Version 2.5 Beta 1

Release Notes

This is a beta release of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Detailed Changelog

General Changes

• novelWriter now requires Python 3.9 and Qt 5.15 as a minimum. That means Ubuntu 20.04 and older are no longer supported for the Debian packages. Users on Ubuntu 20.04 and equivalent Linux distros must use the AppImage. PRs #1826 and #1833.

Major Features

• Status and Importance icons can now be assigned a shape in addition to a colour. Issue #1786. PRs #1810 and #1819.
• Footnotes have been added. They use a modified comment format for specifying the footnote text, and a shortcode for inserting the footnote into the text. They are linked via a key. If the footnote is inserted via the Insert menu, a unique key is generated. Issue #342. PR #1832.
• Comments in general now support formatting, so format tags work just like in regular text. This was needed for footnotes, but has been expanded to include all comments. PR #1832.
• Two new themes have been added. Dracula is available as a set for both the GUI and the editor. Snazzy Light is available for syntax only, but works well with the default light GUI theme. PR #1840.
• Character dialogue highlighting has been completely redesigned. The highlighting rule now specifically relates to dialogue, and not just quoted text in general. To that effect, more rules for detecting what is and isn't dialogue has been added. This is designed to support difference between dialogue conventions in different languages. Issues #1770 and #1771. PR #1864.
• The font settings in Preferences now considers the full range of font options, in particular font style and weight. The changes include the font size in these settings, so the additional setting for font size has been removed. Use the font dialog to pick size as well. Due to this removal, the font size has been reset to default and must be set again by the user. Issue #1733. PR #1881.
• The document viewer and the manuscript preview now uses a completely new class to generate the formatted text. The old method used an outdated HTML format as the go-between, which restricted what formatting could be applied. The main noticeable change to users at the moment should be the size of headings, that now match the size in the editor. Issue #1882. PR #1892.

Improvements

• The default dark theme has been redesigned to match the GUI theme a little better, and is now also consistent with the default light themes. PRs #1836 and #1840.
• Special comments now have a different text colour than plain comments. PR #1836.
• The various Tomorrow themes are now a little more consistent in what colours are used for which components. More variation has also been added. PR #1840.
• The Tango theme has been updated. PR #1840.
• The last cursor position is now always saved when a document is closed in the editor, even if the content has not been changed. PR #1849.
• The settings for first line indent have now been extended to allow setting how deep the indents are and whether or not to indent the first paragraph after a heading or break. The settings have also moved from being Open Document specific to the general formatting tab for manuscripts. PR #1857.
• Preserving in-paragraph line breaks is now a general Manuscript setting that applies to all output formats. PR #1891.
• The Manuscript builds now also uses the full font settings of the selected output font, not just the font family and size option. Since the size option has been merged into the general font choice, the separate font size setting has been dropped and users must set it again. PR #1891.
• It is now possible to disable the usage of the font selection dialog from your operating system. At least on Linux Gnome desktops, the system's font dialog lacks a lot of the selection options available in the font dialog provided with Qt. PR #1891.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where Manuscript dialogs would be left open if the project was closed. PR #1844.
• First line indents are no longer reset after a comment. Issue #1852. PR #1857.

Packaging

• Minimal zip file release packages can no longer be built from the package utility script. The zip file needed for building the Windows installer is still available. PR #1826.
• Added build packages for AARCH64 on MacOS. It seems some dependencies still prevents it from being installed cleanly without requiring some virtualisation feature, but it works. PR #1829.
• AppImages are now released with Python 3.12. PR #1829.

Other Changes

• A new GUI theme setting for error text has been added. It is used when error messages need to be displayed on the GUI. PR #1880.

Code Improvements

• The behaviour of dialogs across various platforms has been unified and improved a little to ensure more consistent behaviour. It is mostly related to modality and z-order. There are still limitations due to platform restrictions, like non-modal dialogs being stuck on top on Linux Wayland. PR #1844.
• Some GUI components have been improved and refactored to rely more on signals and slots rather than reaching into each other's classes and calling methods. This is a little more robust. PR #1849.
• The text tokenizer used to parse the formatting codes in novelWriter has been refactored and improved. In particular, multi-line paragraphs are now processed during the second pass of tokenization rather than when the final format is applied. This allows a much more compact format of the token data, and avoid potential inconsistencies between the various output formats. PR #1885.