github Zettlr/Zettlr v3.1.0-beta.1
Release v3.1.0-beta.1

latest release: v3.1.0-beta.2
pre-releaseone month ago

This update changes a few minor but notable things from the previous beta release. Here they are at a glance:

  • Fixed a serious bug during save that would effectively remove any non-standard linefeeds (such as CRLF or LFCR) during save, leading to various issues with detecting external changes
  • The dialogs are now modal even on Linux. Previously, they weren't due to (likely) a bug in Electron. We've now undone this in the hopes that the original bug that this fixed doesn't re-occur, so please report any problems you may encounter.
  • The app now shows the precise git commit hash from which it was compiled (in the About Debug tab). This might help reproduce bugs in the future.
  • Fixed an issue with the visual list indentation. This should reduce the "wobble" some were experiencing when using tabular characters for indentation as well as line up the list markers with the rest of the text.
  • We've switched from the legacy YAML implementation to the new mode implementation. This means that some syntax highlighting has slightly changed, but this will give us more control over the various frontmatter blocks.
  • Removed fuzzy translation matching. This has led to our translation library gettext to auto-translate sentences that appeared similar, which has led to confusion. That being said, should you find odd-sounding translations if you're not using English (US) as your app language, this is likely an issue that can be easily solved and we would like to invite you to become a translator. All you need to know can be found on the project repository.
  • Other than that, we've fixed various minor things here and there.

For everything that has changed since v3.0.0, refer to the full changelog below.

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
  • Fixed a bug in the print window (#4902)
  • Fixed a bug in the image pasting modal handler (#5007)
  • Fixed a bug caused by a workaround from a few years ago, making dialogs modal
    again (see #4952)
  • Fixed an issue that would prevent the status bar in Code editors to switch
    between light and dark
  • Fixed an issue that would not show the color picker's color in the tag manager
    on Windows
  • Fixed list item indentation in Markdown and Code files
  • Fixed a bug that would make Zettlr always save files with regular newlines
    (LF), even if the file originally uses carriage returns (CR) or a mixture
    (CRLF or LFCR), leading, among other things, to save issues (#4959)

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
  • Move preventNavigation utility function into the lifecycle handlers to
    reduce boilerplate code and make the app more secure
  • Switched to the new YAML parser (@codemirror/lang-yaml)
  • Improved linting to include plain JavaScript files, but exclude type checking
  • Add build number (= git commit hash) to the debug info of the about dialog
  • Simplify exporter types
  • Retire the test-gui command; instead now the start command does the same;
    similarly, start won't touch any existing Zettlr configuration anymore
  • Simplify CodeMirror theming, retire the themeManager and replace it with a
    simpler, more general darkTheme extension
  • Disallow fuzzy matching during updates of translation files; previously this
    has led to inaccurate results (see, e.g., #5042)

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