Release v3.1.1

Hotfix for crashes on Linux

Sometimes, waiting to update something is a smart idea. This time, we were not that smart and bumped the underlying Electron framework to version 30, which unfortunately made running Zettlr 3.1.0 on most Linux systems impossible. With this patch, we rolled back Electron to a working version. Apologies to all Linux users, we still love you!

Changelog

GUI and Functionality

• Fixed a segmentation fault crash on startup across various Linux setups
  (#5135)

Under the Hood

• Downgrade Electron to version 29.3.2 (cf. Electron issue #41839)

Release v3.1.0

Wikilink-Titles | Project Overhaul | LT Improvements | And much more

Today's the day! After more than half a year since the last bigger update we are absolutely stoked to announce the next major update to Zettlr! This update brings loads of improvements and a decent amount of new features with it. A lot of it is about improving many workflows around the app and making your life much, much easier. Also, this release contains the début of our UX/UI artist, Artem Barinov, who has spent almost the entirety of 2023 fully re-designing the preferences dialog from the ground up — a feature that was fully designed before the launch of 3.0.0 but narrowly didn't make it in that release. We are excited to hear what you have to say about it!

Zettlr is Free and Open Source (FOSS) software and is done entirely by volunteers. But, developing the app incurs a significant cost factor. Please consider becoming a regular sponsor via Patreon or send a one-time donation via PayPal. Every dollar counts!

But now, let's get into what changed in 3.1.0. There are three categories of changes: new features, improvements to existing workflows, and significant changes to existing workflows. Please make sure to read the entirety of the Changelog below to know what has changed so that none of the changes take you by surprise! Here's the overview at a glance:

• You can now specify titles for wikilinks
• Plain links are now no longer auto-detected
• The old link-title-syntax ([Title]([[Link]])) has been partially restored
• Project settings overhaul
• Full Preferences overhaul
• LanguageTool Language detection improved
• "Other files" in the sidebar are now relative to the current file, not the open directory
• Removed the option for choosing the file time sorting; this setting is now tied to the file display time
• Removed the option for automatic file creation; since this is now inferred from whether you have a Zettelkasten directory specified

Changelog

Changes to the link detection

For a long time now, Zettlr would (sometimes aggressively so) detect plain links
and display them in a rendered state. In some cases, this was nice as it would
relieve you from having to surround such links with pointy or angled brackets.

However, especially in the latest evolution of this parser plugin, the link
detection was a bit too aggressive and interfered, e.g., with emphasis
highlighting. In this version, we have entirely removed our custom link
detection and rely upon the more straight-forward way of detecting links.

Regarding your exporting experience, this should not have any impact, since the
auto-link-detection feature wasn't enabled by default by Pandoc anyhow, but
depending on how you have been writing, you may notice less detected links in
your documents.

To add "plain" links (without using the full []()-syntax) from now on, simply
surround them with angled brackets: <https://www.google.com> or
<mail@example.com>. Note that the protocol (https://) is required, so
<www.google.com> will not work.

This changes brings Zettlr's link functionality much more into alignment with
other editors as well, since this is the way that many other applications handle
links as well.

Introducing Wikilink Titles

This update brings a long-awaited change to Zettlr's handling of internal links
(sometimes called Wikilinks). Specifically, with this version, Zettlr finally
supports optional titles in such links. Your old links in the format [[link]]
still work fine, but now you can add a title that is different from the link,
separated by a pipe, or vertical bar character (|).

If such a title is given, Zettlr will use it in various ways to make your files
more readable. For example, if you have the link renderer activated in the
settings, it will take care of hiding the link target of Wikilinks as well as
those of regular Markdown links.

Since there is no way of knowing which of the two parts is the link, and which
is the title, Zettlr follows Pandoc's solution in allowing you to specify how
internal links are structured for you. The default and recommended setting is to
put links first, and titles second ([[link|title]]). This ensures
compatibility with VimWiki, MediaWiki, Obsidian, and others. However, should you
need to target GitHub wiki pages or another application that expects a title to
come first, you can select the alternative option ([[title|link]]).

In order to make Pandoc aware of your choice, you can add one of the following
reader extensions to your export profiles: wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
wikilinks_title_before_pipe.

Lastly, due to this improvement, we have changed the default setting for "link
with filename" from "always" to "never", since it will be more ergonomic to use
a custom link title directly instead of having the filename pop up after the
link. This default setting applies only to new installations automatically; so
if you already installed Zettlr, you can manually switch it.

Re-enabling old Link-Title-Syntax

After the release of Zettlr v3.0.0, some users have complained that their
internal links have stopped working. It turns out that quite a lot were using
Logseq's syntax for adding titles to internal links ([Title]([[Link]])), which
we broke during a refactor of the Markdown parser. This update partially
restores this link functionality, allowing you to Cmd/Ctrl-Click them to
follow these links again.

Note that we have not implemented other parts yet, and we recommend the more
common [[wikilinks]] or [regular markdown links](./file.md).

Preferences Window Overhaul

This release marks the debut of our UX/UI artist Artem Barinov who spent the
better half of 2023 redesigning the entire preferences window from scratch.
While this change narrowly didn't make it into 3.0.0, we are more than excited
to introduce this new and sleek overhaul in this version.

The new window now follows a much more consistent design philosophy. While we
have kept the broad tabbed outline, the settings have now been moved into
smaller blocks that contain sets of related settings. Furthermore, instead of
having to remember where a setting is located, you can now directly search for
it using the new search bar.

We also took the opportunity to change, rename, relabel, and remove settings so
that a bit of older remnants are now gone. Overall, the experience of changing
the settings should now be much smoother, and we hope you like the change. In
the coming updates, you can improve many more improvements on the UX side of
things!

Project Overhaul: Full Control Over Your Files

Projects are at the heart of Zettlr. As a writing toolbox primarily targeted at
academics, journalists, and writers, it must cater not just to simple note-
taking workflows, but also to serious writing. Because of this, Zettlr ships
with a project feature since the very beginning (since version 0.18.0,
released on Jul 20, 2018, to be precise).

However, for a long time the feature attempted to piggyback on the way your
files were displayed. This meant that (a) the order in which your files were
weaved together into the project file depended on the sorting of the directory,
and (b) there was no clear way to exclude files that naturally amass during the
lifetime of a project, such as notes, backup files, and miscellaneous.

Zettlr 3.1.0 fixes this issue by introducing a rather small, but powerful change
to the way projects work. We have removed the difficult to understand glob-
patterns that were introduced in a less-than-ideal attempt to fix some of the
complexity-issues that were introduced later (such as displaying file titles
instead of filenames, and others). Instead, you can now explicitly select which
files will be included in your bound export files – and in which order.

The new file list, which you can find in the project properties dialog, aims to
be dead-simple to understand, yet give you back the certainty which files will
end up where in your export – without a doubt.

This also means a change to your projects: After this update, the glob patterns
will be removed from your .ztr-directory files and replaced with an (initially
empty) array of files to be included in your project. That means that you will
have to select the files you want to include in a project once after the update.

Managing this list in the project properties is simple: The "Files" tab includes
a list of all files available within the project's folder structure. To select a
file for export, click the "+"-button to move it up and include it in the
export. Next, you can use the "Up"- and "Down"-buttons to change the order of
the files within your export. The "-"-button removes a file again and moves it
back down to the list of ignored files. Changes are immediately applied and
persisted to your disk.

When you now export the project, Zettlr will use only the files you have
selected, and put them in the appropriate order.

Should you have deleted a file that you originally included in the list of
files, Zettlr will show you a warning message as soon as you export it so that
you can have a second look to not send off a file that's missing a crucial part
of your work. Such missing files are shown atop of the available files and
feature a "-"-button which allows you to remove them from the list. We opted for
this approach of you manually having to remove missing links, since it makes it
transparent which files are missing so you can take the appropriate action
(especially if it was an accidental deletion).

LanguageTool Improvements

The first update to Zettlr's LanguageTool ...

Release v3.1.0-beta.3

This is likely the last beta release before we will be releasing 3.1.0 stable. It includes a few fixes relating to opening the proper files from the file manager, and many issues relating to the translation. So if you're a translator for Zettlr, there are about ~50 new translation strings to translate now. Again, for all changes, see the changelog below.

Changelog

Changes to the link detection

For a long time now, Zettlr would (sometimes aggressively so) detect plain links
and display them in a rendered state. In some cases, this was nice as it would
relieve you from having to surround such links with pointy or angled brackets.

However, especially in the latest evolution of this parser plugin, the link
detection was a bit too aggressive and interfered, e.g., with emphasis
highlighting. In this version, we have entirely removed our custom link
detection and rely upon the more straight-forward way of detecting links.

Regarding your exporting experience, this should not have any impact, since the
auto-link-detection feature wasn't supported by Pandoc anyhow, but depending on
how you have been writing, you may notice less detected links in your documents.

To add "plain" links (without using the full []()-syntax) from now on, simply
surround them with angled brackets: <https://www.google.com> or
<mail@example.com>. Note that the protocol (https://) is required, so
<www.google.com> will not work.

This changes brings Zettlr's link functionality much more into alignment with
other editors as well, since this is the way that many other applications handle
links as well.

Introducing Wikilink Titles

This update brings a long-awaited change to Zettlr's handling of internal links
(sometimes called Wikilinks). Specifically, with this version, Zettlr finally
supports optional titles in such links. Your old links in the format [[link]]
still work fine, but now you can add a title that is different from the link,
separated by a pipe, or vertical bar character (|).

If such a title is given, Zettlr will use it in various ways to make your files
more readable. For example, if you have the link renderer activated in the
settings, it will take care of hiding the link target of Wikilinks as well as
those of regular Markdown links.

Since there is no way of knowing which of the two parts is the link, and which
is the title, Zettlr follows Pandoc's solution in allowing you to specify how
internal links are structured for you. The default and recommended setting is to
put links first, and titles second ([[link|title]]). This ensures
compatibility with VimWiki, MediaWiki, Obsidian, and others. However, should you
need to target GitHub wiki pages or another application that expects a title to
come first, you can select the alternative option ([[title|link]]).

In order to make Pandoc aware of your choice, you can add one of the following
reader extensions to your export profiles: wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
wikilinks_title_before_pipe.

Lastly, due to this improvement, we have changed the default setting for "link
with filename" from "always" to "never", since it will be more ergonomic to use
a custom link title directly instead of having the filename pop up after the
link. This default setting applies to new installations; so you may consider to
change this setting manually yourself as well.

Re-enabling old Link-Title-Syntax

After the release of Zettlr v3.0.0, some users have complained that their
internal links have stopped working. It turns out that quite a lot were using
Logseq's syntax for adding titles to internal links ([Title]([[Link]])), which
we broke during a refactor of the Markdown parser. This update partially
restores this link functionality, allowing you to Cmd/Ctrl-Click them to
follow these links again.

Note that we have not yet implemented the functionality of auto-renaming files
or showing tooltips on these links.

Project Overhaul: Full Control Over Your Files

Projects are at the heart of Zettlr. As a writing toolbox primarily targeted at
academics, journalists, and writers, it must cater not just to simple note-
taking workflows, but also to serious writing. Because of this, Zettlr ships
with a project feature since the very beginning (since version 0.18.0,
released on Jul 20, 2018, to be precise).

However, for a long time the feature attempted to piggyback on the way your
files were displayed. This meant that (a) the order in which your files were
weaved together into the project file depended on the sorting of the directory,
and (b) there was no clear way to exclude files that naturally amass during the
lifetime of a project, such as notes, backup files, and miscellaneous.

Zettlr 3.1.0 fixes this issue by introducing a rather small, but powerful change
to the way projects work. We have removed the difficult to understand glob-
patterns that were introduced in a less-than-ideal attempt to fix some of the
complexity-issues that were introduced later (such as displaying file titles
instead of filenames, and others). Instead, you can now explicitly select which
files will be included in your bound export files – and in which order.

The new file list, which you can find in the project properties dialog, aims to
be dead-simple to understand, yet give you back the certainty which files will
end up where in your export – without a doubt.

This also means a change to your projects: After this update, the glob patterns
will be removed from your .ztr-directory files and replaced with an (initially
empty) array of files to be included in your project. That means that you will
have to select the files you want to include in a project once after the update.

Managing this list in the project properties is simple: The "Files" tab includes
a list of all files available within the project's folder structure. To select a
file for export, click the "+"-button to move it up and include it in the
export. Next, you can use the "Up"- and "Down"-buttons to change the order of
the files within your export. The "-"-button removes a file again and moves it
back down to the list of ignored files. Changes are immediately applied and
persisted to your disk.

When you now export the project, Zettlr will use only the files you have
selected, and put them in the appropriate order.

Should you have deleted a file that you originally included in the list of
files, Zettlr will show you a warning message as soon as you export it so that
you can have a second look to not send off a file that's missing a crucial part
of your work. Such missing files are shown atop of the available files and
feature a "-"-button which allows you to remove them from the list. We opted for
this approach, since it makes it transparent which files are missing so you can
take the appropriate action (especially if it was an accidental deletion).

LanguageTool Improvements

The first update to Zettlr's LanguageTool integration concerns the language
detection. This update ships with two improvements:

1. Zettlr implements LanguageTool's "Preferred Variants" setting
2. LanguageTool respects the lang frontmatter property

Those who prefer writing in British English (instead of, e.g., US English) had
to resort to manually switching the automatically detected language from en-US
to en-GB every time they opened a file. This has to do with fact that
LanguageTool's auto-detector cannot reliably distinguish between variants of
some languages (English, German, Portuguese, and Catalan). That is why LT
implements a "Preferred Variants" setting that allows you to specify which
variant you prefer when writing in any of these languages. Zettlr now implements
this setting so that when LT auto-detects the language, it will choose that
variant if it detects that, e.g., English is the language. You can adapt this in
the settings.

Second, LanguageTool now respects the lang property in YAML frontmatters. This
will come in especially handy for people writing bilingual and where
LanguageTool has troubles auto-detecting the proper language. By setting the
property lang to the language of the document (e.g., en-CA), LanguageTool
will default to that one instead of choosing the auto-detection. As an added
benefit, Pandoc also supports this property to localize some things here and
there (read more at https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#language-variables).

Note that both improvements only apply to the initial loading of a document. You
can always override the language on a per-document basis using the status bar.

GUI and Functionality

• Feature: Zettlr now supports titles in internal (wiki) links; the default
  setting instructs the parser to expect first the link, and then the title
  ([[link|title]]), which ensures compatibility to, e.g., VimWiki, MediaWiki,
  or Obsidian, whereas the alternative setting ([[title|link]]) is compatible
  to GitHub wiki syntax. Remember that you need to enable the corresponding
  option on the Pandoc Markdown reader (wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
  wikilinks_title_before_pipe, respectively) if you wish to export files with
  this option
• Feature: Project Overhaul. Now you can properly manage which files will be
  exported in projects, and in which order
• Feature: Zettlr can now suggest you emojis during autocompletion. Emojis
  use the same trigger character as the snippets autocomplete, a colon (:);
  and Emojis will always be sorted below your snippets -- you can turn this off
  in the editor settings
• Feature: We've completely redesigned the preferences dialog; now it is
  more aligned with the system preferences on macOS and Windows, allows
  searching and follows a more stringent structure
• Feature: The assets manager now provides buttons to open the defaults and
  snippets directories...

Release v3.1.0-beta.2

This new beta release adds many smaller and a few bigger improvements. The bigger improvements of note for you are the following:

• You can now enable whitespace highlighting for the editors, which will make any spaces visible
• The LanguageTool linter now respects the lang property of YAML front matters
• Zettlr now incorporates the “preferred variants” setting of LanguageTool
• Improved project management, allowing you to properly select files and ordering for project exports

You can read more about those and all the other changes in the Changelog below. Besides that, this beta primarily fixes smaller issues and improves many things under the hood which won't be very visible, except making the experience more smooth.

Changelog

Changes to the link detection

For a long time now, Zettlr would (sometimes aggressively so) detect plain links
and display them in a rendered state. In some cases, this was nice as it would
relieve you from having to surround such links with pointy or angled brackets.

However, especially in the latest evolution of this parser plugin, the link
detection was a bit too aggressive and interfered, e.g., with emphasis
highlighting. In this version, we have entirely removed our custom link
detection and rely upon the more straight-forward way of detecting links.

Regarding your exporting experience, this should not have any impact, since the
auto-link-detection feature wasn't supported by Pandoc anyhow, but depending on
how you have been writing, you may notice less detected links in your documents.

To add "plain" links (without using the full []()-syntax) from now on, simply
surround them with angled brackets: <https://www.google.com> or
<mail@example.com>. Note that the protocol (https://) is required, so
<www.google.com> will not work.

This changes brings Zettlr's link functionality much more into alignment with
other editors as well, since this is the way that many other applications handle
links as well.

Introducing Wikilink Titles

This update brings a long-awaited change to Zettlr's handling of internal links
(sometimes called Wikilinks). Specifically, with this version, Zettlr finally
supports optional titles in such links. Your old links in the format [[link]]
still work fine, but now you can add a title that is different from the link,
separated by a pipe, or vertical bar character (|).

If such a title is given, Zettlr will use it in various ways to make your files
more readable. For example, if you have the link renderer activated in the
settings, it will take care of hiding the link target of Wikilinks as well as
those of regular Markdown links.

Since there is no way of knowing which of the two parts is the link, and which
is the title, Zettlr follows Pandoc's solution in allowing you to specify how
internal links are structured for you. The default and recommended setting is to
put links first, and titles second ([[link|title]]). This ensure compatibility
with VimWiki, MediaWiki, Obsidian, and others. However, should you need to
target GitHub wiki pages or another application that expects a title to come
first, you can select the alternative option ([[title|link]]).

In order to make Pandoc aware of your choice, you can add one of the following
reader extensions to your export profiles: wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
wikilinks_title_before_pipe.

Lastly, due to this improvement, we have changed the default setting for "link
with filename" from "always" to "never", since it will be more ergonomic to use
a custom link title directly instead of having the filename pop up after the
link. This default setting applies to new installations; so you may consider to
change this setting manually yourself as well.

Re-enabling old Link-Title-Syntax

After the release of Zettlr v3.0.0, some users have complained that their
internal links have stopped working. It turns out that quite a lot were using
Logseq's syntax for adding titles to internal links ([Title]([[Link]])), which
we broke during a refactor of the Markdown parser. This update partially
restores this link functionality, allowing you to Cmd/Ctrl-Click them to
follow these links again.

Note that we have not yet implemented the functionality of auto-renaming files
or showing tooltips on these links.

Project Overhaul: Full Control Over Your Files

Projects are at the heart of Zettlr. As a writing toolbox primarily targeted at
academics, journalists, and writers, it must cater not just to simple note-
taking workflows, but also to serious writing. Because of this, Zettlr ships
with a project feature since the very beginning (since version 0.18.0,
released on Jul 20, 2018, to be precise).

However, for a long time the feature attempted to piggyback on the way your
files were displayed. This meant that (a) the order in which your files were
weaved together into the project file depended on the sorting of the directory,
and (b) there was no clear way to exclude files that naturally amass during the
lifetime of a project, such as notes, backup files, and miscellaneous.

Zettlr 3.1.0 fixes this issue by introducing a rather small, but powerful change
to the way projects work. We have removed the difficult to understand glob-
patterns that were introduced in a less-than-ideal attempt to fix some of the
complexity-issues that were introduced later (such as displaying file titles
instead of filenames, and others). Instead, you can now explicitly select which
files will be included in your bound export files – and in which order.

The new file list, which you can find in the project properties dialog, aims to
be dead-simple to understand, yet give you back the certainty which files will
end up where in your export – without a doubt.

This also means a change to your projects: After this update, the glob patterns
will be removed from your .ztr-directory files and replaced with an (initially
empty) array of files to be included in your project. That means that you will
have to select the files you want to include in a project once after the update.

Managing this list in the project properties is simple: The "Files" tab includes
a list of all files available within the project's folder structure. To select a
file for export, click the "+"-button to move it up and include it in the
export. Next, you can use the "Up"- and "Down"-buttons to change the order of
the files within your export. The "-"-button removes a file again and moves it
back down to the list of ignored files. Changes are immediately applied and
persisted to your disk.

When you now export the project, Zettlr will use only the files you have
selected, and put them in the appropriate order.

Should you have deleted a file that you originally included in the list of
files, Zettlr will show you a warning message as soon as you export it so that
you can have a second look to not send off a file that's missing a crucial part
of your work. Such missing files are shown atop of the available files and
feature a "-"-button which allows you to remove them from the list. We opted for
this approach, since it makes it transparent which files are missing so you can
take the appropriate action (especially if it was an accidental deletion).

LanguageTool Improvements

The first update to Zettlr's LanguageTool integration concerns the language
detection. This update ships with two improvements:

1. Zettlr implements LanguageTool's "Preferred Variants" setting
2. LanguageTool respects the lang frontmatter property

Those who prefer writing in British English (instead of, e.g., US English) had
to resort to manually switching the automatically detected language from en-US
to en-GB every time they opened a file. This has to do with fact that
LanguageTool's auto-detector cannot reliably distinguish between variants of
some languages (English, German, Portuguese, and Catalan). That is why LT
implements a "Preferred Variants" setting that allows you to specify which
variant you prefer when writing in any of these languages. Zettlr now implements
this setting so that when LT auto-detects the language, it will choose that
variant if it detects that, e.g., English is the language. You can adapt this in
the settings.

Second, LanguageTool now respects the lang property in YAML frontmatters. This
will come in especially handy for people writing bilingual and where
LanguageTool has troubles auto-detecting the proper language. By setting the
property lang to the language of the document (e.g., en-CA), LanguageTool
will default to that one instead of choosing the auto-detection. As an added
benefit, Pandoc also supports this property to localize some things here and
there (read more at https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#language-variables).

Note that both improvements only apply to the initial loading of a document. You
can always override the language on a per-document basis using the status bar.

GUI and Functionality

• Feature: Zettlr now supports titles in internal (wiki) links; the default
  setting instructs the parser to expect first the link, and then the title
  ([[link|title]]), which ensures compatibility to, e.g., VimWiki, MediaWiki,
  or Obsidian, whereas the alternative setting ([[title|link]]) is compatible
  to GitHub wiki syntax. Remember that you need to enable the corresponding
  option on the Pandoc Markdown reader (wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
  wikilinks_title_before_pipe, respectively) if you wish to export files with
  this option
• Feature: Project Overhaul. Now you can properly manage which files will be
  exported in projects, and in which order
• Feature: Zettlr can now suggest you emojis during autocompletion. Emojis
  use the same trigger character as the snippets autocomplete, a colon (:);
  and Emojis will always be sor...

Release v3.1.0-beta.1

This update changes a few minor but notable things from the previous beta release. Here they are at a glance:

• Fixed a serious bug during save that would effectively remove any non-standard linefeeds (such as CRLF or LFCR) during save, leading to various issues with detecting external changes
• The dialogs are now modal even on Linux. Previously, they weren't due to (likely) a bug in Electron. We've now undone this in the hopes that the original bug that this fixed doesn't re-occur, so please report any problems you may encounter.
• The app now shows the precise git commit hash from which it was compiled (in the About Debug tab). This might help reproduce bugs in the future.
• Fixed an issue with the visual list indentation. This should reduce the "wobble" some were experiencing when using tabular characters for indentation as well as line up the list markers with the rest of the text.
• We've switched from the legacy YAML implementation to the new mode implementation. This means that some syntax highlighting has slightly changed, but this will give us more control over the various frontmatter blocks.
• Removed fuzzy translation matching. This has led to our translation library gettext to auto-translate sentences that appeared similar, which has led to confusion. That being said, should you find odd-sounding translations if you're not using English (US) as your app language, this is likely an issue that can be easily solved and we would like to invite you to become a translator. All you need to know can be found on the project repository.
• Other than that, we've fixed various minor things here and there.

For everything that has changed since v3.0.0, refer to the full changelog below.

Changelog

Changes to the link detection

For a long time now, Zettlr would (sometimes aggressively so) detect plain links
and display them in a rendered state. In some cases, this was nice as it would
relieve you from having to surround such links with pointy or angled brackets.

However, especially in the latest evolution of this parser plugin, the link
detection was a bit too aggressive and interfered, e.g., with emphasis
highlighting. In this version, we have entirely removed our custom link
detection and rely upon the more straight-forward way of detecting links.

Regarding your exporting experience, this should not have any impact, since the
auto-link-detection feature wasn't supported by Pandoc anyhow, but depending on
how you have been writing, you may notice less detected links in your documents.

To add "plain" links (without using the full []()-syntax) from now on, simply
surround them with angled brackets: <https://www.google.com> or
<mail@example.com>. Note that the protocol (https://) is required, so
<www.google.com> will not work.

This changes brings Zettlr's link functionality much more into alignment with
other editors as well, since this is the way that many other applications handle
links as well.

Introducing Wikilink Titles

This update brings a long-awaited change to Zettlr's handling of internal links
(sometimes called Wikilinks). Specifically, with this version, Zettlr finally
supports optional titles in such links. Your old links in the format [[link]]
still work fine, but now you can add a title that is different from the link,
separated by a pipe, or vertical bar character (|).

If such a title is given, Zettlr will use it in various ways to make your files
more readable. For example, if you have the link renderer activated in the
settings, it will take care of hiding the link target of Wikilinks as well as
those of regular Markdown links.

Since there is no way of knowing which of the two parts is the link, and which
is the title, Zettlr follows Pandoc's solution in allowing you to specify how
internal links are structured for you. The default and recommended setting is to
put links first, and titles second ([[link|title]]). This ensure compatibility
with VimWiki, MediaWiki, Obsidian, and others. However, should you need to
target GitHub wiki pages or another application that expects a title to come
first, you can select the alternative option ([[title|link]]).

In order to make Pandoc aware of your choice, you can add one of the following
reader extensions to your export profiles: wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
wikilinks_title_before_pipe.

Lastly, due to this improvement, we have changed the default setting for "link
with filename" from "always" to "never", since it will be more ergonomic to use
a custom link title directly instead of having the filename pop up after the
link. This default setting applies to new installations; so you may consider to
change this setting manually yourself as well.

Re-enabling old Link-Title-Syntax

After the release of Zettlr v3.0.0, some users have complained that their
internal links have stopped working. It turns out that quite a lot were using
Logseq's syntax for adding titles to internal links ([Title]([[Link]])), which
we broke during a refactor of the Markdown parser. This update partially
restores this link functionality, allowing you to Cmd/Ctrl-Click them to
follow these links again.

Note that we have not yet implemented the functionality of auto-renaming files
or showing tooltips on these links.

GUI and Functionality

• Feature: Zettlr now supports titles in internal (wiki) links; the default
  setting instructs the parser to expect first the link, and then the title
  ([[link|title]]), which ensures compatibility to, e.g., VimWiki, MediaWiki,
  or Obsidian, whereas the alternative setting ([[title|link]]) is compatible
  to GitHub wiki syntax. Remember that you need to enable the corresponding
  option on the Pandoc Markdown reader (wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
  wikilinks_title_before_pipe, respectively) if you wish to export files with
  this option
• Feature: Zettlr can now suggest you emojis during autocompletion. Emojis
  use the same trigger character as the snippets autocomplete, a colon (:);
  and Emojis will always be sorted below your snippets -- you can turn this off
  in the editor settings
• Feature: We've completely redesigned the preferences dialog; now it is
  more aligned with the system preferences on macOS and Windows, allows
  searching and follows a more stringent structure
• Removed the option for choosing to sort by either file creation or last
  modification time, since that can also be inferred from whichever time you
  choose to display
• Feature: The assets manager now provides buttons to open the defaults and
  snippets directories directly from within the app
• Removed the option for activating or disabling automatic file creation upon
  following internal links; now this will happen automatically as long as the
  "custom folder" option points to an existing folder; to disable this
  functionality simply remove the folder path
• Fixed a bug where recent documents would not turn up in the menu
• Fixed the sidebar shortcut: It is now Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+0 (to align with the
  file manager shortcut, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+1)
• Custom protocols should now be opened without problems by Zettlr (#3853)
• Added Tamil (India) translation (#4848)
• Removed the custom plain link parser out of two reasons: (1) It was a tad too
  aggressive, detecting links even where none were wanted; (2) Pandoc doesn't
  support auto-links in such a way as we have implemented it, leading to
  inconsistencies in exports
• The YAML frontmatter is now ignored for the purposes of previewing files,
  showing a more meaningful preview of its contents (#4598)
• Improve pasting behavior: Now text from Microsoft Word or Excel will be pasted
  as text, instead of offering to insert an image of the selection
• Fix pasting behavior: Now Zettlr should properly paste most formatted text
  without too much noise (in the form of comments, styles, and other additions)
• Fix restart-dialog showing multiple times for the same options (#4768)
• Fix the active typewriter line background color in dark mode
• Fixed an issue where gutter markers were not equally offset when typewriter
  mode was active (#4918)
• Fixed non-working file deletion menu item (#3894)
• Fixed a bug that would not ask users to save their changes when closing the
  last main window on Windows or Linux (#4898)
• Fixed a bug that would not properly restore the open directory on application
  boot (#3797)
• Fixed an issue that would break drag & drop behavior of editor panes when the
  pathname contained a colon on non-Windows systems (#4822)
• Fixed an issue where the re-ordering of list item numbers would not ensure
  that lists start at 1
• Fixed an issue that has removed the custom background color from the Bielefeld
  and Bordeaux themes (#4913)
• Fixed broken context menu options for images (#4893)
• Implemented superscript and subscript HTML rendering in the internal Markdown-
  to-HTML converter (#4943)
• Improved the TableEditor to more reliably parse tables; also, when a table
  could not be rendered out of any reason, the editor will simply remain dormant
  and not render the table instead of messing up the entire document
• Improvements to how the Markdown AST handles table parsing, which will improve
  Markdown-to-HTML conversion both within the TableEditor as well as when
  copying as HTML
• Fixed an issue that would make a context menu on macOS appear offset from the
  actual mouse position if the window's GUI was scaled absolutely (as per the
  preferences); now the context menu should always appear exactly where it
  should be
• Updated the CodeMirror dependencies to resolve an issue where users of
  keyboards with Alt-G being assigned to some character were unable to type
  that (specifically, Swiss-Mac keyboard users could not type an @)
• Fixed a bug that would not...

Release v3.1.0-beta

New Preferences UI | Link Improvements | Bug Fixes | Quality of Life Improvements

Thank you for testing Zettlr's beta releases and helping us create a stable and enjoyable release! Please report any bugs you find on GitHub. If you have any questions, we warmly welcome you on our Discord server. Finally, Zettlr is and will always remain Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), but every app requires some funding. If you enjoy Zettlr and would like to ensure it remains a viable alternative for professional writing, consider becoming a Patron on Patreon or use PayPal. If you prefer, you can also send over a small tip on Ko-Fi. You can find more information on our website.

Since the 3.0.0 major release, we've been hard at work at improving the app everywhere to aid your writing process even better. Zettlr 3.1 will contain a serious amount of improvements, all of which you can find in the changelog below. Let us highlight a few of the main things we have implemented:

A new preferences UI. Together with UI/UX designer Artem Barinov, we have spent the better half of 2023 thinking about how to improve the preferences UI. The result is a fully redesigned and much more accessible UI that allows you to find settings faster and adapt Zettlr to your own style.

A more accidental but nonetheless central theme of this release is links. One thing you may immediately note when testing out the beta is that the plain link detection has changed. You can read more below, but in short: What you see within Zettlr is now much closer aligned with what you actually get once you export your files.

Continuing with the Zelda link theme, Zettlr finally supports proper Wikilinks in: you can now add titles to them. This is a long-awaited feature that other editors already support, and we're happy that Zettlr now follows suit. This means, instead of the (depending on how you use them) cumbersome "Add filename after link" setting, you can now directly link them within proper, grammatical sentences. Activating the link renderer in the preferences will automatically hide the link and only show the title if applicable.

Finally, we have received many reports by users online and offline that their links broke after the release of v3.0.0. If you belong to this group of users, rejoice: We listen to the user base, and this release begins the work of re-enabling their functionality. Again, a more elaborate description can be found below.

Lastly, one issue that people have been wanting is an easy way of backing up snippets or export/import profiles. Until now this was a bit cumbersome, as you had to manually navigate into the application data directory. But no more! This version adds buttons to the appropriate places in the assets manager that allow you to open the corresponding folders directly, making it easy to simply copy and/or paste files into those folders, synchronizing that between your devices.

A lot more has changed, and we hope that these changes are all to your liking. Should something not work as expected, you know where to go!

Thank you again for helping the project by rigorously testing the beta releases.

Changelog

Changes to the link detection

For a long time now, Zettlr would (sometimes aggressively so) detect plain links
and display them in a rendered state. In some cases, this was nice as it would
relieve you from having to surround such links with pointy or angled brackets.

However, especially in the latest evolution of this parser plugin, the link
detection was a bit too aggressive and interfered, e.g., with emphasis
highlighting. In this version, we have entirely removed our custom link
detection and rely upon the more straight-forward way of detecting links.

Regarding your exporting experience, this should not have any impact, since the
auto-link-detection feature wasn't supported by Pandoc anyhow, but depending on
how you have been writing, you may notice less detected links in your documents.

To add "plain" links (without using the full []()-syntax) from now on, simply
surround them with angled brackets: <https://www.google.com> or
<mail@example.com>. Note that the protocol (https://) is required, so
<www.google.com> will not work.

This changes brings Zettlr's link functionality much more into alignment with
other editors as well, since this is the way that many other applications handle
links as well.

Introducing Wikilink Titles

This update brings a long-awaited change to Zettlr's handling of internal links
(sometimes called Wikilinks). Specifically, with this version, Zettlr finally
supports optional titles in such links. Your old links in the format [[link]]
still work fine, but now you can add a title that is different from the link,
separated by a pipe, or vertical bar character (|).

If such a title is given, Zettlr will use it in various ways to make your files
more readable. For example, if you have the link renderer activated in the
settings, it will take care of hiding the link target of Wikilinks as well as
those of regular Markdown links.

Since there is no way of knowing which of the two parts is the link, and which
is the title, Zettlr follows Pandoc's solution in allowing you to specify how
internal links are structured for you. The default and recommended setting is to
put links first, and titles second ([[link|title]]). This ensure compatibility
with VimWiki, MediaWiki, Obsidian, and others. However, should you need to
target GitHub wiki pages or another application that expects a title to come
first, you can select the alternative option ([[title|link]]).

In order to make Pandoc aware of your choice, you can add one of the following
reader extensions to your export profiles: wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
wikilinks_title_before_pipe.

Lastly, due to this improvement, we have changed the default setting for "link
with filename" from "always" to "never", since it will be more ergonomic to use
a custom link title directly instead of having the filename pop up after the
link. This default setting applies to new installations; so you may consider to
change this setting manually yourself as well.

Re-enabling old Link-Title-Syntax

After the release of Zettlr v3.0.0, some users have complained that their
internal links have stopped working. It turns out that quite a lot were using
Logseq's syntax for adding titles to internal links ([Title]([[Link]])), which
we broke during a refactor of the Markdown parser. This update partially
restores this link functionality, allowing you to Cmd/Ctrl-Click them to
follow these links again.

Note that we have not yet implemented the functionality of auto-renaming files
or showing tooltips on these links.

GUI and Functionality

• Feature: Zettlr now supports titles in internal (wiki) links; the default
  setting instructs the parser to expect first the link, and then the title
  ([[link|title]]), which ensures compatibility to, e.g., VimWiki, MediaWiki,
  or Obsidian, whereas the alternative setting ([[title|link]]) is compatible
  to GitHub wiki syntax. Remember that you need to enable the corresponding
  option on the Pandoc Markdown reader (wikilinks_title_after_pipe or
  wikilinks_title_before_pipe, respectively) if you wish to export files with
  this option
• Feature: Zettlr can now suggest you emojis during autocompletion. Emojis
  use the same trigger character as the snippets autocomplete, a colon (:);
  and Emojis will always be sorted below your snippets -- you can turn this off
  in the editor settings
• Feature: We've completely redesigned the preferences dialog; now it is
  more aligned with the system preferences on macOS and Windows, allows
  searching and follows a more stringent structure
• Removed the option for choosing to sort by either file creation or last
  modification time, since that can also be inferred from whichever time you
  choose to display
• Feature: The assets manager now provides buttons to open the defaults and
  snippets directories directly from within the app
• Removed the option for activating or disabling automatic file creation upon
  following internal links; now this will happen automatically as long as the
  "custom folder" option points to an existing folder; to disable this
  functionality simply remove the folder path
• Fixed a bug where recent documents would not turn up in the menu
• Fixed the sidebar shortcut: It is now Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+0 (to align with the
  file manager shortcut, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+1)
• Custom protocols should now be opened without problems by Zettlr (#3853)
• Added Tamil (India) translation (#4848)
• Removed the custom plain link parser out of two reasons: (1) It was a tad too
  aggressive, detecting links even where none were wanted; (2) Pandoc doesn't
  support auto-links in such a way as we have implemented it, leading to
  inconsistencies in exports
• The YAML frontmatter is now ignored for the purposes of previewing files,
  showing a more meaningful preview of its contents (#4598)
• Improve pasting behavior: Now text from Microsoft Word or Excel will be pasted
  as text, instead of offering to insert an image of the selection
• Fix pasting behavior: Now Zettlr should properly paste most formatted text
  without too much noise (in the form of comments, styles, and other additions)
• Fix restart-dialog showing multiple times for the same options (#4768)
• Fix the active typewriter line background color in dark mode
• Fixed an issue where gutter markers were not equally offset when typewriter
  mode was active (#4918)
• Fixed non-working file deletion menu item (#3894)
• Fixed ...

Release v3.0.5

Minor patch | Fixes Linux ARM | Drops support for macOS 10.13 & 10.14

This update includes a critical security fix. We therefore recommend all users install this update as soon as possible. If you run macOS below version 10.15, which is no longer supported in Zettlr 3.0.5, please upgrade to Zettlr 3.0.4 by downloading this from GitHub Releases, which includes the security patch but still works on macOS 10.13 and 10.14 until you are able to update your macOS to 10.15 or higher.

Immediately after v3.0.4, we decided to release a minor upgrade that bumps
the underlying Electron framework to the most recent version. This will stop
segmentation faults in Wayland environments and prevent the flagging of
Zettlr in repositories such as AUR due to outdated dependencies.

Dropping Support for macOS 10.13 and 10.14

Due to Zettlr's underlying Electron framework dropping support for macOS 10.13
(High Sierra) and 10.14 (Mojave), Zettlr drops support for these operating
systems as well. To continue to use Zettlr on a Mac, ensure to update to at
least macOS 10.15 (Catalina).

Linux ARM builds functionally again

Since Zettlr v3.0.0, Linux users on ARM-machines had the issue that they could
not run the app, as a dependency has been compiled for the wrong architecture.
Thanks to efforts by @LaPingvino, this has now been finally fixed and you should
be able to run the app again just fine on ARM computers with Linux.

Changelog

GUI and Functionality

• Fix: Segmentation faults in Wayland environments (#4877)
• Fix Linux ARM builds (#4910)

Under the Hood

• Update Electron from v25 to the latest available release (v28.2.1); this
  fixes segmentation fault issues in Wayland environments (#4877) and ensures
  that Zettlr keeps running a supported Electron version, which is especially
  pressing for the Arch Linux repository (see #4887; thanks to @alerque for
  bringing this to our attention), but also means that macOS 10.13 and 10.14 are
  no longer supported
• Switched to Zig compiler to enable successful compilation for Linux ARM
  targets (#4910)

Release v3.0.4

Security patch | Please Update immediately

Dear users,

a security researcher has brought to our attention an issue that can lead to a
potential remote code execution (RCE) attack utilizing Zettlr's binary. This
issue has been first discovered and exploited in 2023. It is unlikely that you
have been affected, since the effort for this exploit is comparatively high and
it requires you to take some non-trivial actions. However, since we are
committed to making the app as safe as humanely possible to use, and the
corresponding fix was pretty easy to implement, we decided to offer this
security release that includes the same functionality as Zettlr v3.0.3, but with
the added security patch included.

A CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) number has been applied for at
MITRE, but not yet issued. Once we know the number, we will publish a postmortem
on our blog and include some background as well as details about what this issue
exactly implied, how it could have been exploited, and how we have mitigated the
issue in this patch.

Thanks again to user "soulfood" for bringing this to our attention and for the
cooperation in fixing the issue in a timely manner.

Changelog

GUI and Functionality

Nothing changed.

Under the hood

• Update Electron to the last version 25 update (v25.9.8)
• Add Electron fuses support and disable those that allow certain debug commands
  to be sent to the binary (e.g., --inspect). This can be abused by malicious
  actors for remote code execution (RCE) attacks (CVE number applied for at
  MITRE; not yet issued; please see the Zettlr blog for updates)

Release v3.0.3

Bug Fixes | Performance Improvements | CSS Changes

This patch includes a series of minor bug fixes and performance improvements. In addition, this patch refactors a lot of the theming of the app. This should not impact anyone, but may lead to some of you having to do minor updates to your Custom CSS, if you use any.

Are you satisfied with Zettlr?

Then please consider becoming a patron over at Patreon, or make a one-time payment via PayPal.

Changelog

A Note on Custom CSS

This update includes a full refactor of the theming: The editor themes (Berlin,
Frankfurt, Bielefeld, Karl-Marx-Stadt, and Bordeaux) have now moved to their own
theme files and do not come with standard CSS anymore. This heavily un-clutters
the codebase, but it may impact your Custom CSS, should you use this feature. We
have ensured that no class names change and that the styling is mostly the same,
but the possibility of having to adapt the Custom CSS may arise for some of you.

GUI and Functionality

• Fixed a visual issue that would handle overly long window titles improperly
• Fixed Tab not indenting/unindenting code in the CodeEditors (snippets,
  profiles, etc.)
• Fixed a precedence issue that would make it impossible to use autocomplete
  while filling in a snippet; now, accepting a potential autocomplete has a
  higher precedence than moving to the next tabstop of a snippet, making working
  with snippets more ergonomic
• Images now render more appropriately in inline-contexts
• Updated the German translation
• Fixed the keyboard shortcut for inserting footnotes on Windows and Linux
• Removed the accent color setting: now the accent color will always be the
  system accent color on macOS and Windows, and Zettlr's brand green on Linux;
  themes do not provide an accent color anymore
• Restored syntax highlighting for inline math code
• Fixes an issue that would frequently may make the cursor appear to jump or a
  dialog appearing warning of external changes (#4729; #4732)
• Added some translations
• Generating link previews no longer downloads the entire link target if the
  content is not preview-able
• Improved layout of link previews
• Overly long summaries of link previews are now shortened
• Project properties now adequately resolve the readers and writers of the
  existing profiles, enabling the usage of profiles with extended
  readers/writers (#4699)
• GraphView's labels are now rendered filled instead of stroked, to make it
  easier to read the labels.
• The GraphView does now support multi-window, so clicking a link will open it
  in the last focused window. If the file is already open in a leaf, that file
  will be in that leaf, otherwise it will open the file in the last focused
  leaf.
• Alt+Click in GraphView will force the document to be opened in a new tab.
• Zettelkasten links and tags will now be output by our custom Markdown-to-HTML
  parser (i.e., in various places in the app as well as on Copy with Style)

Under the Hood

• Moved all themes from the *.less-files into proper theme plugins for
  CodeMirror v6; this means that they will not provide any global styles
  anymore; any applicable styling has been moved to more appropriate places
  (CodeMirror plugins as well as the WindowChrome and the various remaining
  *.less files). We tested the changes out and in our settings, no changes
  were necessary; sometimes you may need to adapt class definitions
• Remove unused color variable definitions
• Move gray color palette to the Window Chrome component
• Fixed an issue where the font definitions were borked and required usage of
  !important to make them work (#4719)
• Upgraded all available CodeMirror components to the most recent version
• Replaced fs.unlink with fs.rm in safeDelete to support recursive removal
  of directories
• fsal-directory::removeChild now calls pathExists instead of isFile to
  make sure directories also are removed in removeChild
• pathExists wraps fs.promises.access.
• (CodeMirror) Move plugin-specific base styles from the main override as well
  as from the themes to the respective plugin files
• Bump Pandoc to version 3.1.9
• Fixed a weird layouting issue with the code block backgrounds
• DocumentManager's openFile does now handle the case when windowId and leafId
  is undefined, by keeping track on the last used editor.

New Contributors

• @pseandersson made their first contribution in #4707
• @conglinyizhi made their first contribution in #4759

Release v3.0.2

Bug Fixes | Quality of Life Updates | Security Improvements

This update fixed a few issues here and there that have been identified since the last release. This mainly refers to how link rendering is done, a potential data loss issue, and the file importer. Additionally, some translations have been updated. Finally, this update contains a security patch, so we recommend a swift update.

Changelog

GUI and Functionality

• Fixed a bug that would not parse plain-text links at the end of a line
  completely
• Added two heuristics to plain link parser: (a) if the matched link ends with a
  period, exclude the period; (b) if the matched link ends with a closing
  bracket that does not match an open bracket, exclude the closing bracket
  (remember that you can explicitly define the start and end of plain links by
  wrapping them in < and >)
• Fixed an issue that could lead to data loss if "Always load remote changes"
  was checked in the settings (#4706)
• Improved the Czech translation (#4688)
• Improve the Chinese (Taiwan) translation (#4711)
• Fixed an issue that would import Markdown files as LaTeX instead of simply
  copying the file
• If multiple candidate profiles to import files are found, the user can now
  choose the correct one

Under the Hood

• Increased the "immediate" save delay from 250 to 500ms to give slower systems
  more time to persist changes to disk
• Replaced direct access and stat calls for files and directories in the
  FSAL with a wrapper that will later on allow us to keep different file systems
  (e.g., WebDav versus local filesystem) opaque to the user
• Fixed a potentially (?) horrible bug where directory modification times were
  accidentally set to ctime instead of mtime, leaving any changes to the
  directory that do not also update ctime hidden from the FSAL
• Fixed a misalignment of the InlineCode element for the Pandoc attribute
  parser
• Upgrade Electron to v25.8.4, mitigating CVE-2023-5217

New Contributors

• @czneal made their first contribution in #4688
• @seanmars made their first contribution in #4711