New in Quillhollow 1.0.8
Export your manuscript as a PDF. The export screen now has a Word / PDF switch at the top. Choose PDF to save a page-for-page copy that matches the on-screen preview exactly, with your title page, running headers and page breaks all in place. Handy for beta readers who do not use Word, and for printing. Word export is unchanged.
Search now looks inside your cards, not just your scenes. The Search panel has two tabs. Scenes finds text in your manuscript's prose, exactly as before. The new Cards tab finds it in your cards' names, descriptions, notes, tags, pins and issues, grouped by card type. Each tab keeps its own filters and match count, and clicking a card result opens that card's editor.
You can now remove a paragraph indent. Tab has always indented the first line of a paragraph, but there was no way back. Shift+Tab now removes the indent, and the alignment menu gains "Indent paragraph" and "Remove indent". A removed indent is remembered as a deliberate choice.
New export option: "Force indent paragraphs". If you type without indenting, your manuscript previously exported with no paragraph indents at all, which makes paragraph boundaries invisible in double-spaced format. Turn this on and every plainly typed paragraph gets the standard half-inch first-line indent in Word, PDF and both previews. Paragraphs you flushed on purpose stay flush. Off by default.
New export option: "Remove blank lines". Empty lines you leave between paragraphs are removed from your exported Word and PDF files by default, which is what standard manuscript format expects. Turn it off to keep them exactly as you typed them.
Projects saved by a newer version now open safely. If you open a project last saved by a newer version of Quillhollow, it opens in read-only mode instead of risking the newer changes. A banner explains what happened and offers a button to get the latest version. Locking the project, or using Save As on it, is held back until you update, so an older version can never quietly rewrite it. After you update, the project opens normally again.
Quillhollow now keeps a record when something goes wrong. A new _diagnostics folder inside your Quillhollow folder holds two small text files: one that stays empty unless the app hits a real problem, and one that notes when each session started and ended. They never contain any part of your writing, and nothing is ever sent anywhere on its own.
One click to send those files to support. Help, then About, then Diagnostics. "Save diagnostic report" gathers everything into a single text file ready to attach to an email, and "Open diagnostics folder" takes you to the files themselves. The report is plain text, so you can read every word before you send it.
Companion: you can now reject a desktop change from your phone. Each update in the sync review screen has a Reject button next to Accept, so it works the same way in both directions. Rejecting a brand new card asks you to confirm first, so a stray tap cannot delete a card by accident.
Fixed
Starting up and getting your window back
- Attempting to start the app a second time now tells you the app is already running. It previously did nothing at all, with no window and no message, which looked exactly like the app failing to launch.
- Clicking the shortcut when Quillhollow is already open now brings the app window back into focus. If the window had ended up hidden, there was no way to recover it short of Task Manager. Double-clicking a project file in that situation used to discard the file as well, and now opens it once the window is ready.
- Quillhollow can no longer start up without showing a window. In rare cases the app could begin loading, never finish, and leave you with nothing on screen. Because it was still running, starting it again did nothing at all. If the window has not appeared within ten seconds, Quillhollow now shows it regardless, and makes a note of what happened in the diagnostics files.
- A window that stops responding now tries to recover. If the writing window stops responding because something went wrong underneath it, Quillhollow reloads it once and, if that does not work, tells you plainly instead of leaving you with a blank screen.
Export
- Chapter titles now start one third of the way down the page in Word exports, which previously ignored the setting. Your chapter openings will sit lower on the page than before, matching common submission practice.
- The export preview now shows the same running header as Word: your surname in capitals, then the title in capitals. The preview previously showed your full author name as typed, so the two disagreed.
- Word exports no longer show a stray " / " at the start of the running header when no author name is set. It now reads "YOUR TITLE / 2", matching the preview.
- The export preview no longer shows a faint dashed line above each chapter title. Word exports never had it, so what you see now matches what you get.
- The paged export preview no longer hangs on very long unbroken text, such as a pasted web address. It now clips at the page edge, the way Word does.
- Line breaks inside a paragraph no longer fuse words together when the paragraph splits across a page.
- The "Indent first paragraph" setting now updates the scrolling preview straight away. Your exported files were always correct.
Writing and editing
- Selected text in the Dark theme is readable again. Selected text keeps its normal colour and only the background is tinted.
- Pressing Tab no longer removes a paragraph's alignment. Indent and alignment now coexist.
- Undo no longer fills up with steps that change nothing. Tab on an already-indented paragraph, or choosing an alignment it already had, now does nothing at all.
- The formatting toolbar is now disabled for locked scenes and read-only projects. Find and typewriter mode remain available, since they only read.
- Comment highlights stay on the words you commented on, whether you type, paste, delete or undo. A comment that had already drifted stays where it drifted to: delete and re-add it once, and it will track correctly from then on.
Importing
- Importing a very long manuscript is much faster and no longer makes the app look frozen. On a million-word manuscript the slowest step went from roughly a second to under two milliseconds.
- Importing a Word file with pictures in it no longer loads the pictures into memory. Nothing about the imported text changes.
Sync and projects
- The sync review now tells you which pin or note your phone changed, showing the old text alongside the new instead of just "pins: 1 to 1".
Companion app
- A failed save can no longer wipe your unsynced phone changes. The companion refuses to write an empty save and keeps the last good file.
- A change rejected on desktop no longer comes back as a new proposal by itself.
- Opening an imported scene no longer creates a phantom "formatting change". An edit you fully revert now sends nothing.
- A project saved by a different app version now opens in read-only mode, holding off saving until the versions line up, instead of warning you but saving anyway.
- Renaming a card no longer risks the name landing on the wrong card if you swipe away before tapping off.
- Notes typed on a card are no longer lost when you swipe to another card.
- A note is no longer lost if its page is removed by a sync while you type.
- The Notes editor no longer sits under the on-screen keyboard.
- The undo and redo buttons now announce themselves to screen readers.
- The pulsing help icon on the Open Project screen now respects your "remove animations" accessibility setting.