Veronica Berglyd Olsen
9cd2bb232b
* Bump version and update release notes and changelog * Delete old release notes
83 lines
5.6 KiB
HTML
83 lines
5.6 KiB
HTML
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<h2>Release Notes for 1.5 RC 1</h2>
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<p><i>Released on 10 September 2021</i></p>
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<p>This is a release candidate of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes.
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Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you make frequent
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backups.</p>
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<p>From this release on, Debian packages will be provided for Ubuntu and Debian users. A new
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<a href="https://launchpad.net/~vkbo/+archive/ubuntu/novelwriter">PPA</a> has also been created.
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Adding this will allow users to install and update novelWriter automatically on Ubuntu and Debian.
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</p>
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<p>Release 1.5 introduces a new project file format, which has been given a file format version
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1.3. The project file and index is updated automatically when you open the project, which means you
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can no longer open it in an older version of novelWriter.</p>
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<p>You may also have to make a handful of changes in your novel documents as novelWriter will not
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make any automated changes to your actual text. However, the changes are minimal and in any case
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only affects the way your manuscript looks like when exported via the Build Novel Project tool. The
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details are described below.</p>
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<h4>Novel Document Layouts</h4>
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<p>The main change in this release is the significant simplification of document layouts.
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Previously, there were seven different layouts available for novel documents, in addition to the
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one layout for project notes. The original intention of these layouts were partially to define some
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default formatting behaviour when exporting your project, and partially as a way to indicate
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whether a specific document was a partition, chapter or scene.</p>
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<p>With this release, all the seven layouts for novel documents have been merged into a single
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layout called simply "Novel Document". The other layout, "Project Note", remains unchanged. The
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functionality provided by the various novel layouts have been implemented in other ways, and a few
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new formatting codes have been added to accommodate the formatting functionality lost with the
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removal of the layouts. They are all available in the Format and Insert menu.</p>
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<p>The changes you need to make to your project should be limited to altering a handful of titles
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and maybe insert a page break code here and there. The only title formats you need to update are
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those for the main novel title and for your unnumbered chapters, if you have any.</p>
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<p>Novel titles need to be altered from "# Novel Title" to "#! Novel Title" and unnumbered chapters
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from "## Chapter Name" or "## *Chapter Name" to "##! Chapter Name". That is all. For inserting page
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breaks, you can add a single line with the command "[NEW PAGE]"" where you want the break to be
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inserted. As before, page breaks are automatically inserted in front of all partition and chapter
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titles.</p>
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<p>You will find these changes described in more detail in the documentation in the
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"<a href="https://novelwriter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage_projectformat.html#a-prjfmt-1-3">Format 1.3 Changes</a>"
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section.
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<h4>GUI Changes</h4>
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<p>Due to the above changes, the GUI has been altered a bit. The main changes are in the project
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tree. These changes are also reflected in the details panel below the project tree, and to a lesser
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extent in the Outline tab.</p>
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<p>The layouts were previously a way to indicate the purpose of a specific novel document, like
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whether it was a chapter or scene. With these layouts gone, the distinction is instead indicated by
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other visual means.</p>
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<p>The project index will now record the level of the first header of your document, and select a
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different icon for documents with a partition, chapter or scene header. These are colour coded as
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green, red, and blue respectively. The project notes have also received a new icon, with a yellow
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colour code. Due to this change, the grey icon themes have been removed.</p>
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<p>In addition, novel documents with a partition or chapter header will have the document label
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viewed as bold and underlined. This feature can be disabled in Preferences if you want a cleaner
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look in the project tree.</p>
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<h4>Other Changes</h4>
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<p>Several improvements have been made to the project index, which means the index will be
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automatically rebuilt when you open a project for the first time in the new version. You will get a
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notification about this.</p>
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<p>The ODT export tool has also been improved. The code that writes out text paragraphs has been
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rewritten and now conforms more closely to the Open Document standard. Most of these improvements
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will not be noticeable to you as a user, but you may notice that the exported document will now
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allow multiple consecutive spaces. Previously, two spaces, or more, would be concatenated into a
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single space in the exported document.</p>
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<p>The internal spell check tool has been removed. If you want spell checking, you must install the
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Spell Enchant tool. The internal spell checker was only ever added because the Python package for
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Spell Enchant was not available on 64-bit Windows. This was corrected over a year ago. The main
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issue with the internal spell checker was that it only included English, and the large dictionary
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files had to be shipped with novelWriter.</p>
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<p>Finally, a PDF version of the documentation should now be shipped with your install package. If
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it is available, a "User Manual (PDF)" option should be visible in the Help menu. This should give
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you access to the documentation also when you don't have an active internet connection.</p>
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<p><i>See also the <a href="https://github.com/vkbo/novelWriter/releases">Releases</a> page.</i></p>
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