Version 2.6 Beta 1

[vkbo]

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.

Detailed Changelog

New Features

• Added PDF build format. Issue Add a PDF output option #2046. PR Add PDF output for manuscript #2048.
• Added DocX (MS Word) format. Issue Export to DOCX #1537. PR Add DocX support #2056.
• The Build settings tool has the following changes: Ability to control page break and centring of main titles, an option to disable styling for headings altogether, and the ODT section has been generalised to apply to all document formats. Issue Modify build tool to support heading formatting #2023. PR Extend heading styling options #2045.
• Text and heading margin can now be control in the Manuscript Build tool. Issue Modify build tool to support heading formatting #2023. PR Expose text margin settings in Manuscript Build #2051.
• Word counts and other such statistics can now be inserted into the manuscript. This is done through new insert actions in the Insert menu, and processed at build time. Issue Allow inserting word counts etc in manuscript #2024. PR Allow inserting stats in documents #2073.
• Forced line breaks can now be inserted as a shortcode. This is useful when line breaks in paragraphs are ignored when building the manuscript. Issue Add a hard line break shortcode #1991. PR Add forced line breaks feature #2063.
• A new @mentions keyword has been added that can list any tag in the project as being mentioned in the current section. These are listed separately from tags present in the story section. Issue Add a mentions kewword #1822. PR Add support for mentions references #2064.
• Tags in novel documents can now be referenced with the @story keyword. Issue Tag Definitions in a Novel Document #1990. PR Add support for referencing tags in novel documents #2072.
• URLs starting with http/https are now recognised and clickable in the editor, viewer, and manuscript preview. Issue Include a possibility to have clickable URLs in notes. #1426. PR Add Url recognition and formatting #2067.
• Added dialogue highlighting for Portuguese and Polish dialogue styles. Issues Support narrator breaks in PT-BR in dialogue highlighting #2066 and Add syntax to auto-replace with horizontal bar #2070. Related to Epic: Refactor Quotes and Dialogue #1773. PRs Rewrite narrator break for dialogue highlighting #2068, Add a dialogue parser #2079, Update dialogue handling again #2081 and Improve dialogue highlighting after feedback #2082.
• Four dashes in the editor are now replaced by a horizontal bar. This is useful as a replacement symbol for em dash when using dialogue highlighting to avoid triggering it. The horizontal bar is replaced with an em dash in the manuscript. Issue Add syntax to auto-replace with horizontal bar #2070. PR Add a dialogue parser #2079.
• Manuscript Build settings can now be duplicated. Issue Build Tool: copy build setting #1931. PR Add build copy feature #2084.
• Page breaks can optionally be made visible in the Manuscript preview. PR Make page breaks visible in manuscript preview #2086.
• The document status label can now be selected in the Outline View. Issue Outline view columns: status #1909. PR Add status column to project outline #2088.
• The document viewer now has an edit button to open the document in the editor. Issue Add a button to edit viewer document #1963. PR Various GUI improvements #2089.

User Interface

• The Manuscript Build settings have now been moved into a single scrollable page, using the same layout as in Preferences. The heading and filtering pages are still separate forms, as they are of a more complex nature. PR Refactor build settings #2031.
• The currently open document in the editor is now highlighted in the project tree, just like it is in the novel view. Issue Project Tree View: Edit Indicator #1981. PR Improve document editing #2077.
• The details panel in the Outline view is now resizable. PR Refactor and clean up GUi code #2078.

Improvements

• Add an option to ignore a word in the spell checker. An ignored word is ignored only for the current writing session. PR Improve spell checking #2030.
• Word counts and other such statistics is now exported as custom variables to ODT files, and can be inserted in the text in LibreOffice, and similar. Issue Always make word counts etc. available in odt output as variables #2033. PR Add word counts to ODT output #2035.

Code Improvements

• Added Python 3.13 coverage to ensure the new Python release is supported. Issue Add Python 3.13 support #2040. PR Add Python 3.13 #2044.
• Preparation for Qt6: Clean up Qt enums. PR Clean up Qt enums #2025.
• Preparation for Qt6: Replace Qt regular expression tools with the internal Python re module for markup processing and syntax highlighting. It is both slightly faster, and there are issues with text encoding in at least some versions of Qt6 or PyQt6. PRs Replace Qt RegEx with Python RegEx #2028 and Don't use "match" as a variable #2043.
• Preparation for Qt6: Added a wrapper function for connecting signals to slots that has a different function signature. Python lambdas generate warnings inn Qt6. PR Refactor main menu #2075.
• Refactored manuscript formats and moved most of the processing to the Tokenizer class to simplify the format classes and also make them more consistent. PRs Refactor text formats modules #2060, Improve text document formatting #2061 and Fix counting error #2062.
• The document builder has been refactored to support more generalised format classes. PR Refactor document builder #2047.
• Action parent assignment has been rafactored in the main menu. Refactor main menu #2075.
• Raw text format output has been refactored and reduced to just appending documents. PR Simplify collection of raw text #2087.

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This discussion was created from the release Version 2.6 Beta 1.