Version 2.2 RC 1

[vkbo]

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.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Revert the change of keyboard shortcut to delete a project tree item made in 2.2 Beta 1 as it blocks certain features in the editor. This is a regression. PR 1616.

Features

• The old References panel under the Document Viewer has been replaced with a completely new widget with a lot more features. The Back-references panel is still there, but is now a scrollable list with a lot more information. In addition, tabs for each category of tags are available when there are tags defined for them. These panels list all available tags, with a good deal of information about them that may be useful to the writer, as well as buttons to open them in the viewer or editor. Issues Improve the reference panel #925 and Notes overview panel #998. PR Add a new tags and references panel #1606.
• Multi-select is now possible in the project tree, with some limitations. Drag and drop is only permitted if the selected items have the same parent item. Any other drag and drop selection will be cancelled and the user notified. A new context menu has been added for the case when multiple items are selected, with a reduced set of options that can be collectively applied to them. Issues Drag and drop multiple documents #1549 and Multiselect for labeling #1592. PR Add multi selection to project tree #1612.
• The "Scroll Past End" setting in Preferences has been added back in. It is slightly different than the old one, as this one uses the Qt Plain Text Editor implementation, which has some side effects some users may want to avoid. Issue Add an option to disable centre on scroll #1602. PR Bring back the "Scroll past end" setting #1605.
• For Windows users, there is now an "Add Dictionaries" tool in the Tools menu where new spell check dictionaries can be added. Links are provided to sources for these dictionaries, and a file selector tool to import the files into novelWriter. Issue Spell check tool and adding dictionaries #982. PR Add a tool to download spell check dictionaries, alternative 2 #1611.
• You can now update the name of a document by right-clicking on any heading inside the document and select "Set as Document Name". This will open the Rename dialog with the text of the heading pre-filled. Issue changing scene title and item name simultaneously #1503. PR Add a context menu entry to set item name from heading #1614.
• A new special comment, called "Short" can be added to Project Notes. They are identical to Synopsis comments, and are in fact just an alias for them. The "Short Description" will be displayed alongside the tags in the new panel under the Document Viewer. Issues Tag description feature #1617 and Rename "brief" to "summary" #1621. PRs Tag description feature #1617, Add "summary" to the insert menu #1619 and All good things are three, apparently #1622.

Usability

• The feature to auto select word under cursor no longer uses the default Qt implementation, and has instead been implemented by iterating backward and forward in the text to find the nearest word boundaries. It will stop on characters that aren't Unicode alphanumeric as per Python's definition. Toggling markup will also move the cursor to after the markup if it was already at the end of the word. Otherwise it remains within the word at the same position. The word is not selected after formatting if it wasn't selected before. If no selection was made, and no word is auto selected, the formatting tags are inserted in-place with the cursor in the middle. Issues Embed markup gracefully when formatting a single auto-selected word #1333 and Formatting buttons should always insert formatting symbols #1598. PR Improve how formatting is applied in the editor #1600.
• The auto complete context menu is now only triggered on actual user input consisting of adding or removing a single character. PR UI usability fixes #1601.
• Various improvements to the visibility of the cursor when the dimensions of the editor changes have been added. Like for instance keeping the cursor visible when opening or closing the Viewer panel, or toggling Focus Mode. Issues When editor width changes, keep the cursor in view #1302 and Losing scroll pos when entering/exiting Focus Mode after having scrolled #1478. PR Improve cursor visibility features #1608.
• The Manuscript Build dialog now has a button to open the output folder. Issue Show a button to open file manager at the manuscript build path #1554. PR Add a button to open manuscript build folder #1613.

Code Improvements

• Improve test coverage. PR Clean up config and improve project tree test coverage #1607.

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This discussion was created from the release Version 2.2 RC 1.