vkbo/novelWriter v2.0rc1

Version 2.0 RC 1

on GitHub

Release Notes

This is a release candidate 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.

Note: As of the 2.0 release, novelWriter requires Qt 5.10 or higher and Python 3.7 or higher.

Detailed Changelog

Note: This will no longer be release 1.7, but 2.0 instead due to the major changes to the User Interface. PR #1146.

Features

• The add new documents feature has been made a little smarter and now tries to choose whether the added document should be a sibling or a child to the selected document. Issue #1107. PR #1110.
• A folder in the Project Tree can now be converted to a Novel Document or Project Note from the item's context menu. This makes sense now that documents can have child items. Issue #1071. PR #1128.
• All child elements of an item in the Project Tree can now be collectively expanded or collapsed from the context menu. The same action can be triggered on the entire tree from the menu button at the top. Issue #1122. PR #1129.
• If using the auto-insert feature for spaces next to punctuation designed for for instance French, any existing spaces are first stripped before the correct space character is added. Some users find it hard to unlearn the reflex to type the space. Issue #1061. PR #1131.
• The Project Tree now has Quick Links for navigating directly between root folders. This is convenient for very large projects. Issue #1137. PR #1165.
• It is now possible to filter out entire root folders on the Build Tool. Issue #1138. PR #1168.

Bugfixes

• Fix a typo in the Lorem Ipsum tool and set a max width for the views bar. PR #1065.
• The language set in the Build Tool is now properly exported to Open Document files. Previously, it would be set to English regardless of the user's selection. Issue #1073. PR #1077.
• Since the text editor cursor extends to the right of its position in the window, it would disappear under the right-hand margin if it reached the edge. A minimum margin of the width of the cursor has been added to the editor, and the same value subtracted from the margin of the viewbox. Thus, the cursor no longer disappears. Issue #1112. PR #1113.
• The Shift+Enter key combination no longer inserts a Unicode line separator in the text editor. Issue #1150. PR #1151.
• Fixed an issue where idle time would not be properly reset when a new project was created. Issue #1149. PR #1153.
• Removed the context menu that would appear on the Views Bar, from which the bar could be hidden. This is some feature imposed by the Qt library, and it is not wanted. Issue #1147. PR #1153.

Known Issues

• An attempt has been made to fix the missing mime icon for novelWriter projects on Linux. The newer versions of Nautilus don't seem to display the correct icon due to some changes in the way icons are extracted from the theme. The icon displays fine in other places. PR #1068.

Internationalisation

• Norwegian and US English translations have been updated. PR #1170.

User Interface

• The New Project Wizard has been updated based on user feedback. The "Working Title" setting is now called "Project Name". The number of root folders one can create on the options page has been reduced to the standard ones. An option to add sample notes has been added, and the option to generate chapter folders has been removed. The "Minimal Project" option also no longer creates folders. An Archive root folder is automatically added to all new projects, and a Trash folder is added to custom projects. PR #1067.
• The border around a lot of Widgets on the main GUI have been removed. PR #1069.
• The Views Bar has been updated since the beta re;ease with better icons, tooltips, and an expanding menu on the Settings button. The Build Tool can now also be accessed from the Views Bar. PR #1069.
• The editor theme setting in Preferences has been moved back to the General tab where users seem to expect to find it. PR #1069.
• A toolbar has been added to the Outline View where the user can select which Novel folder to view. A refresh button for a forced reload of the selected Novel folder has been added, and the menu to select which columns to show has been added to a new button. This makes it easier to find for users instead of having to right-click the table header. Issue #1105. PRs #1063, #1094, and #1111.
• The Rebuild Outline and Auto-Update Outline options have been removed from the Main Menu. PR #1063.
• The Project Tree has been redesigned. The header is now hidden, and the columns resize automatically. A toolbar has been added with buttons for moving items up and down in the tree, a button for adding new files, folders and root folders, and a menu button for further options affecting the whole tree. These features have mostly bee removed from the Main Menu. PR #1079.
• The context menu of the Project Tree has been rewritten completely. It is now possible to set importance and status directly from this menu. Part of issue #973. PRs #1079 and #1105.
• The Edit Item dialog has been replaced with a simple Edit Label dialog. Most of the features handled by the old dialog have been moved to the Project Tree context menu. PR #1082.
• The Novel View has been redesigned to match the new Outline View and Project Tree. The header is now hidden, and the columns auto-size. The third column can be selected from a set of options, or be hidden entirely. A button with a menu can be used to select which Novel folder to show. Issue #1041. PR #1084.
• An arrow icon has been added behind each item in the Novel View. Clicking it, will pop up a tooltip showing the collected meta data for the heading the item represents. PR #1088.
• The Project Details dialog now supports multiple novel folders. Issue #1078. PRs #1130 and #1167.
• The Split and Merge tools have been rewritten to work with the new feature of allowing documents to have child documents. The tools have also had more options added to them. The feature is now accessible through the Project Tree item's context menu, and is no longer available from the Main Menu. Issues #1072 and #1032. PRs #1148 and #1154.

Installation and Packaging

• AppImage distribution has been added by @Ryex. Issue #1091. PR #1092.

Code Improvements

• A new test project generator function has been added to replace the dependency on the New Project tools in the app itself. This ensures that changing the in-app feature doesn't affect the entire test suite. Over time, this generator function should also replace the minimal sample project saved in the test suite. PR #1067.
• The index class has been rewritten. The index data is now stored in a hierarchy of objects rather than a set of nested dictionaries. The itemIndex holds all the data collected from the project, and the tagsIndex is a reverse lookup index for linking tags back to where they are used. The reading/writing of the index to disk between sessions is now handled by pack/unpack functions in each object. The index will be regenerated when the user first opens a project as it has been completely restructured. PR #1074.
• The index instance is now an instance of the project class, not the main GUI. PR #1074.
• The Outline View has been restructured into a single parent widget in the same manner as the Novel View was in the previous pre-release. Related to #1041. PR #1063.
• A lot of main GUI objects have been given new names in the code to better represent what they do. PR #1081.
• The converter for the old 1.0 project structure has been simplified. Mostly to reduce the amount of code and number of translation labels needed for it. It now produces a single error if something went wrong. PR #1083.
• A number of unused icons have been removed from the code base. PR #1164.
• All checks for Qt versions below 5.10 have been removed. PR #1174.

Not Implemented

• An idea to make the indexer run in the global thread pool was not implemented. Issue #1076.
• Feature #997 is now obsolete due to the changes made to the Edit Item dialog in #1082.
• Feature #1106 is not implemented. It proposes to hide the option to select Novel folder if there is only one. We will see if this is really needed based on user feedback.