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.
Please check the changelog for an overview of changes. The full release notes will be added to the final release.
Detailed Changelog
Features
- A simple tool to add Lorem Ipsum placeholder text has been added to the Insert menu. PR #1028.
- Status and Importance flags can now be reorganised in Project Settings. Issue #1035. PR #1040.
- It is now possible to create multiple Root Folders of the same kind. This makes it possible to add multiple Novel root folders in a project, for instance. Issue #967. PR #1031.
- All documents can now be dragged and dropped anywhere in the project tree. The document layout may be converted in the process. PR #1031.
- Documents in the project tree can now have other documents as child documents. Issue #1002. PR #1047.
- Folders in the project tree that are not empty, can now be moved to trash. PR #1048.
- Empty folders are deleted on request, and not moved to trash. Issue #1052. PR #1055.
User Interface
- The tabs under the project tree and to the right of the main window have been replaced with a toolbar on the left hand side. The toolbar has a set of buttons to change view between Project, Novel and Outline. The three buttons that were available under the project tree have been moved to the bottom of the new toolbar. Issue #1056. PR #1057.
- When a document changes from a project document to a note, and back again, the Status flag setting is preserved. Previously, the Importance setting would overwrite it during the conversion. PR #1030.
- Item labels, Status labels, and other labels on the GUI are now run through a "simplify" function before being accepted. This functions strips out all whitespaces and consecutive whitespaces and replace them with single plain whitespaces. This is a safer format to store in XML, and also makes sure there aren't invisible characters floating around in the labels. PR #1038.
- Due to the changes to how drag and drop works, there are no longer any restrictions on folders and documents. Only root folders remain restricted in terms of moving. Root folders can only be reordered with the Move Up and Move Down commands. PR #1047.
- The label for the highlighting of redundant spaces in the Preferences dialog has been updated to better reflect what it does. Issue #1043. PR #1046.
- The New Project Wizard will now try to check if the path selected for the new project can actually be used before letting the user proceed to the next page. Issue #1058. PR #1062.
Internationalisation
- Dutch translations have been added by Martijn van der Kleijn (@mvdkleijn). PR #1027.
Functionality
- Documents that are missing in the project index when a project is opened are automatically re-indexed. This also handles cases where the cached index is missing. PR #1039.
Installation and Packaging
- Python 3.6 is no longer supported. PR #1004.
- Ubuntu 18.04 packages will no longer be released, due to dropping Python 3.6. Issue #1005. PR #1014.
Project File Format
- The item nodes in the content section of the main project XML file have been compacted. It now consists of a main item node and meta and a name node. All settings have been made attributes of one of these three nodes, except the item label which is the text value of the name node. The file format version has been bumped to 1.4. Issue #995. PR #993.
- Both Importance and Status flag values are now saved to the project file. This means if a document changes layout, the value is no longer lost. PR #1030.
Code Improvements
- The linting settings have been updated to select between mutually exclusive options in pycodestyle. PR #1014.
- The Tokenizer class has been converted to an abstract base class. PR #1026.
- The class handling Status and Importance flags has been completely rewritten. The flags are now handled using a unique random key as reference rather than relying on the text of the label itself. This makes it a lot easier to rename them as there is no need to update project items. PR #1034.
- Many of the decisions regarding where items are allowed to belong has been delegated to the NWItem class that holds the item. Some is also handled by the NWTree class that holds the project tree. A new maintenance function in the NWTree class will also ensure that the meta data of an item is correct and up to date. This is especially important after an item has been moved, but is also checked when items are initially loaded. PRs #1031 and #1054.
- Item handles are now generated using the standard library random number generator. The new handles have the same format as the old algorithm, so they are compatible. PR #1044.