to set page-breaks, add page numbers, having a title at the top of the page.
• Ability to have the PDF match the notes in terms of font, color, etc. • Ability to export / print in a smaller size font (see above).
I am thrilled several of these options are now in Bear 2.0. And there are others that are still critical to fully return to Bear now that I have gotten used to these features in other apps.
I realize no app is “perfect.” It is a matter of what is a “must” vs. what I am willing to accept. The items I put in BOLD text are pretty much MUSTS for me.
The things you say you “must” have don’t exist in any markdown app i know of natively (haven’t used notebooks). Pdf export is actually a phenomenally huge pain to program well at the level you are describing. The concept of setting discrete page breaks in markdown and then exporting to a font size (hoping your font will even fit on the page you have described) is a potential formatting mess for many reasons.
These requests are simply not going to come to bear.
If you “must” have them and want to keep using bear, i suggest you look into pandoc and then write a script in python that recognizes some formatting you have in the document to divide it into separate “pages,” then export to pandoc as pdf with whatever font you want.
As for the other requests, there are absolute limitations of markdown compatibility for things like multiple colours, and bear devs have been crystal clear about adhering to markdown standards.
There are other apps that do some of the things you request, but it isn’t in keeping with the bear devs’ ethos to accommodate much of your list
Thank you for your detailed response. This provides me with some clarity regarding the boundaries with Bear / markdown. It helps me determine which direction to go.
I am continuing to test Bear. The PDF export is so vital to how I work. A simple request … would it be possible to be able to change the COLOR of the bullet points, etc. in the PDF export from RED to some other color? Ideally, it would be a plus to be able to set the font, font size, accent color, etc. for PDFs. I understand that pagination, headers, page numbers, and so forth is too much. Those other customizations seem reasonable?!
Just FYI, Craft recently added the ability to add page breaks for exported PDFs. Also, Readle’s PDF Expert app allows you to easily do all the other PDF things you list after export.
Some of these are word processor features, and you shouldn’t get your hopes up for them adding things like that to Bear.
I don’t find it impossible if one of the possible future options would be setting a different font size for the export but who knows. Wouldn’t you still get so much better experience if you just copypasted or exported as Docx and did the edits with the word processor? Your needs seem very specific and there’s slim chance an app like Bear will ever be able to fulfill them.
Actually page breaks wouldn’t be added to bear writing environment just because of the simple reason that the text in bears editor is not separated in pages. But on export pages breaks makes sense. The question is how to tell the exporting tool where to make a page break. as far as the devs said the export will be a huge area for improvement after 2.0. release. I guess when the times will come when we can discuss that in detail