## Release Notes for 1.5 Beta 1

Released on 22 August 2021

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 make frequent backups.

This release introduces a new project file format, which has been given a file format version 1.3. The project file and index is updated automatically when you open the project, which means you can no longer open it in an older version of novelWriter.

You may also have to make a handful of changes in your novel documents as these are not updated automatically. However, the changes are minimal and in any case only affects the way your manuscript looks like when exported via the Build Novel Project tool. The details are described below.

#### Novel Document Layouts

The main change in this release is the significant simplification of document layouts. Previously, there were seven different layouts available for novel documents, in addition to the one layout for project notes. The original intention of these layouts were partially to define some default formatting behaviour when exporting your project, and partially a way to indicate whether a specific document was a partition, chapter or scene.

With this release, all the seven layouts for novel documents have been merged into a single layout called simply "Novel Document". The other layout for "Project Note" remains unchanged. The functionality provided by the various novel layouts have been implemented in other ways, and a few new formatting codes have been added to accommodate the formatting functionality lost with the removal of the layouts. They are all available in the Format and Insert menu.

The changes you need to make to your project should be limited to altering a handful of titles and maybe insert a page break code here and there. The only title formats you need to update are those for the main novel title and for your unnumbered chapters, if you have any.

Novel titles need to be altered from "# Novel Title" to "#! Novel Title" and unnumbered chapters from "## Chapter Name" or "## *Chapter Name" to "##! Chapter Name". That is all. For inserting page breaks, you can add a single line with the command "[NEW PAGE]" where you want the break to be inserted. As before, page breaks are automatically inserted in front of all partition and chapter titles.

You will find these changes described in more detail the documentation in the "Format 1.3 Changes" section.

#### GUI Changes

Due to the above changes, the GUI has been altered a bit. The main changes are in the project tree. These changes are also reflected in the details panel below the project tree, and to a lesser extent in the Outline tab.

The layouts were previously a way to indicate the purpose of a specific novel document, like whether it was a chapter or scene. With these layouts gone, the distinction is instead indicated by other visual means.

The project index will now record the level of the first header of your document, and select a different icon for documents with a partition, chapter or scene header. These are colour coded as green, red and blue respectively. This only works for the coloured icon themes. The project notes have also received a new icon, with a yellow colour code.

In addition, novel documents with a partition or chapter header will have the document label viewed as bold and underlined. This feature can be disabled in Preferences if you want a cleaner look in the project tree.

#### Other Changes

Several improvements have been made to the project index, which means the index will be automatically rebuilt when you open a project for the first time in the new version. You will get a notification about this.

The ODT export tool has also been improved. The code that writes out text paragraphs has been rewritten and now conforms more closely to the Open Document standard. Most of these improvements will not be noticeable to you as a user, but you may notice that the exported document will now allow multiple consecutive spaces. Previously, two spaces, or more, would be concatenated into a single space in the exported document.

See also the Releases page.