SilverBullet 2.5.0 brings a number of keyboard binding changes (due to CodeMirror dropping support for Alt-<letter> shortcuts, sorry about this...), significant sync reliability improvements ensuring your local state stays in sync with the server, and powerful new Lua Integrated Query features including group by and aggregator support. The Space Lua engine also saw significant improvements with a port of Lua's native pattern matching library, <close> attribute support, and various performance and compatibility improvements.

Changes

• Changed keyboard bindings (sorry!). CodeMirror no longer directly allows Alt-<letter> and Alt-<special-character> Keyboard Shortcuts, meaning I had to remap a few key bindings. It's basically a mission impossible to pick great ones, but here are the new defaults:
  • Quick note is now bound to both Ctrl-q q (type Ctrl-q first, then hit q again) and Ctrl-q Ctrl-q (hit Ctrl-q twice)
  • Navigate: Home is now bound to Ctrl-g h
  • Text: Marker is now bound to Ctrl-Alt-m
  • Outlines commands generally now use a Mod-. (Cmd-. on mac, Ctrl-. on Linux/Windows) prefix:
    • Outline: Move Right: Mod-. l
    • Outline: Move Left: Mod-. h
    • Outline: Move Up: Alt-ArrowUp still works, but now also adds Mod-. k for consistency
    • Outline: Move Down: Alt-ArrowDow still works, but now also adds Mod-. j for consistency
    • Outline: Toggle Fold: Mod-. Mod-.
    • Outline: * Fold (other fold commands): keyboard disabled, readd yourself if you need them (see Keyboard Shortcuts)
    • Task: Cycle State: Mod-. t
  • Page: Rename keyboard shortcut removed
  • Page: Rename Linked Page keyboard shortcut removed
  • Sync: Space keyboard shortcut removed
  • As documented in Keyboard Shortcuts, it is now possible to specify multiple keyboard shortcuts to a commands.
• Sync reliability work:
  • Better indication whether your page is synced to the server: "Dirty state" (slightly tinted color of page name) is now aligned with actual synced-to-server state unless the editor clearly indicates it is in offline mode (yellow top bar).
  • Sync snapshots are now persisted after every file sync, reducing (and hopefully eliminating) edge cases where the sync engine is killed mid-sync (for whatever reason) and the snapshot becomes of sync with "reality".
  • The index status progress indicator (blue circle) should now be more reliably reflect the actual indexing status.
  • HTTP status codes >= 500 are now treated as offline (better offline detection).
• Lua Integrated Query improvements (courtesy of Matouš Jan Fialka):
  • group by and having clauses with aggregator support
  • filter(where <cond>) clause for per-row aggregate filtering
  • nulls first/nulls last in order by
  • Null/missing query cells now render as empty
• Space Lua engine general improvements (most courtesey of Matouš Jan Fialka):
  • Native Lua pattern matching engine (replacing previous implementation)
  • Support for <close> attribute and __close metamethod
  • Better arithmetic error messages
  • Refactor of control flow (performance)
  • Improved numeric type semantics
  • Implement string.pack, string.unpack and string.packsize
  • Implement math.random, math.randomseed, math.tointeger, math.frexp and math.ldexp
  • Implement table.move; align table.pack and table.unpack with Lua semantics
  • table.select(table, keys...) (non-standard in Lua) API, convenient to use in Lua Integrated Query select clauses, see example in docs.
  • Extend os module
  • Add _VERSION environment variable
  • tostring() now respects __tostring metamethod; # operator now respects __len metamethod
  • Fix: table.sort comparator, string.gsub table replacement, math.modf return types, number formatting in .. and table.concat
  • Load order of scripts is now well defined: order by (script.priority or 0) desc, script.ref
• New experimental API: tag.define(spec), see linked page for docs and example uses. Brings back ability to define deadlines for tasks (see example). Another part of this is Schema support for tags. When a schema is defined for a tag, you get:
  • Frontmatter attribute completion and linting (in-editor error indicators) for attributes defined as part of the tag's schema.
  • Lua Integrated Query attribute code completion if you use the from v = index.tag("bla") style syntax (so explicitly bind your iterator variable).
  • Item-level linting (highlights the object in-line in case of validation errors).
• Tag schema updates:
  • pos (present in link, item and some other tags) is now deprecated, use range instead
  • range is a tuple of two numbers: from and to (e.g. {0, 10}) identify where the object appears in the page
• Editor improvements:
  • New Page: Create Under Cursor command, useful to pre-create an aspiring page link. Put your cursor in a wiki link to a non-existing page, and hit Cmd-Shift-Enter (Ctrl-Shift-Enter) to create it (empty) without navigating there.
  • Linked Mentions now list full page path rather than abbreviated version.
  • Hide vertical scrollbar overflow for long page names.
  • Upload file: prompt user before replacing files and no-clobber behavior for paste uploads (by Oliver Marriott).
  • Trim user input from prompts where appropriate (by rktjmp).
  • Consider empty string as invalid path (by rktjmp).
• Styling changes:
  • Attribute names and values ([key: value] notation) now get different CSS classes in the editor: sb-attribute-name for names and sb-attribute-value for values.
  • The diff Fenced Code Block language now uses colors to indicate additions and removals (by Lajos Papp).
• Configuration:
  • New shortWikiLinks config (defaulting to true) that decides whether a wiki link should be rendered in its short form (rendering just the last segment, e.g. Person/John would show as John). To always render the full name, put config.set("shortWikiLinks", false) in your CONFIG.
  • Authentication: how long "remember me" works is now configurable (by Metin Yazici) via Configuration and more reliably persisted.
• Library Manager: SilverBullet now navigates to library page after installing one.
• FreeBSD buids!
• Now excluding .plug.js and .js.map files from the document list.
• Fix: bring back Virtual Pages.

Upgrading

• For docker-based install, pull the new image, stop the container and start a new one. For binary-based installs run silverbullet --upgrade and restart.
• After upgrading the server, make sure you reload all your SilverBullet tabs a few times, just to make sure the cache is flushed.

Dedication

As mentioned earlier, I decided to reduce my regular day job to fewer days and spend this time on SilverBullet. This allows for deeper focus and more ambitious work. If you like this, consider sponsoring to make this a little bit more financially viable for me.