Version 2.7 RC 1

Release Notes

This is a release candidate 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

• It is now possible to set character count as the main statistics displayed on the GUI instead of word count. The setting is available under the "Appearance" section in Preferences. Issue #1657. PR #2323.
• Comments can now be marked as "Manuscript Notes" with the %Note.term: syntax. The term is a free form value that is displayed alongside the note when exported to the manuscript. Each term is also added as a column in exports from the Outline View. Issue #1133. PR #2346.
• A completer drop down menu has been added to comments as well in the editor. It is triggered when a new line starts with %. It will show the options of Synopsis, Short, Story and Note, and when a period is added after the latter two, show a list of previously used Story and Note keys. Issue #1784. PR #2290.

Improvements

• The dialogue colour of the Snazzy Light syntax theme has changed from yellow to blue, which should make it easier to read. PR #2336.
• The Snazzy Light theme has also been added as a GUI theme. PR #2334.
• The auto-generated title page for new projects should now make a little more sense in terms of default values filled in for the author. PR #2333.
• The new project form on the Welcome dialog now remembers the previous author name filled in, so there should be no need to type it again every time. PR #2333.
• Project name and author name values are now also used for new example projects. PR #2333.
• The narrator break symbol settings for dialogue have been changed from a free text field to a dropdown list of dashes. This helps to avoid misunderstandings where the field was populated with other symbols, like quote symbols (see #2320). Issue #2324. PR #2327.
• A splash screen is now shown at startup, providing some information about the initialisation steps the startup script is running before the GUI is launched. Since loading system fonts can be quote heavy, this at least gives some user feedback to users running on systems where there is a significant delay. In particular, there is a long delay when loading fonts with poor Unicode support, in which case the Qt library will look for replacement glyphs when the symbols are first encountered. Previously, the delay happened when the Welcome dialog was being drawn, since this is the first time a non-Ascii Unicode character is used. Now these Unicode characters are probed when the config is loaded, with progress output on the splash screen. Issue #2315. PR #2316.

Bugfixes

• Moving a note between root folders of a different type will now update the class the tags defined within the note are associated with. This association is used to populate the tag auto-completion in the editor. Issue #2330. PR #2343.
• The story structure comments now appear under the correct column when exported to CSV from the Outline View. Issue #2313. PR #2343.
• A new unique ID is now assigned to new example projects. Creating multiple example projects would previously retain the original ID, causing the Welcome dialog to override them rather than list them as unique projects. PR #2333.
• In Qt6, or probably in PyQt6, the datetime type from Python was truncated to a date variable when localising it. This has been fixed by explicitly converting the Python datetime to a QDateTime before passing it to the PyQt wrapper. This is probably a bug in PyQt6. Issue #2325. PR #2326.
• A missing Remix icon for project copy has been added. Issue #2314. PR #2317.

Accessibility

• Trees and lists on the GUI have been assigned names so that screen readers can more easily identify them. Switches on the GUI have also been associated with their labels so the screen reader can pick up the label text. Icons on the project tree also have an accessibility label. Issues #2106 and #2107. PR #2337.
• Switches should now show a highlighted border when they have focus, and the toggle animation also now works properly when a switch is toggled using the keyboard. This should improve keyboard navigation. PR #2337.
• The default status and importance labels for new projects now use shapes for icons, to make the defaults more accessible for people with reduced colour vision. Issue #2332. PR #2333.

Code Improvements

• New tests have been added for the custom data models, using the Qt model tester framework that ensures the models have all the virtual methods implemented. PR #2331.