I've had quite a run the last week and integrated a lot of issues into the app. Therefore, here's version 0.17.0!

Huge changes to the export engine

This version features first and foremost enormous changes to the exporting engine Zettlr uses to create exports to your likings. There have been three changes worth introducing.

HTML export no longer requires Pandoc

First, we've integrated the HTML export into the App itself. Zettlr does not rely on Pandoc for simple HTML exports anymore. For simple previewing and printing of documents, you don't need to install additional software.

But as we don't rely on the comprehensive engine of Pandoc for exporting to HTML, you will notice some inconsistencies. Showdown.js, which we now use for converting the Markdown into HTML, does not support footnotes, and our (not final) workaround does not re-count the footnotes, meaning that they may be messed up (the numbers of your footnotes show in your HTML document the same way they show up in your Markdown file).

Introducing PDF exporting options

Now you have a lot of export options for your PDF files. As we have relied upon a LaTeX-template for exporting to PDF all along, it was only natural to now integrate more flexibility in the building of the template. Therefore, you now have first options to customise your template. Simply press Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+, to open up the PDF exporting preferences. There you can set the most basic options such as pagemargins, papertype, the main font to be used, the font size and the line spacing. Many more options will be added over time, so that in a later version you'll be able to control your PDF export to a degree that you already know from Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer.

General export options

Also, we've implemented some more general exporting options. In your preferences dialog, you can now choose whether Zettlr saves your exported files to the temporary directory (as it has been for all the last versions) or directly into your current working directory (i.e. the directory that is currently selected). This makes it easier to directly export your files to a directory of your liking — simply select it prior to exporting. But be aware: There won't be any warning if Zettlr is about to overwrite any old file, because the general workflow doesn't include working with files once they are exported. If you think there should be a warning, and enough other people join in, we'll integrate one, but for now it's less stressful without such a warning. Other options available to you now concern the ZKN-functionality that you can put into your files. You can choose to strip Hashtags, IDs and internal links prior to exporting your files.

Distraction Free Mode

For several months there has been an issue on GitHub asking for a distraction free mode. This has now been integrated into Zettlr! Simply press Cmd/Ctrl+J to enter the distraction free mode, in which you'll only have a slightly dimmed toolbar and the editor visible. Also, you can (in your preferences) choose to dim all paragraphs in which you are not currently working, as well.

Among these things, a bunch of other things have changed, see the full changelog below. Additionally, we still haven't got RPM-exporting up and running. Therefore, Fedora-users still have to use Alien or something else to convert the DEB-package to an installable RPM-package. Sorry!

0.17.0

GUI and functionality

• Added full stops after TOC-ordinals.
• The HTML-export (e.g., for printing) does not rely on pandoc to be present on the system anymore. In other words: HTML-export is now working everywhere and has no prerequisites anymore. Attention: As we do not rely on pandoc for HTML exports anymore, this means that the HTML format is likely to suffer from some inconsistencies, as the rendering engine is way less advanced than pandoc. Yet, this should not pose a problem, as the HTML-export is intended to be for quick previews and prints only.
• Added a bunch of options for exporting files, such as:
  • Choose whether to save the exported files in the temporary directory (which is expunged on each restart of the system) or in your current working directory (meaning they are persistent across system reboots and are also accessible normally through your file explorer).
  • Strip Zettelkasten-IDs (such as @ID:yyyymmddhhmmss).
  • Strip tags (in the format #tag).
  • Completely remove internal Zettelkasten-links (e.g. [[<link-text>]]).
  • Only unlink internal Zettelkaten-links (i.e. transform [[<link-text>]] to <link-text>).
• Switched to the better xelatex engine to render PDF documents.
• Added a great number of PDF export customization options. More will be coming in the future (depending on necessities and user wishes).
• Added a feature that search results now also are shown on the scrollbar so that you know exactly where the matches reside in your document.
• Replaced the ugly find-in-file dialog with a Zettlr-style popup and added a replace-function as well. Simply press Return while inside the replacement-field to replace the next occurrence of your search term, or press ALT+Return, to replace all occurrences at once. The search is case-insensitive.
• Introducing a distraction free mode, which can be toggled by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+J. This makes the editor fullscreen and mutes all lines except the one in which you are currently working.
• Added option to recall up to ten recently used documents.
• Hashtags are now not rendered, when they are not preceded by a space or are at the start of a line. This prevents links with anchor-names being displayed wrongly.
• Added a shortcut for inserting footnotes: Ctrl+Alt+F (Windows+Linux) or Cmd+Alt+R (macOS).

Under the hood

• Moved all exporting functionality to a separate class, ZettlrExport.
• Removed unnecessary CodeMirror plugins.
• Removed unnecessary styles and some unnecessary (b/c unused) functionality.