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
**General Changes**
* novelWriter now requires Python 3.9 and Qt 5.15 as a minimum. That means Ubuntu 20.04 and older
are no longer supported for the Debian packages. Users on Ubuntu 20.04 and equivalent Linux
distros must use the AppImage. PRs 1826 and 1833.
**Major Features**
* Status and Importance icons can now be assigned a shape in addition to a colour. Issue 1786.
PRs 1810 and 1819.
* Footnotes have been added. They use a modified comment format for specifying the footnote text,
and a shortcode for inserting the footnote into the text. They are linked via a key. If the
footnote is inserted via the **Insert** menu, a unique key is generated. Issue 342. PR 1832.
* Comments in general now support formatting, so format tags work just like in regular text. This
was needed for footnotes, but has been expanded to include all comments. PR 1832.
* Two new themes have been added. Dracula is available as a set for both the GUI and the editor.
Snazzy Light is available for syntax only, but works well with the default light GUI theme.
PR 1840.
* Character dialogue highlighting has been completely redesigned. The highlighting rule now
specifically relates to dialogue, and not just quoted text in general. To that effect, more rules
for detecting what is and isn't dialogue has been added. This is designed to support difference
between dialogue conventions in different languages. Issues 1770 and 1771. PR 1864.
* The font settings in Preferences now considers the full range of font options, in particular font
style and weight. The changes include the font size in these settings, so the additional setting
for font size has been removed. Use the font dialog to pick size as well. Due to this removal,
the font size has been reset to default and must be set again by the user. Issue 1733. PR 1881.
* The document viewer and the manuscript preview now uses a completely new class to generate the
formatted text. The old method used an outdated HTML format as the go-between, which restricted
what formatting could be applied. The main noticeable change to users at the moment should be the
size of headings, that now match the size in the editor. Issue 1882. PR 1892.
**Improvements**
* The default dark theme has been redesigned to match the GUI theme a little better, and is now
also consistent with the default light themes. PRs 1836 and 1840.
* Special comments now have a different text colour than plain comments. PR 1836.
* The various Tomorrow themes are now a little more consistent in what colours are used for which
components. More variation has also been added. PR 1840.
* The Tango theme has been updated. PR 1840.
* The last cursor position is now always saved when a document is closed in the editor, even if the
content has not been changed. PR 1849.
* The settings for first line indent have now been extended to allow setting how deep the indents
are and whether or not to indent the first paragraph after a heading or break. The settings have
also moved from being Open Document specific to the general formatting tab for manuscripts.
PR 1857.
* Preserving in-paragraph line breaks is now a general Manuscript setting that applies to all
output formats. PR 1891.
* The Manuscript builds now also uses the full font settings of the selected output font, not just
the font family and size option. Since the size option has been merged into the general font
choice, the separate font size setting has been dropped and users must set it again. PR 1891.
* It is now possible to disable the usage of the font selection dialog from your operating system.
At least on Linux Gnome desktops, the system's font dialog lacks a lot of the selection options
available in the font dialog provided with Qt. PR 1891.
**Bugfixes**
* Fixed an issue where Manuscript dialogs would be left open if the project was closed. PR 1844.
* First line indents are no longer reset after a comment. Issue 1852. PR 1857.
**Packaging**
* Minimal zip file release packages can no longer be built from the package utility script. The zip
file needed for building the Windows installer is still available. PR 1826.
* Added build packages for AARCH64 on MacOS. It seems some dependencies still prevents it from
being installed cleanly without requiring some virtualisation feature, but it works. PR 1829.
* AppImages are now released with Python 3.12. PR 1829.
**Other Changes**
* A new GUI theme setting for error text has been added. It is used when error messages need to be
displayed on the GUI. PR 1880.
**Code Improvements**
* The behaviour of dialogs across various platforms has been unified and improved a little to
ensure more consistent behaviour. It is mostly related to modality and z-order. There are still
limitations due to platform restrictions, like non-modal dialogs being stuck on top on Linux
Wayland. PR 1844.
* Some GUI components have been improved and refactored to rely more on signals and slots rather
than reaching into each other's classes and calling methods. This is a little more robust.
PR 1849.
* The text tokenizer used to parse the formatting codes in novelWriter has been refactored and
improved. In particular, multi-line paragraphs are now processed during the second pass of
tokenization rather than when the final format is applied. This allows a much more compact format
of the token data, and avoid potential inconsistencies between the various output formats.
PR 1885.
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