New Preferences UI | Link Improvements | Bug Fixes | Quality of Life Improvements

Thank you for testing Zettlr's beta releases and helping us create a stable and enjoyable release! Please report any bugs you find on GitHub. If you have any questions, we warmly welcome you on our Discord server. Finally, Zettlr is and will always remain Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), but every app requires some funding. If you enjoy Zettlr and would like to ensure it remains a viable alternative for professional writing, consider becoming a Patron on Patreon or use PayPal. If you prefer, you can also send over a small tip on Ko-Fi. You can find more information on our website.

Since the 3.0.0 major release, we've been hard at work at improving the app everywhere to aid your writing process even better. Zettlr 3.1 will contain a serious amount of improvements, all of which you can find in the changelog below. Let us highlight a few of the main things we have implemented:

A new preferences UI. Together with UI/UX designer Artem Barinov, we have spent the better half of 2023 thinking about how to improve the preferences UI. The result is a fully redesigned and much more accessible UI that allows you to find settings faster and adapt Zettlr to your own style.

A more accidental but nonetheless central theme of this release is links. One thing you may immediately note when testing out the beta is that the plain link detection has changed. You can read more below, but in short: What you see within Zettlr is now much closer aligned with what you actually get once you export your files.

Continuing with the Zelda link theme, Zettlr finally supports proper Wikilinks in: you can now add titles to them. This is a long-awaited feature that other editors already support, and we're happy that Zettlr now follows suit. This means, instead of the (depending on how you use them) cumbersome "Add filename after link" setting, you can now directly link them within proper, grammatical sentences. Activating the link renderer in the preferences will automatically hide the link and only show the title if applicable.

Finally, we have received many reports by users online and offline that their links broke after the release of v3.0.0. If you belong to this group of users, rejoice: We listen to the user base, and this release begins the work of re-enabling their functionality. Again, a more elaborate description can be found below.

Lastly, one issue that people have been wanting is an easy way of backing up snippets or export/import profiles. Until now this was a bit cumbersome, as you had to manually navigate into the application data directory. But no more! This version adds buttons to the appropriate places in the assets manager that allow you to open the corresponding folders directly, making it easy to simply copy and/or paste files into those folders, synchronizing that between your devices.

A lot more has changed, and we hope that these changes are all to your liking. Should something not work as expected, you know where to go!

Thank you again for helping the project by rigorously testing the beta releases.

Changelog

Changes to the link detection

For a long time now, Zettlr would (sometimes aggressively so) detect plain links
and display them in a rendered state. In some cases, this was nice as it would
relieve you from having to surround such links with pointy or angled brackets.

However, especially in the latest evolution of this parser plugin, the link
detection was a bit too aggressive and interfered, e.g., with emphasis
highlighting. In this version, we have entirely removed our custom link
detection and rely upon the more straight-forward way of detecting links.

Regarding your exporting experience, this should not have any impact, since the
auto-link-detection feature wasn't supported by Pandoc anyhow, but depending on
how you have been writing, you may notice less detected links in your documents.

To add "plain" links (without using the full []()-syntax) from now on, simply
surround them with angled brackets: <https://www.google.com> or
<mail@example.com>. Note that the protocol (https://) is required, so
<www.google.com> will not work.

This changes brings Zettlr's link functionality much more into alignment with
other editors as well, since this is the way that many other applications handle
links as well.

Introducing Wikilink Titles

This update brings a long-awaited change to Zettlr's handling of internal links
(sometimes called Wikilinks). Specifically, with this version, Zettlr finally
supports optional titles in such links. Your old links in the format [[link]]
still work fine, but now you can add a title that is different from the link,
separated by a pipe, or vertical bar character (|).

If such a title is given, Zettlr will use it in various ways to make your files
more readable. For example, if you have the link renderer activated in the
settings, it will take care of hiding the link target of Wikilinks as well as
those of regular Markdown links.

Since there is no way of knowing which of the two parts is the link, and which
is the title, Zettlr follows Pandoc's solution in allowing you to specify how
internal links are structured for you. The default and recommended setting is to
put links first, and titles second ([[link|title]]). This ensure compatibility
with VimWiki, MediaWiki, Obsidian, and others. However, should you need to
target GitHub wiki pages or another application that expects a title to come
first, you can select the alternative option ([[title|link]]).

In order to make Pandoc aware of your choice, you can add one of the following
reader extensions to your export profiles: wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
wikilinks_title_before_pipe.

Lastly, due to this improvement, we have changed the default setting for "link
with filename" from "always" to "never", since it will be more ergonomic to use
a custom link title directly instead of having the filename pop up after the
link. This default setting applies to new installations; so you may consider to
change this setting manually yourself as well.

Re-enabling old Link-Title-Syntax

After the release of Zettlr v3.0.0, some users have complained that their
internal links have stopped working. It turns out that quite a lot were using
Logseq's syntax for adding titles to internal links ([Title]([[Link]])), which
we broke during a refactor of the Markdown parser. This update partially
restores this link functionality, allowing you to Cmd/Ctrl-Click them to
follow these links again.

Note that we have not yet implemented the functionality of auto-renaming files
or showing tooltips on these links.

GUI and Functionality

• Feature: Zettlr now supports titles in internal (wiki) links; the default
  setting instructs the parser to expect first the link, and then the title
  ([[link|title]]), which ensures compatibility to, e.g., VimWiki, MediaWiki,
  or Obsidian, whereas the alternative setting ([[title|link]]) is compatible
  to GitHub wiki syntax. Remember that you need to enable the corresponding
  option on the Pandoc Markdown reader (wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
  wikilinks_title_before_pipe, respectively) if you wish to export files with
  this option
• Feature: Zettlr can now suggest you emojis during autocompletion. Emojis
  use the same trigger character as the snippets autocomplete, a colon (:);
  and Emojis will always be sorted below your snippets -- you can turn this off
  in the editor settings
• Feature: We've completely redesigned the preferences dialog; now it is
  more aligned with the system preferences on macOS and Windows, allows
  searching and follows a more stringent structure
• Removed the option for choosing to sort by either file creation or last
  modification time, since that can also be inferred from whichever time you
  choose to display
• Feature: The assets manager now provides buttons to open the defaults and
  snippets directories directly from within the app
• Removed the option for activating or disabling automatic file creation upon
  following internal links; now this will happen automatically as long as the
  "custom folder" option points to an existing folder; to disable this
  functionality simply remove the folder path
• Fixed a bug where recent documents would not turn up in the menu
• Fixed the sidebar shortcut: It is now Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+0 (to align with the
  file manager shortcut, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+1)
• Custom protocols should now be opened without problems by Zettlr (#3853)
• Added Tamil (India) translation (#4848)
• Removed the custom plain link parser out of two reasons: (1) It was a tad too
  aggressive, detecting links even where none were wanted; (2) Pandoc doesn't
  support auto-links in such a way as we have implemented it, leading to
  inconsistencies in exports
• The YAML frontmatter is now ignored for the purposes of previewing files,
  showing a more meaningful preview of its contents (#4598)
• Improve pasting behavior: Now text from Microsoft Word or Excel will be pasted
  as text, instead of offering to insert an image of the selection
• Fix pasting behavior: Now Zettlr should properly paste most formatted text
  without too much noise (in the form of comments, styles, and other additions)
• Fix restart-dialog showing multiple times for the same options (#4768)
• Fix the active typewriter line background color in dark mode
• Fixed an issue where gutter markers were not equally offset when typewriter
  mode was active (#4918)
• Fixed non-working file deletion menu item (#3894)
• Fixed a bug that would not ask users to save their changes when closing the
  last main window on Windows or Linux (#4898)
• Fixed a bug that would not properly restore the open directory on application
  boot (#3797)
• Fixed an issue that would break drag & drop behavior of editor panes when the
  pathname contained a colon on non-Windows systems (#4822)
• Fixed an issue where the re-ordering of list item numbers would not ensure
  that lists start at 1
• Fixed an issue that has removed the custom background color from the Bielefeld
  and Bordeaux themes (#4913)
• Fixed broken context menu options for images (#4893)
• Implemented superscript and subscript HTML rendering in the internal Markdown-
  to-HTML converter (#4943)
• Improved the TableEditor to more reliably parse tables; also, when a table
  could not be rendered out of any reason, the editor will simply remain dormant
  and not render the table instead of messing up the entire document
• Improvements to how the Markdown AST handles table parsing, which will improve
  Markdown-to-HTML conversion both within the TableEditor as well as when
  copying as HTML
• Fixed an issue that would make a context menu on macOS appear offset from the
  actual mouse position if the window's GUI was scaled absolutely (as per the
  preferences); now the context menu should always appear exactly where it
  should be
• Updated the CodeMirror dependencies to resolve an issue where users of
  keyboards with Alt-G being assigned to some character were unable to type
  that (specifically, Swiss-Mac keyboard users could not type an @)
• Fixed a bug that would not properly highlight PHP syntax in code blocks
• The link renderer will now also hide internal link/Wikilink links and only
  show the headers, if enabled
• Internal link tooltips will now show regardless of where inside the link your
  mouse cursor is
• Added a visible error message to two places in which saving documents may go
  wrong so that users have visible feedback if their changes are actually
  persisted to disk (#4229)
• Re-enable following internal Links in the format [Title]([[Link]]) by
  clicking them with Cmd/Ctrl pressed
• Fixed a bug that would not properly check for autocorrect values during a
  spell check
• The cursor on the editor scrollbars should now be a regular pointer instead of
  a text cursor (#4441)
• The global search now differentiates between the total amount of matches and
  the number of matched files
• The search button in the global search will now be disabled during a search
• Due to the new ability to add link titles, the default setting for "Link with
  filename" is now set to "never" for new installations; you may consider
  changing this as well
• The updater now contains a message indicating when Zettlr last checked for
  updates (#4963)
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes make the "New file" command hang (#4785)
• Fixed a bug on Windows and Linux that would not make the context menu on the
  statusbars' MagicQuotes handler appear

Under the Hood

• Switched from the vue-recommended to the vue3-recommended ESLint ruleset
• Removed the config option sortingTime since that can be inferred from the
  option fileMetaTime
• Removed the config option zkn.autoCreateLinkedFiles, since that can be
  inferred from the option zkn.customDir
• Simplified tab bar tab retention logic across reloads
• Add the ability to programmatically open the assets window with specified tab
• Bump the bundled Pandoc to version 3.1.12
• Bump Electron to version 29
• Failure to fetch a link preview will now simply log a verbose message instead
  of an error
• Reimplement configuration guard options as Maps to allow for volatile state
• Fully remove the renderers's dependency on Node.js's path module to prepare
  for fully sandboxing the window code; instead polyfill the required functions,
  testing them against the module's behavior
• Completely sandbox renderers
• Switched the popover logic away from deprecated plugin syntax to child
  components with Teleport (#4663)
• No more JavaScript: With this update, the entire code base (sans build
  scripts) is written in TypeScript.
• Migrated from Electron's deprecated clipboard API to the native Browser API
• Migrated the entire main window store state from Vuex to Pinia
• Fixed an issue with the FSALCache provider where we accidentally stored the
  descriptors as strings, increasing the complexity of loading the cache values
  (see #4269)
• The internal Markdown-to-HTML converter now respects (potentially significant)
  whitespace in the Markdown source to construct the HTML
• The TableEditor now parses any table directly from the underlying parser to
  ensure that the representation is (almost) identical to the parse state and
  reduce complexity when parsing the table; several edge cases remain
• Removed a check for whether certain commands exist; instead we now attempt to
  run them, and if they do not succeed, we catch that error instead; removed
  commandExists as it appears to have a few minor issues on Windows installs
• The config provider now allows specifying options that will cause an event to
  be emitted instructing every open MainEditor to reload itself; this can be
  used to change options that affect non-reloadable components such as the
  parser without having to manually close and re-open affected editors, or
  forcing a reload of the entire main window
• MainEditors can now be programmatically instructed by the main process to
  reload themselves with the broadcast event reload-editors
• Added the commands shortcut:install and shortcut:uninstall to add develop
  shortcuts on Linux systems, allowing the simple launching of a binary compiled
  from source (rather than the provided binaries)
• Fixed an issue with showing the appropriate platformVersion in the about
  debug info tab