Version 26.1 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.

Note: There are no longer any Mac releases produced for novelWriter. See #2618.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• The URL highlighting now also works if the URL has an exclamation point. Issue Broken link url #2693. PR Add exclamation point to URL regex and update themes credits #2695.
• The margin settings in Manuscript Build settings now correctly shows icons to indicate margin type. PR Build settings update #2647.

Features

• The novelWriter version number is now year-based. Instead of the next release being 2.9, it is now 26.1 or 2026.1 as shown in the app. Discussion Changing version numbers for novelWriter #2667. PR Switch to year-based versioning and update version info widget #2669.
• Added the Lucide icon theme as a user-selectable icon theme. Issue Add Lucide icon theme #2605. PR Add Lucide icon theme #2632.
• It is now possible to split a document via text selection, or at the cursor position, from the right-click menu in the editor. Issues Create document from selected text #1486 and Split at Cursor into New Document #2571. PR Add split document by cursor feature #2688.
• The shortcuts Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down now move the cursor between paragraphs in the editor. Issue Navigating per sentence or paragraph #2635. PR Add shortcuts to move between paragraphs #2679.
• The size of the different heading levels can now be adjusted in the Manuscript Build settings tool. Issue Configure Headings text format #2439. PR Allow setting sizes of manuscript headings #2650.
• Added a setting for manuscripts to use blank lines instead of margins in manuscript document formats. Issue Allow using empty lines as paragraph separators in manuscript #2648. Discussion No Paragraphs in final build? #2646. PR Allow using empty lines as margins in manuscript #2649.
• A new "Heading Format" sections is available in Manuscript Build settings. The settings for bold and colourised headings have been moved there, and a new setting to make them uppercase has been added. PR Build settings update #2647.

Improvements

• Added word or character units to count tooltip labels in project tree and novel view. PR Improve screen reader support #2698.
• The note document associated with a reference can now be opened in the editor from the right-click menu. Issue Installing 2.7 on Ubuntu 22/jammy #2448. PR Improve opening documents from search and editor #2697.
• The Shift+Enter shortcut now also works in the project search, and opens the document in the viewer. However, it cannot show the actual search result since the search itself is performed on the raw plain text document and doesn't apply to the generated document in the viewer. Issue Add Shift+Enter shortcut to project search #2661. PR Improve opening documents from search and editor #2697.
• Backward searches in the editor can now also iterate backwards in project documents if the option to continue search in the next document is enabled. Issue Shift+F3 is stuck in current file #1451. PR Allow backwards search also to loop through documents #2696.
• Error handling when encountering file system issues has been improved and hardened. It should further prevent application crashes when encountering such issues. Issues Show a dialog box when project files fail to save #2529 and OneDrive Sync and use between PC and Mac #2671. PRs Harden I/O handling to account for PermissionError from pathlib #2675 and Improve error handling and reporting #2683.
• The document header in the editor and viewer panels have been improved. An issue with clipping of the descending characters have been fixed, and each part of the path can be clicked to highlight it in the project tree. Issues Clickable Breadcrumb Navigation in Editor Header #2664 and Margin Error For Tall Letters in Heading #2674. PR Update document headers #2677.
• Added a setting in Preferences that turns off scaling of headings in the editor, which is more consistent with plain text where all text is the same size. Issue Header sizes Editor view #2636. PR Add heading size setting for editor #2670.
• Improved the way version numbers are shown in the Welcome dialog, allows the selected project to be opened with the Enter key, and using the arrow keys will move the selection up and down without first having to switch focus to the recent projects list. PR Improve Welcome dialog #2668.

Accessibility

• Improved screen reader support for remaining buttons, and improved reading of settings pages in various dialogs. Issue Add accessible/tooltip labels for all buttons #2338. PR Improve screen reader support #2698.
• Two new light colour themes for colour blindness has been added. They are "Today Deuteranopia" for red/green colour blindness, and "Today Tritanopia" for blue colour blindness. Issue Add better theme options for colour blindness #2689. PR Add colourblindness themes #2694.
• Added an option in Preference to show dotted lines under formatting codes in the editor. This is a visual aid in addition to highlighting colours. Issue Add accessibility settings for syntax highlighting in preferences #2691. PR Add option for dotted underline for formatting tags and modifiers #2692.

Internationalisation

• Updated translation files with some new translations since the 2.8 release. PR Update translation files #2699.

Other Changes

• The fun Discworld themed titles shown on error windows have been extended with new titles to randomly select from. PR Update the error window titles #2684.
• PDM has replaced UV as the dependency manager for development and testing. This should not matter to end users. Issue Replace uv with pdm in project tooling and docs #2685. PR Packaging updates #2678.

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This discussion was created from the release Version 26.1 Beta 1.