Nisus Writer Express 4.1 Release Notes

This is a significant update that:

• Restores non-English localizations
• Improves compatibility with macOS 10.15 Catalina
• Adds several enhancements
• Fixes many important bugs

Enhancements

• Restored localizations (Danish, French, German, Italian, Polish and Portuguese).
  - English keyboard shortcuts are now available when using a non-English localization, but can be overridden. Changes to non-English shortcuts do not affect shortcuts when reverting to the English localization.
  - Centimeter ruler units should permit an accuracy of 0.01 cm.
• Added the menu File > Versions to list and open previously saved versions.
• Note styles can control how much horizontal space to use between notes on the same line.
• Clicking the up/down stepper arrows in the palettes can produce larger or smaller changes by holding down the Option or Control modifier key respectively, eg: hold Control to change the font size by ±0.1 points.
• Styles can enforce character formatting removal (eg: unbold), without a parent style that first enforces it.
• List style levels can enforce character formatting removal (eg: unbold).

Fixes for macOS 10.15 Catalina

• Fixed: possible hangs on Catalina for some users, when working on certain files in Page View.
• Fixed: Page View layout could stall on Catalina, resulting in the inability to see the remainder of the document.
• Fixed: spelling commands to learn/forget words can fail on Catalina.
• Fixed: the spelling corrections popover on Catalina can be incorrectly dismissed by background layout.
• Fixed: can't enter numeric values in the palette fields without a unit suffix (eg: "9" for "9 pt") on Catalina.
• Fixed: Thesaurus suggestions do not appear on the contextual menu on Catalina.

Highlighted Changes

• Fixed: renaming or moving a file externally (eg: in the Finder) can prevent already open files from being saved.
• Fixed: typewriter scrolling could be jittery or enacted too soon in Page View.
• Improved compatibility when interchanging RTF files with Microsoft Word:
  - Right-to-left (RTL) paragraphs are imported more reliably by Word.
  - Improved font fidelity when loading Word RTF files; the font could be incorrect for certain styles or text.
  - newlines immediately before tables can incorrectly be added or removed.
  - page breaks can disrupt styles or add unwanted newlines.
  - text encodings can be read incorrectly from some Word files, for certain right-to-left text sequences.
  - PDF images saved by Word in RTF files are now loaded; preserved when saved and reopened in Word.
  - Japanese text from certain Word files may fail to be marked as bold or italic.
• Fixed: showing the find panel should never change the activate Desktop/Space.
• Fixed: pasting lists into Apple Mail results in doubled/duplicated list item numbers.
• Fixed: section breaks with odd/even page requirements can trigger incorrectly blank pages.
• Fixed several bugs when pasting table slices into/over existing table cells:
• Fixed: scrolling downward quickly after editing could briefly show stale display on screen.
• Fixed: Focus Mode and inactive split view fading can interact badly.
• Fixed: the vertical ruler hides text on macOS 10.14 Mojave and later.
• Fixed: closing a document on macOS 10.11 can crash.
• Opt: improved performance when working in documents with very large tables.
• Fixed: Apple's image editing contextual menu (eg: Markup) should include access to Nisus Writer commands.
• Fixed: temporary autosaved Untitled files can fail to be deleted correctly after the user explicitly saves the file.
• Fixed: Untitled draft files that have been autosaved can silently fail to be explicitly saved by the user.
• Fixed: spelling commands to learn/forget words should always eventually recheck all open documents.
• Added: if text lacks an explicit language, fallback to using the language of the Normal paragraph style, either from the current document or the Nisus New File template, instead of the system language.
• Fixed: note style options that control where to apply a character style (eg: Number Only) can fail.
• Added menu commands that:
  - convert paragraph ruler indents to tab characters and vice versa.
  - convert text to Sentence Capitalization.

Other Changes

• Changed: creating a new style from the selection should apply the style.
• Formatting Examiner palette shows Unicode information when a single character, composed character sequence, or ligature glyph is selected.
• Changed: paragraph spacing before/after should allow an accuracy of 0.1 points.
• Added: shadow blur and offset can be specified in half points.
• Reduced the likelihood that list items will fail to update automatically.
• Fixed: adding italic to a style with a bold font face should keep normalized attributes intact (eg: Tahoma + Bold + Italic), instead of using a display face attribute (eg: "Tahoma Bold")
• Fixed: newly created list items should not use the character formatting of text at the start of their paragraph, unless that formatting is applied to the entire paragraph and the list level style does not enforce values for that formatting.
• Fixed: can't delete individual styles from a style collection in the Document Manager window.
• Added: select by sentence should consider super/sub-scripted numbers after periods.
• Fixed: changing the "count words" option for a language should recalculate the live word count.
• Changed: Find All should not scroll to the first match, if the text currently in view has visible matches.
• Opt: improved responsiveness after a find operation creates a big multi-part selection with many thousands of individual selections.
• Opt: entering or exiting Full Screen mode for Draft View should not trigger superfluous text layout.
• Opt: some palettes and status bar items did unnecessary redrawing after every key stroke.
• Fixed: switching to certain palette groups could incorrectly expand the width of the entire palette dock.
• Fixed: adjusting certain formatting values in the Character palette to zero (eg: zero kerning) should not immediately hide the relevant controls.
• Fixed: Character palette popup menus should flash the vertical scrollbar when displayed.
• Fixed: improved behavior when changing table cell height/width using the palette fields.
• Fixed: editing the current page number in the status bar fails to show the new page number after making the jump.
• Changed: status bar icons should show their contextual menu immediately on mouse down.
• Fixed: the Find panel "Here to Start" option should make the "Find Previous" button the default so it's triggered by the Return key.
• Changed: minor improvements to how quickly keyboard shortcuts are displayed on the main menu.
• Fixed: should be able to change the status bar mode when in Full Screen Minimal mode.
• Fixed: using Shift click to extend existing selections can behave improperly when tables are involved.
• Changed: jumping to a note reference should place the insertion point after the reference, not select it entirely.
• Changed: clicking the Styles palette to change styles should keep the document selection focussed.
• Fixed: toggling whether an inline image's drawing is clipped to its line should refresh the display, even if the image draws over adjacent lines.
• Changed: editing or adding a link should not apply the Hyperlink character style if the text already has a consistent character style.
• Fixed: cull list level overrides for paragraphs with no list style when loading files.
• Fixed: table cells that span multiple pages can sometimes be incorrect clipped on their final page, if the cell's content is taller than its constituent rows.
• Fixed: tables that span multiple pages may incorrectly include a row resizing hotspot near the top of each page.
• Changed: should open Markdown files as plain text, without a warning alert.
• Fixed: sorting paragraphs using unusual paragraph delimiters (eg: glossary breaks) should not introduce additional newlines.
• Fixed: deleting all text from a file in Page View could incorrectly leave blank pages showing the "typesetting text" status message.
• Fixed: documents with certain headers/footers could incorrectly fail to resize Page View after editing, incorrectly showing blank pages with the "typesetting text" status message.
• Fixed: whitespace should be trimmed from both sides of any user typed URLs.
• Fixed: switching document windows could fail to redraw the selection coloring with the new activation color.
• Fixed: pasting paragraph text that ends in a newline should not trim that newline when pasting in an empty paragraph at the end of a text area.
• Fixed: paragraph formatting gutter icons were incorrectly not shown for paragraphs where the applied override value matched the default value.
• Fixed: Escape key should return focus to document area, if ruler marker has focus.
• Fixed: focus ring doesn't always draw completely for footnotes/endnotes.
• Changed: switching to the Style Sheet view should select the appropriate list level within any relevant list style.
• Fixed: autoscrolling in an empty document in certain situations could be slightly wrong after adjusting tool visibility.
• Added: show invisibles should draw marking above non-breaking hyphens.
• Fixed: preference to disable insertion point blinking stopped working on macOS 10.14 Mojave and later.
• Improved the display of list style level formatting in the Style Sheet.
• Bookends: problems displaying status properly when (un)scanning a bibliography.
• Bookends: missing or ambiguous citations should be shown as a results list window after a scan.
• Fixed: collapsed palettes can incorrectly become blank after certain sequences.
• Fixed: dragging a palette out of the dock should show floating palettes.
• Fixed: when using an attached palette dock, switching to a document with hidden palettes should hide any floating palettes.
• Fixed: page numbers can display incorrectly when editing in a header/footer.
• Fixed: using Copy Text Only should preserve current list item numbering, even if only copying a partial list.
• Fixed: dragging files between Document Manager groups did not always result in proper behavior.
• Fixed: renaming a file in the Document Manager could incorrectly remove it from its group.
• Changed: improved reliability when trashing or renaming files via the Document Manager.
• Fixed: Language palette shows cut off descenders for word suggestions.
• Changed: the Repeat menu should ignore some common non-formatting commands like Close, Save, etc.
• Added: new menu commands to better control line spacing for a paragraph.
• Fixed: using multi-part paste with text already ending in newlines should not add additional newline separators.
• Opt: faster for Replace All operations involving regular expressions.
• Fixed: blank regions can sometimes incorrectly appear at the top of pages.
• Fixed: saving a file in Style Sheet view should not reopen the file in Draft View. The last view should be saved.
• Fixed: using the option "force page break before paragraph" for the paragraph just after an inserted page break can cause endless CPU usage.
• Fixed: the clipboard preview should not be blank after the app first launches.
• Fixed: table selections with fully selected cells can draw improperly.
• Fixed: Formatting Examiner palette doesn't show "Use None" list override in text.
• Fixed: Formatting Examiner palette should only find tables by default (instead of formatting) if one or more table cells are fully selected.
• Fixed: Formatting Examiner palette irregularities when show font substitution in various special circumstances.
• Fixed: Formatting Examiner palette doesn't find next/previous links in a document.
• Fixed: Formatting Examiner palette may hang when searching backwards for certain kinds of special objects.
• Fixed: newer emoji characters using zero-width joiners should not be shown as multiple characters on screen.
• Fixed: emoji characters should not show the font substitution color on screen.
• Fixed: italics could be incorrectly reintroduced in text when reopening files with specific formatting sequences.
• Fixed: search matches should be scrolled so the Find & Replace panel does not obscure the selection.
• Changed: improved labeling of the numbering restart options in the Sections palette.
• Changed: typesetting progress shown in a background window should not make that window frontmost
• Opt: bad performance when changing formatting for a very large text selection.
• Fixed: ruler indents should be rounded when opening files; this prevents superfluous style conflict warnings when potentially copy-pasting later.
• Changed: restart list numbering commands should only affect the first paragraph in a text selection.
• Fixed: the toolbar can be incorrectly hidden for new documents after hiding the toolbar in a prior document.
• Fixed: some issues with pasting table slices.
• Fixed: improved user experience after the demo period expires, to prevent too many warning alerts and the inability to close documents or quit.
• Fixed: editing a document's Normal style should immediately refresh formatting in an empty document.
• Fixed: a few screen drawing problems related to ruler placement changes on macOS 10.14 Mojave and later.
• Changed: minor improvements to the dialog that asks the user for permission to access a previously used file.
• Fixed: possible random crashes in Page View layout.
• Changed: if a file can't be saved due to an exception, the user should be shown a more specific error message.
• Fixed: intermittent crashes in background stats thread.
• Fixed: pasting a table (or multi-part source) in front of a table using "plain text" mode could incorrectly introduce a small font into the document.
• Fixed: closing a document while an in-flight save is still underway should not cause possible crashes.
• Fixed: the slash or backslash character should not appear at the very end of a line of wrapped text by itself when preceded by whitespace.
• Fixed: file paths starting with ~ should not let ~/ appear on a wrapped line by itself.
• Fixed: the regex character class \p{Arabic} should include U+064B through U+0652.
• Fixed: some minor issues with ruler units in palettes.
• Opt: improvements to RTF that slightly decreases file sizes.
• Fixed: damaged or unsupported images (eg: Mac PICT) should not cause file save/export to fail.
• Fixed: opening RTF files from Word with certain sequences of footnotes, tables, and links can cause crashes.
• Fixed: pasting RTF text with improperly encoded Unicode fallback characters (eg: Hook) is no longer garbled.
• Fixed: opening old or non-Nisus files with unusual note reference style names could trigger a crash.
• Fixed: list items created in otherwise empty text storages should not trigger errors.
• Fixed: checking for app updates should always bring the update alert to the foreground.
• Fixed: prevent hang when resetting table mouse cursors, if table view responsible row ranges are out of bounds.
• Changed: attempt to fix hangs related to toolbar item validation and file save/open panels.
• Fixed: some issues with invalidation after a document is closed.
• Fixed: some memory leaks related to editing headers/footers.
• Speculative changes to try to prevent a few unreproducible crashes.