Nisus Software, Inc.

These are the release notes for an older version of Nisus Writer Express.
For current information, please see our version and release notes archive.


Changes For Version 2.7

New features:
  • Multikey keyboard shortcuts.
  • Added Full Screen editing mode (access using the "View" menu).
  • Leader tabs.
  • Attribute Dropper toolbar item lets you easily copy-paste attributes/styles.

    Minor additions:
  • Added more color customization to preferences.
  • Added native Sort Paragraph menus that properly preserve the attributes assigned to your text.
  • Added a handful of new menus:
    • Reorganized the Format menu and made additional style menus (like "Select Style Range") available.
    • Added "Convert To Unicode Code Points" and "Convert From Unicode Code Points" menus.
    • Added line spacing menus for standard spacings.
    • Added "New Document" and "Show Document Manager" items to our Dock menu.
    • Added "Remove Attribtues Except Styles"
    • Added "Edit Current Clipboard"
  • Show Invisibles now reveals additional non-printing characters.
  • Function key menu shortcuts now allow modifier keys (eg: shift) to be included.

    Footnotes and Endotes:
  • Optimization and stabilization of footnote/endnote engine (many fixes).
  • Better retention of footnote/endnote formatting and style when reading/writing RTF.
  • Fixed superfluous creation of footnote/endnote styles when pasting text or reading in a document.
  • Attributes found in styles are properly culled from footnotes/endnotes.
  • Word now properly shows that Endnote/Footnote style is applied in our RTF files.
  • Fixed: note style previews do not properly show attributes.
  • Footnotes in RTF files created by NeoOffice are no longer ignored.
  • Fixed handling of zero length footnotes.

    Styles:
  • Pasting in text with styles of the same name but different attributes now prompts the user on what to do.
  • Redundant attributes are properly stripped from styles loaded from files.
  • Fixed: the default font would sometimes be incorrectly introduced into style definitions.
  • Fixed: if text is pasted and adds styles to the document, undoing the paste does not remove those styles.
  • User can override super/sub-scripts that styles enforce.
  • Fixed a few crashes that could occur when changing (or undoing changes to) list styles.
  • Cleaned up our rather large preview swatches in the Styles palette.
  • Fixed: styles palette was not showing keyboard shortcuts.
  • Pasting text with a newline at the end would improperly clear the paragraph style from the typing attributes.
  • Fixed: applying paragraph styles to an empty paragraph would not change the style.
  • Applying languages can no longer automatically change a style's alignment or writing direction.
  • Fixed: attribute bubbles in the stylesheet view for paragraph indents show proper units now.
  • Fixed: changing the paragraph style from one that enforces a list style to one that does not bleeds unchangeable ruler indentations into the document.
  • Fixed: adding a style using the "based on selection" command does not properly pick up the list style.
  • Fixed: pasting a ruler with a list style applied onto a style does not properly transfer the list style.

    Tables:
  • Fixed: documents ending with a table sometimes did not show the table until an edit was made.
  • Fixed: attributes from empty table cells no longer bleed into adjacent cells when a file is saved.
  • Fixed: can't drag-drop text into table cells.
  • Fixed: keyboard navigation in tables properly scrolls new selection into view.
  • Fixed: table column resizing hotspots can become non-functional if the table width is contrained by the page/column.
  • Fixed: crash when undo/redo of table cell merging.
  • Can paste a single tab into multiple table cells now (allows easy creation of decimal aligned column).
  • Fixed: automatic page/section numbers did not always show the proper number if they were inside a table placed in a header/footer.
  • Inserting a table no longer gobbles up the following page/section break (if present).
  • Fixed issues when applying paragraph/list style changes to table cells.
  • Fixed: Copy Text Only always copies the whole table, even if only part of it is selected.
  • Fixed: table "Fit to Contents" did not account for cell padding. Also does a better job if all column headings can fit.
  • Fixed: documents starting with tables could have empty autosave names set.
  • If multiple cells were selected, text insertion did not always work.
  • Could get in a state where typing in a table cell would just continually overwrite a single character.
  • Fixed possible random errors in reading tables from RTF.
  • Fixed case where row heights could become larger when file was reopened after the user had manually adjusted the row height.
  • Cells sometimes drew normal character selection in addition to the full cell selection.
  • Fixed some cases where invalid selections could persist, causing operations to fail.

    Classic documents:
  • The text encoding popup is now shown when opening Classic documents (and is properly respected when fonts fail).
  • Fixed: extra returns (and some other chars) show up in footnotes that are from converted Classic documents.
  • Fixed: Classic files that used "\r\n" for newlines could cause crashes.
  • Classic styles without names no longer prevent files from opening.
  • Fixed: Classic documents would not open when font names could not be represented in the system text encoding.
  • Classic documents with corrupted text no longer prevent blocks of text from decoding properly.
  • Strip out some improper directionality characters from Classic files.
  • Fixed data loss for Classic documents with header list styles of more than 4 levels.
  • Fixed: Classic files that had proprietary Apple unicode grouping markers would cause font choosing weirdness.

    Macros:
  • The Macros menu now allows submenus.
  • Fixed: perl macro's arguments array ($ARGV) is properly filled (eg: "paste path" macro works again).
  • Saving a file to the macros folder now adds it to the macros menu immediately.
  • Fixed: opening and closing a perl macro no longer breaks it until Express is restarted.
  • Macros open up for editing up in Draft view with the "Macro" style set.
  • Our default macros have the required "use utf8" statements in them.
  • The "Save As Macro" menu now defaults the file format to Perl Macro or Menu Macro as appropriate.
  • Fixed: the Macros menu is not always properly sorted.

    Find and Replace:
  • Fixed: Find Next/Previous keyboard shortcuts work in the Find panel.
  • Fixed hangs (and other issues) when searching for patterns that match empty character ranges (eg: "^$").
  • Fixed matching problems when the start/end-of-line anchor (eg: the "^" and "$" grep/PowerFind characters) were used.
  • Fixed "ignore case" option not working for PowerFind.
  • Speedups for large find or replace all operations.
  • Added: can show/hide invisibles in the Find panel.
  • Fixed: Find window does not display arbitrary attributes from pasted text.
  • Fixed: using option-tab in the Find window properly insert a tab character.
  • Fixed: "Replace" and "Replace & Find" buttons did not work for zero length matches.

    File Format Compatibility (RTF):
  • Fixed: Ligature settings (use default, none, all) are not saved to RTF files properly.
  • Fixed: kerning changes were not faithfully saved to file.
  • Fixed: paragraphs starting with a hyperlink did not have their ruler read properly.
  • Fixed: if font was missing from an RTF file then we substituted Lucida Grande. Now we substitute the font that is set in the Nisus New File.
  • Fixed how Word did not respect our RTF paragraph level attributes (like alignment, style, etc) for headers, footers, and table cells.
  • Fixed: could use incorrect encoding when reading characters from file without any font applied (could garble characters).
  • Fixed: PICT graphics saved in RTF are no longer are ignored by Word.
  • Fixed improper bleeding of first line head indent from previous paragraphs when reading certain RTF files.
  • Fixed case where some head indents read improperly from RTF files.
  • Fixed: soft hyphens in files are no longer turned into weird characters when opened in Express.
  • Fixed reading of glyph IDs from RTF ("glid" controls).
  • We properly read old-style page/section numbers in RTF (eg: those specified by "chpgn" control instead of a field code).
  • Fixed case where tabs improperly stripped from ruler when reading from RTF (or copy-paste ruler).
  • Fixed: character attributes can bleed into list numbers from the previous paragraph.
  • Fixed: RTF files with damaged LinkBack objects can spill hex codes (or other random data) into document text.

    Additional bug fixes:
  • Fixed: Print and Save As PDF could yield partial documents when invoked from Draft view.
  • Fixed: if you are editing in a header/footer for a section that does not have the "different this section" option turned on, the Sections palette displayed and modified the wrong section.
  • Better preservation of attributes when pasting in attributed text.
  • Fixed: Document manager does not save column states or window location.
  • Headers and footers in new sections did not always have the proper Header/Footer style applied.
  • Fixed: document zoom saved in file is not always respected.
  • Fixed: if you save a file as HTML, then save it again, it would turn into plain text.
  • Fixed: changes to zoom are properly shown in the Zoom tag.
  • Fixed: if the Application Support folder is not readable/writable by Express, user could not create a new document.
  • Fixed: changing document views did not always scroll you to the same location.
  • Font size menu properly shows when multiple sizes are in effect.
  • Headers and footers properly track undo, even across changes to "different this section".
  • Fixed how floating palettes could become permanently collapsed.
  • Fixed weirdness and crashes that could sometimes occur when the user clicks the "Cancel" button when a document is being read.
  • Fixed: carriage returns in pasted text (or in text files) are properly converted to newlines.
  • Fixed: default actions are now done if the user selects the Copy/Paste/Cut/Find menu (eg: user doesn't bother with the submenus).
  • Fixed: smart insert/delete of whitespace is not turned on for all paste operations.
  • Fixed: list items that appear directly after a table would always continue numbering from the previous number, even if that option was not set.
  • No longer able to assign conflicting shortcuts when document is not loaded.
  • Change in the Nisus New File doesn't leave the styles menu in the formatting prefs pane useless (eg: after the user clicks "Restore Factory Default").
  • Fixed: when pasting in a lot of text you were not always scrolled to the proper location.
  • User no longer hit with 2-3 dialogs about file opening issues when file format is unrecognized.
  • Fixed: could crash if user attempted to continue typing in header/footer after changing the section's "different this section" or "different first page" options.
  • Custom user languages no longer lose secondary font after restarting Express.
  • Pasting text (or dropping) it just after a curly quote no longer improperly inserts a space.
  • Fixed: paper orientation is properly saved (and used) in Nisus New File. (paper size is still always picked up from system)
  • Fixed: formatting preference pane doesn't hang (or cause infinite loop of dialogs) if the Nisus New File is not openable.
  • Fixed crash if you hit the Enter key (to flash the current selection) and then quickly closed the document.
  • Custom/user languages now properly save QuickFix changes.
  • Deleting multiple QuickFix typos no longer takes forever.
  • Fixed: character attributes applied to newlines no longer bleed into newly created list bullets.
  • Fixed: when run for the first time, the user is hit with the EULA, the "welcome to demo" prompt, and the Nisus New File all at once.
  • Doc manager no longer displays hidden files.
  • Fixed: images pasted/dragged into an empty Draft view aren't tiny.
  • Fixed: Sections palette properly shows (and allow changing) when only a few headers/footers are different from the previous section.
  • System font panel shows the correct font for the text selection.
  • Fixed: can't use arrowkeys to set selection before the first list item in a document.
  • Fixed: feedback reports could be truncated or attached files missing in certain situations.