Version 0.9.1

Changes

Bugfixes

• Fixed a serious bug in the replace part of the search/replace function that caused novelWriter to crash when the replace text function was called. Issue #327, PR #328.

Version 0.9

Changes

Core Functionality

• Underline text formatting has been removed. It is not standard HTML5, nor Markdown, and was previously implemented using the double underscore notation that in standard Markdown is renderred as bold text. Instead, novelWriter now renders a single * or _ wrapping a piece of text within a paragraphs as italicised text, and a double ** or __ as bold text. The keyboard shortcuts and automatic features only support the * notation. A triple set of *** are treated as both bold and italicised. PR #310.
• Strikethrough formatting has been added back into novelWriter using the standard Markdown ~~ wrapping. PR #310.
• Added support for thin spaces and non-breaking thin spaces. PR #319.
• The Ctrl+Z key sequence (undo) would not go through the wrapper function for document action for the document editor, but act directly on the document. This caused some of the logic preventing conflict between auto-replace and undo to be bypassed. This has now been resolved by blocking the keypress itself and let the menu action handle the key sequence. Issue #320, PR #321.
• The dialog window size and column width setting for the auto-replace feature in Project Settings are now preserved between closing and opening the dialog. Issue #322, PR #324.

User Interface

• The Open Project dialog will now ask before removing an entry from the recent projects list. PR #309.
• The text emphasis functions, either selected from the menu or via keyboard shortcuts, will now try to respond to the command in a more meaningful way. That is, the text editor will try to toggle the bold or italics features independently of eachother on the selected text. A menu entry to apply both at the same time has also been added. PR #310.
• The document editor search tool has been completely rewritten. It now appears as a search box at the top of the document, and has a number of toggle switches added to it. You can modify the search tool to be case sensitive, select only whole words, use regular expression search strings, loop when reaching the end, and continue the search in the next file in the project tree. For the replace feature, you can also select to have the feature try to preserve the case of the replaced word. Issues #84 and #305, PR #314.
• A dialog has been added for selecting quotation mark style. These are now used in the Preferences dialog instead of a plain text edit box. PR #317.
• Added an insert menu for inserting special symbols like dashes, ellipsis, thin and non-breaking spaces, and hard line breaks. PR #319.
• A menu option to replace straight single and double quotes in a selected piece of text has been added. This uses the same logic as the auto-replace feature. Issue #312, PR #321.
• When pressing Ctrl+R while the document editor has focus, the edited document will be viewed or refreshed in the document viewer. Previously, the selected document in the project tree had priority. The document is also now saved before loaded in the viewer, ensuring that it shows the very latest changes. Issue #143, PR #323.
• The selection in the project tree should not scroll into view when just opening the document. This can be quite annoying if loading several documents in sequence by double-clicking as the target may move just when you're about to click. PR #325.

Other Changes

• Added the file's class and layout to the meta data string of saved document files. This meta data is only used to restore the file meta information into the project if it was lost from the project file. It is also useful information when reading the file in external tools. PR #308.

Version 0.8

Changes

Bugfixes

• The HTML converter, used for the document view window as well as the Build Novel Project tool, would crash novelWriter if a file included an @tag: entry with no actual tag name following it. In addition to fixing this issue, the call to the converter is now also wrapped in a try/except construct to prevent crashes caused by potential edge cases in document content. If the rendering fails, the view window will show an error message instead of the intended document. Issue #298, PR #299.
• Clipping of the descended part of fonts in the document title bar has been fixed. Issue #295, PR #300.
• When clicking a tag in the editor while the viewer was closed, nothing would happen. Now, the viewer is first opened before navigating to the source of the reference tag. Issue #294, PR #306.
• The missing optional rendering of synopsis comments in the document view panel has been added. Mentioned in Issue #301, PR #311.

User Interface

• A details panel below the Outline tree view has been added. The panel shows all the information of a selected row in the tree view above, including hidden columns, and some additional information. The tags and references also become clickable links that when clicked will open in the document viewer. PR #281.
• Icons have been added to the Title and Document columns in the Outline. The titles get a new icon indicating the header level, while the documents get the already existing document icon. PR #302.
• Added a context menu to the project tree for easier access to some of the most use actions on the tree. PR #282.
• Improved the support for High DPI screens. Margins and box sizes that were hardcoded should now scale. User settings should also scale back and forth when switching between scale factors. Issue #280, PR #285.
• The total edit time of a project is now displayed on the Details tab of the Project Settings dialog. PR #290.
• The title bar in the document editor now has a full screen button and a close button, and in the document viewer a reload button and a close button. The full screen button toggles the distraction free mode, and the reload button regenerates the document being viewed to update any changes that may have been made to it. PRs #293, #300, #303 and #306.
• The References panel below the document viewer has been redesigned. It now sits in a resizeable panel below the document, and its controls sit in a footer bar in the document itself. The functionality of the feature is otherwise unchanged, but the buttons have received new icons. PRs #304 and #306.
• The option to render comments and synopsis in the document view panel has been added to Preferences. The toggle option for comments that was previously in the menu has been removed. PR #311.

Project Structure

• The way GUI states of switches, column widths, etc., is saved has been improved a bit during the High DPI updates. PRs #285 and #286.
• Some settings have been moved around to more appropriate sections in the project XML file. The project load function still reads the values from the previous location if opening an older project file. PR #288.
• A file opened in the Trash folder is no longer "Read Only". The feature was rather arbitrary, and also required a GUI element to notify the user of the fact. Any file can now be edited. PR #292.

Code Structure

• The core classes making up the project itself were previously merged into a single source code file. This file was getting a bit big, so they have been split up again. PR #289.
• A lot of Inkscape meta data has been removed from the SVG icons, reducing the file sizes quite a bit. PR #291.
• Opening and closing of files are now properly handled also when using the ConfigParser tool. Previously, files were not properly closed after the content had been read, leaving the handles open until the Python garbage collector handled them. PR #300.

Version 0.7.1

Changes

Bugfixes

• For some fonts (especially Ubuntu) the minimum column width in the tree widgets would be estimated to be too large. It especially meant that the "include when exporting" flag had a column much wider than it needed to be. This setting is now overridden with the known size of the icon, plus a 6 pixel margin. PR #278.
• Correctly fixes issue #273, which was actually due to an old css setting from early development. PR #287.

User Interface

• The Build Novel Project tool now has an option to not style the text before printing or exporting to file. PR #276.
• When opening an item in the project tree, the focus remains on the tree and no longer switches to the editor. It makes it easier to flip through files and look at them by pressing enter repeatedly. PRs #278 and #287.
• Added a title icon and document icon to the outline view. PR #278.
• The timeline class root folder now has a calendar icon instead of a clock. PR #287.
• Regrouped the options on the Build Novel Project tool a bit. They are now sorted into Titles, Format, Text and File categories, with more consistent labelling. PR #278.
• A link colour has been added to the Build Novel Project tool. It's the same colour as the header. PR #287.

Other Changes

• Reduced the number of files and folders in the source code a bit. PR #277.

Version 0.7

Changes

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where novelWriter might crash if a file is deleted immediately after being created, and also additional points-of-failure if the project was new. PR #267.

User Interface

• The back-references list in the project view panel now shows references to any tag in the open document, not just the first tag. Issue #227, PR #234.
• Clicking a tag now tries to scroll to the header where the tag is set. The index needed a couple of minor changes for this feature, so this will invalidate the old index for a project saved with an older version, and require a new to be built. This is done automatically. PR #234.
• Moved the Close button on the "Build Novel Project" dialog to the area with the other buttons since we anyway increased the size of that area. PR #256.
• Updated the unit for Preferences > Editor > Big document limit from kb to kB. Issue #258, PR #260.
• Added Typicons-based coloured icon set also for light GUI background. PR #265.
• The export check mark that was added to the Flags column in the project tree in Version 0.6 has been moved to its own column, and been replaced with a proper icon. The details panel below it has been updated as well. PR #268.
• Icon sizes are now calculated based on the size of the text, and all text and icons should scale relative to the default GUI font size. PR #268.
• The font family and size of the main GUI font can now be changed in Preferences. For Windows, this defaults to Cantarell 11pt, which is now shipped with novelWriter. On other systems it defaults to the system font. Special accommodations had be made for Ubuntu where the font size of the tree widget was not updated automatically (Issue #273). PRs #269, #270, #274 and #275.
• There are no Monospace fonts on the main GUI any more. Where fixed width is needed, the size is calculated beforehand with Qt's font metrics class. PR #271.
• Fonts are now selected via the system's font dialog rather than the font combo box. PR #270.
• Word, character and paragraph counts are now updated on the project tree details panel if the file currently being edited is also selected in the tree. PR #272.
• The Build Novel Project dialog now shows the previous generated content when it's opened. PR #272.
• The Build Novel Project tool can now export the HTML and NWD output into a JSON data file. This file is convenient if the user wants to post-process the output with for instance Python, or one of the other numerous languages that can read JSON files. PR #272.

Project Structure

• The project folder structure has been simplified and cleaned up. We also now freeze the main entry values in the main XML file. The XML file is now given version 1.1, and no further core changes to its structure will be made without bumping this version. We're also locking it to only be opened by version 0.7 or later. An old project file is converted on first open. PRs #253 and #261.
• When a project is closed, two table of contents files are written to the project folder. They are named ToC.txt and ToC.json and are there for the user's convenience if they want to find a specific file from the project in the data folders. As discussed in Issue #259, PRs #261 and #262.
• The expanded node flag from the project tree was also saved for file entries, which cannot actually be expanded. These flags are no longer saved in the XML file. PR #261.

Other Changes

• Dropped the usage of .bak copies of document files. This was the old method to ensure the document data was written successfully, but it uses twice the storage space. Instead, writing via a temp file is the current safe way to save files. PR #248.
• The project class now records the accumulated time in seconds a project has been opened. This data is not yet displayed anywhere, but it is being tracked in the project XML file. PR #261.

Test Suite

• Added tests for Build Novel Project, Merge Folder and Split Document tools. PRs #263 and #264.

Version 0.6.3

Changes

Bugfixes

• It was possible to have the backup folder set to the same folder as the project, resulting in an infinite loop when make_archive was building the zip file. This crash of paths is now checked for before moving to the archive step. Issue #240, PR #241.
• Fixed an issue with the Build Novel Project tool on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS where the dialog wouldn't open. Issue #243, PR #246.

User Interface

• Renamed the "Generate Preview" button on the "Build Novel Project" tool to "Build Novel Project". You must actually click this to be able to export or print. Issue #237, PR #238.
• Added font family and font size selectors to the "Build Novel Project" tool. You may want a different print font than used in the editor itself. Issue #230, PR #238.
• Removed the "Help" feature in "Build Novel Project" and instead added detailed tooltips. Issue #250, PR #249.
• Changed the title formatting codes for "Build Novel Project" to something less verbose. The old codes are translated automatically. Issue #247, PR #249.
• A margin of the viewport (outside the document) has been added to the document editor and viewer to make room for the document title bar. Previously, the title bar would sit on top of the document's top margin, which would sometimes hide text that would otherwise be visible (when scrolling). PR #236.
• Fixed an alignment issue for the status icon on the project tree details panel. Mentioned in #235, PR #239.
• Removed the Xo icon for NO_LAYOUT in the project tree details panel. Mentioned in #235, PR #239.
• Added a "Details" tab to the "Project Settings" dialog, which also lists the project path. Issue #242, PR #239.

Version 0.6.2

Botched release. Replaced with 0.6.3. Crashes when Build Novel Project is opened.

Version 0.6.1

Changes

Bugfixes

• The Outline view now takes into consideration the exported flag, and does not show excluded files in the outline. PR #224.
• Page layout format was ignored when exporting project. The formatting of this layout has now been added. PR #224.
• If multiple headings were present in a file, the sorting of headings in the Outline view would follow a text sort not a numerical sort of the line numbers. That is, it would be sorted as "1", "10", "2", "20", etc. This has been fixed. PR #226.
• The text justification in the preview in the Build Novel Project was following the main Preferences settings, not the Build settings. This did not affect the formatting of the exported file itself, but the preview is now made consistent with the build settings. Issue #228, PR #231.

User Interface

• Recent projects in the open project dialog can be removed from the list by hitting the delete key. PR #225.
• Moved the browse button to after the path box in the open project dialog. PR #225.

Other Changes

• The three remaining dependencies now have a minimum version set. PR #224.
• Moved the sample project up one folder level. PR #224.

Documentation

• The export page in the documentation erroneously stated that line breaks could be added to titles by adding %\\%. The correct syntax is \\. Issue #229, PR #231.

Version 0.6

Changes

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug in validation of @tag: meta tags where one or more spaces before the : would still pass as a valid tag, but the keyword index array would be missing those spaces in its counter. This mainly affected the highlighting of keywords, which would be misaligned. PR #206.

User Interface

• The Export Tool has been removed and replaced by a new tool called "Build Novel Project". The new tool has the same filtering options as the Export Tool, but with more formatting options for titles. It also has a preview window to display the generated document. A Save As button provides exports to HTML, novelWriter Markdown, plain text, PDF and Open Document format. LaTeX export has not been ported over, and interfacing with Pandoc is no longer supported either. Although, as before, the HTML export can be converted with Pandoc to other formats outside of novelWriter. The new tool also supports printing. PRs #204, #220 and #221.
• The Project Settings, Preferences, Item Editor, Merge Documents, and Split Documents dialogs have been redesigned. The ones with tabs now have vertical tabs on the left with horizontal labels. The dialog design should be more compact, and have room for more tabs for future settings. PR #212.
• A new icon, as well as a mimetype icon for the project files, have been designed and added to the app. PRs #213 and #214.
• The About dialog has been completely redesigned to allow more information. PR #217.
• The Open Project dialog has been cleaned up and made more readable. The project paths have been moved out of the list, and are now displayed when an item is selected instead. Icons have been added, and the New project dialog can also be triggered from this dialog. PR #218.
• The document stats have been added to the details panel below the project tree. PR #219.

Version 0.5.2

Changes

Bugfixes

• When running on Windows 10, some of the buttons were missing icons. More fallback icons have been added to ensure that all current buttons have a fallback path that always ends in an icon. PR #211.

User Interface

• The statusbar has been redesigned a bit. The block icons showing document and project saved status have been replaced by LED icons. The statistics has been moved to a separate label, and most of the detailed stats moved to its tooltip. PR #210.
• Default icon theme is now Typicons Grey Light. PR #211.
• Clicking on the document header selects the document in the project tree, but this functionality has been enhanced to also ensure the document is expanded and visible in the tree. If it's scrolled out of view, the tree will scroll it into view. PR #215.
• Syntax highlighting of text in quotes can now be turned off in Preferences. PR #215.

Core Functionality

• Checking for version dependencies and a few packages (aside from PyQt5) is now done later in the start-up so that it is possible to alert the user with a dialog box instead of terminal error messages. PR #210.
• Made a few minor changes to the code so novelWriter can run with Python 3.4.3 and Qt 5.2.1, that is, it runs on last version of Ubuntu 14.04. This level of compatibility is not guaranteed to remain in the future, but for now, the changes have no impact on functionality. PR #210.