a11y/Dark Mode fixes | Text Transformations | Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements

We are happy to present a new update to Zettlr that includes a few nifty new features! Most notably, this update introduces a series of text transformations that you can use to modify any text inside Zettlr. These transformations allow you to, e.g., capitalize text to sentence or title case, fix errors that often happen when copying from PDF files, or change the text to conform to certain typographical styles. More transformations are to come in the future, but we believe that this is a great start to improve your workflow.

A second section in which we were active for this release concerns the theme. First, we have fixed an annoying bug that would never remember your dark mode setting on platforms other than macOS. And second, we have fixed an accessibility issue that would make Zettlr flicker white whenever opening a new window while using dark mode.

Finally, this update includes some additional bug fixes and performance improvements, and updates to the framework. For all information, as always, please refer to the complete changelog below.

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Changelog

Text Transformations

Zettlr now features a set of several text transformation commands in the editor. Using these commands, you can transform various pieces of text in the editor using several strategies aimed at working with both regular text (which you can, e.g., transform between sentence or title case) and corrupted text (from which you can remove control characters, unnecessary line breaks, and clean up quotation marks). In total, Zettlr now ships with 13 such transform commands, but many more are possible.

To utilize these transformations, simply select the text you wish to transform, open the context menu on it, and select the corresponding transformation from the context menu.

The available transforms as of now are:

• Zap gremlins: Removes unwanted control characters (such as form feeds, vertical tabs, and others), which sometimes end up in recognized PDF text.
• Strip duplicate spaces: Removes any superfluous spaces.
• Italics to quotes: Turns italic markers (e.g., *text*) into quotes ("text").
• Quotes to italics: Turns quotation marks (e.g., "text") into italic markers (*text*).
• Remove line breaks: Removes superfluous linebreaks while retaining any paragraphs (separated by two consecutive linebreaks).
• Straighten quotes: Turns smart, or "magic quotes" into regular quotes.
• Ensure double quotes: Turns any type of quotation (which includes backticks, since those sometimes appear in text copied from PDF files!) into regular double quotes.
• Double quotes to single: Turns any straight double quotes to single quotes.
• Single quotes to double: Turns single quotes into double quotes.
• Emdash — Add spaces around: Ensures that all em-dashes (—) in the text are surrounded by spaces.
• Emdash — Remove spaces around: Ensures that no em-dashes (—) in the text are surrounded by spaces.
• To sentence case: Turns the selected text to sentence case.
• To title case: Turns The Selected Text To Title Case.

GUI and Functionality

• Feature: Zettlr now has text transformations. With these, you can change selected pieces of text using a quick access command menu (#5701). Special thanks to @richdouglasevans for implementing this.
• Change: Zettlr will no longer parse Markdown-like files that exceed ca. 10 MB in size. After some testing, we have determined that 10 MB seems to be a balanced trade-off between parsing as many files as possible and preventing the app to crash (especially on slower computers). Note that this only affects the caching of certain pieces of metadata, such as title, heading level 1, and ID. You will still be able to open and edit the file. For more context, see issue [#5801].
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the creation of new directories via the shortcut (#5769).
• Fixed a bug that prevented retention of user-determined dark-mode setting on platforms other than macOS during application restarts (#570).
• Fixed the list of related files disappearing when switching sidebar tabs (#5795).
• Windows will now receive black as their background color on Windows and Linux if dark mode is active, preventing white flicker during window opening before the UI is ready (#5809).

Under the Hood

• Bump Pandoc to version 3.7.0.2.
• Bump Electron to version 37.2.0.
• The primary app service container can now be retrieved using the factory method getAppServiceContainer. This makes it possible to reduce a few recursive dependencies on passing the service container down and will help disentangle the main process services in the future.

New Contributors

• @hayribakici made their first contribution in https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/pull/5769
• @jujuliaa12 made their first contribution in https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/pull/5795

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/compare/v3.5.1...v3.6.0