Nisus Writer Pro 2.1 Release Notes

Major Changes in Version 2.1

• Added support for Mac OS X autosave, where changes to all opens documents are saved regularly.
• Added support for Mac OS X document versioning, where a user can browse and revert to older versions of any document.
• Added support for iCloud.
• Switched to 64-bit.
• Runs inside the Mac App sandbox.
• Changed: discontinued support for Mac OS X 10.6. The required system is now Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later.
• Added: a variety of macro enhancements.
• Changed: Nisus Thesaurus is now integrated directly into Nisus Writer; it is no longer a separate app.

Highlighted Changes in Version 2.1

• Added: new options in Saving preferences pane that control where autosave keeps new documents.
• Added: enabled preference that allows user to choose the language of Nisus Writer's GUI (menus and dialogs).
• Added: added menu Edit > Repeat that will repeat the last used menu or palette command. Note that this only works for commands on the main menubar and palettes, not arbitrary actions.
• Added: will now expand entries from the OS X system-wide text replacements as the user types. Added option to disable this in QuickFix preferences.
• Added: added ability to set keyboard shortcuts for intermediate menus (eg: the Paragraph Style menu) which will show that menu and allow the user to make a final choice from the submenus.
• Added: if running on Mac OS X 10.9 (or later) the user can now define keyboard shortcuts that use the Space key.
• Added: cross-ref: added ability to insert a cross-reference that shows the name of the target bookmark.
• Added: indexing: when using the "Index As" dialog, user can choose the index in which to include the new entry.
• Added: added menu to set document hyphenation to "Manual", where automatic hyphenation is disabled and only soft-hyphen characters are considered.
• Added: spell: added attribute to prevent spellchecking that can be applied to arbitrary pieces of text or as part of style definitions.

Other Changes in Version 2.1

• Added: added document status bar icons for comments and tracked changes, to help indicate to users that annotations are present, even if the pane is hidden.
• Added: palettes: if a word is spelled correctly and has no entry in Nisus Thesaurus (eg: perhaps because it is not English), the language palette should display the system dictionary definition for that word, if one is available.
• Added: lang: preferences allow user to customize language icons by pasting/dragging an image.
• Added: resizing an image, shape, or table cell will show a pop-over (tooltip) that indicates the exact dimensions.
• Added: images: contextual menu for images now includes submenu that lists some basic image information.
• Added: added menu File > New Plain Text File that uses the plain text template.
• Added: added menu commands to show the Thesaurus browser (contextual menu and Edit > Spelling > Thesaurus Window).
• Added: added a menu command that shows the system typography panel directly, under Format > Fonts.
• Added: added menus to jump to specific preference panes.
• Added: spelling: the user can customize the color of the dotted underlines that show spelling mistakes.
• Added: added option to control Navigator pane text color.
• Added: user should be able to sort recently opened and saved file lists in the Document Manager by natural ordering (eg: list most recently saved files at the top). This sorting can now be done by sorting by the file icon column.
• Changed: find: Nisus Writer made to be more liberal in importing the shared/system find string.
• Changed: new file templates, glossaries, and macros now prefer to be stored in the Document Manager. This is because the standard OS X file open and save dialogs will not show any folders inside the sandbox.
• Changed: when saving a document, progress is now always immediately shown in the document's status bar (instead of popping up a status panel after a delay). Progress reporting during saving has also been made more accurate.

File Fidelity Changes in Version 2.1

• Fixed: Microsoft Word no longer ungraciously shows formal PostScript font names when opening Nisus files.
• Fixed: when bibliography scanning in Bookends, could incorrectly bleed question marks into the document.
• Fixed: lists: Apple's RTF sometimes uses a special empty list style to indicate that the list style should be "none". We should detect that and not apply a numbered list.
• Fixed: to avert issues with Sente document scans, changed how special characters (eg: ö) are saved to RTF.
• Changed: tables: when importing floating tables from Microsoft Word, if the table is very large, it is now converted to be an inline table so that it can be paginated.
• Fixed: text from Accordance bible study could be imported with the wrong font and possibly garbled characters.
• Fixed: copy-pasting text with tracked changes to another application could produce a messy jumble.
• Changed: images: when pasting images into a document, improved image data type recognition, yielding better automatic image file extensions (for RTFD, drag-drop, etc).
• Fixed: images: if linked image is set not to include copy of data in the document, should not include image in RTFD.
• Fixed: style names should not be (re)localized when opening a document unless they are loaded from the Nisus New File template.
• Fixed: images: when opening RTF files from Microsoft Word with EMF/WMF images, Nisus Writer should resave that image data in a way that's compatible with Microsoft Word, even if NWP cannot display the images directly.
• Fixed: import: if the import process for a document does not yield an explicit zoom, the default zoom from the user's Nisus New File should be used.
• Changed: import: if a zero-width bookmark is imported, we use a zero-width space to hold its place. This space should not be inserted in the middle of a word.
• Fixed: if memory is exhausted when saving an RTF file, should not hang the application.
• Fixed: drag-dropping a file into an existing document, when that file required a file importer (eg: DOCX file format), would incorrectly insert undecoded bytes from the source file.

Bug Fixes in Version 2.1

• Fixed: images: applying a web link to a smart/linked inline image can cause hangs when saving the document.
• Fixed: potential hang when opening documents with certain combination of inline images and other features.
• Fixed: merge: mail merge placeholder should not discard formatting after a file is saved and reopened.
• Fixed: fixed a bug where saving a PDF with a TOC could throw exceptions and generate corrupted data.
• Fixed: fixed some possible crashes related to text layout.
• Changed: improved behavior when the Apple text engine encounters certain kinds of bugs: instead of crashing or hanging Nisus Writer, an error is displayed for the relevant document, allowing the user to save, close, and reopen it.
• Fixed: could crash when switching into Draft View and restoring the prior zoom/scroll location.
• Fixed: fixed some potential crashes related to toolbar items.
• Added: find: when importing/exporting the shared system-wide find string, Nisus Writer now properly uses relevant metadata (ie: whether the search is case sensitive and if regex mode is enabled).
• Changed: inserting a newline in front of whitespace at the end of a line of text should switch the paragraph style to the appropriate "next style" as necessary.
• Fixed: lists: the display of tracked changes for some list properties was shown incorrectly (eg: paragraph's list starting number).
• Fixed: images: just dragging an inline image should not mark the document dirty, unless the drag is completed and is actually moved within the document.
• Fixed: tables: pasting tab-delimited text into an existing table should not reset the appearance of any table cells.
• Fixed: shapes: floating shapes that are centered horizontally should take the section gutter into account.
• Fixed: shapes: if a floating text box is anchored in a header/footer area, any automatic page number inside should display properly.
• Fixed: shapes: recursive layout should be prevented if smart objects are nested inside floating text boxes. This improves stability of documents with many floating text boxes.
• Fixed: find: the "whole word" find option did not allow matches that started or ended with whitespace.
• Fixed: images: drag-dropping some images from Safari would create a link instead of the image itself.
• Changed: the Open Recent menu now obeys Document Manager preferences that control whether the file extension is shown, and whether deleted and trashed files are shown.
• Changed: tables: using the command "Fit To Contents" in Draft View should not limit the width of the table to the page size.
• Fixed: the "Edit Link" and "Remove Link" commands should be enabled if a zero-length selection rests inside an applied link.
• Fixed: if the selection caret rests inside a field code, it should not split the field in two. This is for the sake of Bookends scanning, which does not handle such RTF.
• Fixed: QuickFix should not expand an entry if the result is already in place. For example, if the user has a correction to turn "!" into " !", QuickFix will not turn "Hello !" into "Hello ! " if the user inserts a space after the exclamation.
• Fixed: images: image borders were not properly saved to RTFD (the border was lost when reopening a file).
• Changed: annotations: the clickable hotspots for the next/previous comment buttons have been expanded slightly.
• Fixed: if a line of text is forced to the next page while typing due to paragraph layout options (eg: prevent widows & orphans), it could incorrectly be displayed both on the old and new pages.
• Fixed: inserting a break in front of an existing section break could incorrectly convert the section break to a page break.
• Fixed: tables: a table's horizontal offset should never place it completely out of view.
• Fixed: tables: could hang when pasting content from Apple apps (eg: Safari or Mail), if a particular sequence of hyperlinks and tables was encountered.
• Fixed: notes: the very first line of text in an endnotes section could be obscured if it started at the bottom of a page.
• Fixed: if a line of text cannot fit at the bottom of a page, and the region/column is not full height due to a same-page section break, the line forced to the next page can improperly be too short, clipping the line.
• Fixed: using the menu Tools > Automatic Content > Convert to Fixed Content on a generated TOC should not convert page numbers to show the "-PAGE-" placeholder for unknown page numbers, even if the TOC content indeed is missing.
• Changed: when adding a link to some selected text, if a valid URL is selected, should not default to a different URL on the pasteboard.
• Fixed: cross-refs: when copy or pasting as plain text, cross-references that are missing their targets should not be updated to display as missing, but should instead display their last value.
• Added: styles: duplicated the commands that add a style based on the selection so they also appear on the Format menu.
• Changed: annotations: better initial vertical positioning of annotations in table cells when first opening a document, leading to less recalculation.
• Changed: annotations: if for some reason invalid annotations are drawn, exceptions should not be thrown.
• Changed: users may choose any file extension when using the plain text file format.
• Fixed: dragging the inner/outer page margin guide lines in a Right To Left (RTL) section would modify the incorrect opposite margin.
• Fixed: if a bookmark starts inside a field code, but ends outside that field, the bookmark should not always be expanded to encompass the field, eg: if a hyperlink was applied before a footnote reference, a cross-reference to the footnote should not incorrectly show both the hyperlink and footnote.
• Changed: added En and Em spaces to the default special character set; added congruence and identical symbols.
• Fixed: possible crash when inserting section breaks.
• Fixed: annotations: when scrolling through a document, fixed bug where comments and track changes in the side pane incorrectly flicker into view at the wrong position and then disappear.
• Fixed: annotations: moving to the next annotation should scroll immediately to the correct location, without sometimes bouncing to the top of the document first.
• Opt: annotations: faster response when redrawing comments and tracked changes in side pane during document scrolling.
• Fixed: images: if a linked image changes externally, and the user tries to undo past the point when the image was reloaded, should not crash.
• Fixed: images: if a linked image changes externally, any resizing, cropping, etc, from the image should be applied to the newly loaded image.
• Fixed: shapes: in certain layout situations floating content would not appear at all.
• Fixed: shapes: inserting a page or section break in front of an existing paragraph delimiter (eg: newline) can incorrect remove any floating content anchored to that delimiter.
• Opt: tables: less redrawing required when typing in main body text if tables did not actually shift position/size.
• Fixed: cleaner drawing of focus ring when editing inside header, footer, and footnote areas.
• Fixed: insertion point should blink when inside an empty header/footer area.
• Changed: toc: if a document contains more than a single TOC style, the Navigator pane's title should indicate which TOC style is active.
• Fixed: toc: the Navigator pane's pop-up menu should show a checkmark for the active TOC style.
• Changed: if a side pane (eg: comments) has been made very narrow, it should be expanded to a reasonable width when reopening a document.
• Fixed: tracked changes: cross-references inside tracked deletions should not update unless they are restored to the document.
• Fixed: palettes: activating Nisus Writer or a document window should never switch the palette editing mode.
• Changed: images: the default for newly inserted inline images should be OFF for "clip drawing to line", so the user can see the whole image.
• Fixed: editing a clipboard should show the same toolbar configured in normal documents.
• Fixed: should refresh cached OSX keyboard layout icons after every system version change.
• Fixed: if LinkBack connection throws exceptions, should not prevent document from saving or closing.
• Fixed: mail merge: if a CSV text file record ended with a comma, it should not produce an error.
• Opt: tables: smoother redrawing and repositioning of tables when working in long documents.
• Opt: improved speed of Document Manager preview generation for large files, as well as the delay when gathering information for the Recovered Files group.
• Fixed: worked around an Apple bug in OS X 10.10 where the selection does not always draw completely.
• Changed: macros: updated table calculation macros so they work on just the selected cells (when multiple cells are selected). If the selection rests inside a single table cell, the macros still work on the whole row or column.
• Fixed: if a document is in Draft View and the print dialog is shown, background page layout should commence and continually update the preview area as page layout progresses.
• Fixed: the font menu did not reliably show a mixed font state if font substitution occurred.
• Fixed: if a font used in a document is not installed on the Mac, the font menu should show a tick mark next to both the desired original font and the actual display font.
• Fixed: palettes: clicking into the Character palette's font name field should select the entire font name.
• Fixed: palettes: should always be able to use the Escape key to exit palette controls and restore focus to the document area.
• Fixed: palettes: the Character palette's font family area should show mixed state using dash marks.
• Fixed: comments: sometimes when adding a comment, the selection would not be placed into the new comment text area.
• Changed: increased priority of background spellchecking thread.
• Fixed: shapes: certain floating shape geometry during page layout could trigger Nisus Writer to hang.
• Changed: if drag-dropping a PDF file into a document, and textual content cannot be extracted, we should fallback to inserting the PDF as an image.
• Fixed: if user has the preference enabled to restore open documents upon relaunch, the Document Manager window should also be restored as necessary.
• Fixed: clicking the font button in the Watermark panel should make the font panel topmost.
• Fixed: palettes: the "Reference Tools" palette group's name should always be localized.
• Changed: the "footnote reference" and "endnote reference" character style names should always be localized when opening files.
• Fixed: notes: using the left or up arrow key in the first footnote/endnote could incorrectly place the selection at the end of the first note.
• Changed: moved recent file lists from general preferences to separate files in Application Support folder.
• Changed: guard against possible crash when generating Thesaurus synonyms.
• Fixed: if Nisus Writer crashed, any available draft documents that were not explicitly saved (but were autosaved) should always be reopened.
• Fixed: when launching Nisus Writer, documents should be reopened after all other startup activity.
• Fixed: sometimes when the user was dragging the mouse (eg: to move a page guide or floating shape), could result in a weird state where the mouse up event was not noticed. In this state Nisus Writer seemed unresponsive but was not hung.
• Fixed: if feedback cannot collect the console log, should show a button to launch Apple's Console app instead.
• Fixed: lang: if a document's text mixed CJK text and English text, but did not have separate language attributes applied, the word count could be too high.
• Fixed: styles: redefining a paragraph style from the selection could introduce spurious attribute overrides if a list style was present.
• Fixed: notes: if a selection is saved inside the footnote/endnote text area, the file should be reopened so that at least the corresponding note reference remains selected.
• Opt: improved performance when selecting (or deselecting) all text in a large document opened in Draft View.
• Fixed: comments: in the comment pane's gear menu, the "Go To Comment Text" command should toggle to "Go To Marked Text", just as the command on the main menu "Tools".
• Opt: find: improved performance when doing an attribute-sensitive Replace All, and no actual characters are changed, ie: only formatting is introduced. Side benefit: track changes doesn't show the change as a replacement, but rather lists the formatting changes.
• Fixed: tables: should not crash/hang when opening a file with an RTF field at the start of a table cell.
• Fixed: images: when pasting an image that was copied from outside Nisus Writer, if the source prefers to use PNG, we should use that PNG data instead of TIFF data.
• Fixed: bib: hidden bibliography citations should not be errantly removed during Bookends document scans.
• Changed: annotations: if tracked changes or comments are made visible in one document view (eg: Page View), they should appear in all document views.
• Changed: removed the option to "suggest completions as you type" from the preferences.
• Fixed: indexing: copy-pasting indexed content within the same document could result in (harmless) warnings when reopening the document later.
• Changed: text marked for inclusion in a TOC or Index is highlighted on screen using distinctive boxing, instead of filling in a background highlight.
• Opt: automatic text that displays the document's last save time should not be forced to update immediately during a save, but instead only be marked dirty and updated later as necessary (eg: if document is printed).
• Fixed: lang: possible exception/crash when saving custom user language QuickFix corrections.
• Fixed: lang: triple-click to select by sentence did not always select grouping punctuation at the very end of a text area.
• Fixed: spelling: the dotted underlines that show spelling mistakes should appear clean at high zooms, and should not "shimmer" when scrolling.
• Fixed: tracked changes: deleting the contents of a whole table cell with tracked changes enabled could bleed a zero-width placeholder into the tracked deletion, and thus the document if the user rejected the change.
• Fixed: Apple typography panel does not update properly when first shown.
• Fixed: drag-drop insertion point indicator can fail to be cleared away after finishing or cancelling a drag.
• Fixed: find: after doing a Replace All with tracked changes enabled, any tracked change tidying/coalescing should not be registered as separate undo events.
• Fixed: some issues with the way stroke/fill menus are enabled/disabled depending on the selected inline image or floating content.
• Fixed: styles: if the user adjusts the Normal paragraph style, any paragraphs in the document without any styles applied should adjust their displayed font/size immediately (if necessary).
• Fixed: tables: wholly selecting a single table cell and copying it should preserve the table-ness of the content, eg: text should paste as a new table cell.
• Fixed: any edits to text field values (eg: full screen width percent) in the preferences should be committed if the user quits application or switches back to a document window, so they are not lost.
• Changed: notes: if a default note style needs to be created (eg: if converting footnotes to endnotes in a document with no Endnote style), attributes of an existing note style should be cloned.
• Opt: performance improvements to our font list caching and the way languages generate their secondary font.
• Fixed: formatting applied to final empty paragraph of document should not be lost after saving and reopening a file.
• Fixed: using the menu "Save Copy As" with the plain text file format should not discard the formatting in the document window.
• Fixed: if saving a plain text document, and the only formatting is that enforced by the Plain Text template, the user should not be warned about discarding formatting.
• Fixed: if the user does choose to discard formatting when saving a plain text file, the formatting from the Plain Text template should be applied, and the change should be undoable.
• Fixed: opening/previewing large text files with non-standard line endings could be unreasonably slow.
• Fixed: possible exceptions when opening or laying out document.
• Changed: if Nisus Writer exits abnormally, the background file importer should automatically terminate itself.
• Fixed: tables: sometimes autoscrolling a table selection would be too aggressive, unnecessarily scrolling when the selected cells were already visible.
• Fixed: tables: typing on the line of text just before or after a table could be very slow if the table was very large.
• Fixed: spell: email addresses should never be marked as misspelled.
• Fixed: lang: custom languages with certain special characters (eg: curly quotes) in their name are incorrectly read when reopening files.
• Fixed: drag-drop of web links should insert the marked text and the link/URL.
• Opt: find: making a huge number of Find & Replace matches while preserving the selection is much faster (eg: redaction macro that replaces every single character).
• Fixed: when doing bibliography processing, if any copy of Bookends is already running, should not try to launch any other version.
• Fixed: styles: fixed some inconsistent enabling/disabling of Style menus in the Stylesheet View.
• Fixed: loc: made some additional/missing strings localizable.
• Fixed: could hang when balancing text in sections with multiple columns.
• Fixed: shapes: converting floating arrows to inline images should not clip them.
• Fixed: shapes: copy-pasting or duplicating multiple floating shapes at a time could incorrectly layer them back to front (wrong z-ordering).
• Fixed: shapes: if a floating text box is completely selected, typing or pasting should completely replace all existing content.
• Fixed: shapes: improved behavior of text layout if floating content completely covers one or more pages.
• Fixed: shapes: just selecting a shape should not mark the document dirty.
• Fixed: styles: attributes added to style definitions that prevent hyphenation or allow hyphenation could be lost when saving and reopening a file. The menu's checkmark state was also not always shown correctly.
• Changed: tables: better behavior when using Shift + Tab to navigate backwards through spanning table cells.
• Fixed: tables: incorrect handling of typing attributes when inserting text into table cells, which could incorrectly reset formatting when inserting newlines, etc.

Macro Changes in Version 2.1

• Added a variety of macro commands to make writing certain macros easier. Search the Macro Language Reference for "v2.1" for a full list of changes. Some highlights:
  • The directive "Macro.import" allows importing macro code between files, like traditional #include statements.
  • The "Macro.run" command allows passing arguments to sub-macros.
  • The @String and @Text constructs help reduce the amount of character escaping for regular expressions.
  • Added ability to call user-defined commands dynamically using "Call" and @Command constructs.
  • Allow the use of parentheses to nest expressions, eg: $value = (22 * 2) - 2
  • Allow chained property access on values returned from object-type commands, eg: "$year = Date.now.year"
  • Can now mark multi-line comments in macros using the /* */ notation (see macro reference for details)
• Added commands to the File object that allow macro authors to extend sandbox access as necessary.
• Added: user can choose the root Macros folder. If so, the command also asks if the default macro set should be installed.
• When creating a new macro the newly added "Macro Template" is consulted, which by default has a mono-spaced font and spellchecking disabled. You can configure this template in the New File preferences, under Advanced.
• Added: macros: the Macros menu supports nested subfolders.
• Added: macros: added a Macro menu command that adds a subfolder from an arbitrary location using an alias.
• Added some macros to the default set.
• Updated the default macro set to account for sandboxing and macro language changes.
• Fixed: if find/replace is limited to the selection, and there is a zero-length selection, the macro should make no matches.
• Fixed: if macro is displaying a modal alert, any delayed document selection changes and redraws should be flushed, so the user can see its current state.
• Opt: macros: macros that interleave editing and menu commands will run faster.
• Opt: macros: better performance when macro operates on a document that has been marked as discardable, or when undo history has been disabled.
• Fixed: macros: the Press Button macro commands should not trigger an error if no sheet or alert is displayed on screen.
• Fixed: macros: the Press Button macro commands should apply to any displayed sheets and alerts.
• Changed: the find panel's Macroize command should sometimes make use of the new @Text literal construct, which can help reduce escaping of special characters.
• Opt: macros do not need to be loaded from file until a macro is actually used.
• Changed: macro names are no longer controllable using a comment at the top of the source code, eg: #NisusMacroProperty Name: Override File Name.
• Fixed: macros: macros that select floating shapes could have issues manipulating them or trigger unwanted scrolling.
• Fixed: macros: should not match unfinished menu command paths, eg: ":File:"
• Fixed: macros: the "Prompt Options" and "Prompt Checkboxes" commands should split a very long list of options (that cannot fit onto the screen at once) into multiple pages.
• Changed: macros: macros automatically loaded from the Document Manager are now grouped into their own submenu.
• Added a variety of other miscellaneous commands. Search the Macro Language Reference for "v2.1" for a full list of changes.