Version 2.7 Beta 1

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

• The TypIcons icon set has been dropped and all individual icon files removed. Instead, three new icon themes have been added in a total of nine different variations. These icon themes are kept in single files and generated from official sources. They are also colourised at runtime using the GUI theme colours for consistency. Issue #2159. PRs #2171, #2174, #2177, #2178 and #2203.
• Support for Story Structure comments have been added. These are special in-text comments that can be used for analysing the story structure using various writing techniques. The comments are indexed by novelWriter and can be included in manuscripts as well as exported to CSV files from the Outline View for use with spread sheet software. Idea and documentation by Alan Langford (@instancezero). Issues #1784, #2288, #2289 and #2296. PRs #2255, #2284, #2293, #2295 and #2298.

Improvements

• The thickness of the editor cursor can now be set in Preferences. Issue #2219. PR #2230.
• The Novel View has been rewritten from scratch using a model/view framework. Several minor issues were resolved in the process. Issues #942 and #2253. PR #2272.
• The logic of where new documents are added in the project tree has been rewritten and improved. The algorithm should now avoid adding chapters within chapters when a scene inside a chapter is selected. Otherwise the behaviour should be similar to before, but it will now also apply the same logic when new documents are created from templates. Issue #2260. PR #2302.
• Dialogue highlighting should now work a little better for single quoted dialogue when it encounters apostrophes in the same text. Issue #2271. PR #2300.
• Quoted text is no longer highlighted as dialogue in the editor when the document is a project note. This is consistent with how the viewer and manuscript tool work. Issue #2297. PR #2299.

Documentation

• Internationalisation for the documentation is now properly supported in the code base, and new contributions are possible. Discussion #1834. PRs #2224 and #2227.

Internationalisation

• French translation files for the documentation were added by @Karduin. PR #2226.

Packaging and Installation

• The move to Qt6 is complete, and the new minimum requirement is Qt 6.4. Issues #864, #1142, #2192, #2193, #2194 and #2195. PRs #2184, #2187, #2190, #2191, #2196, #2204, #2301 and #2306.
• Support for Python 3.9 has been dropped. Due to the Qt6 change, older distros are no longer supported. The oldest Ubuntu release still supported is 24.04. PR #2182.
• The Windows release now uses a custom novelWriter.exe launcher rather than calling the Python exe directly with novelWriter.pyw as an argument. This means novelWriter can also be launched from its install folder, and desktop shortcuts created directly. It also simplifies the registry entries. PRs #2197, #2198 and #2199.
• The Appdata XML files used with AppImage releases has been updated and broken links fixed. PR #2229.
• RPM packages are now available for the 2.6.3 release on Fedora 41 and 42. Several minor adjustments to the code base has been made to make the packaging process easier for the 2.7 release. The Fedora releases are maintained by Benson Muite (@bkmgit). Issues #907, #2276 and #2303. PRs #2305 and #2307.
• The shebang from the launch script on Windows has been removed. Issue #1284. PR #2280.

Code Improvements

• The log output now obeys the NO_COLOR and FORCE_COLOR environment variables. PR #2228.
• The CI/CD pipeline now runs type checking on the code base using Pyright. PR #2279.
• The CI/CD pipeline now uses Ruff to check code style and format. PRs #2281, #2282 and #2287.
• The code base has been updated to conform to new linting rules. PR #2201.