Zettlr

Zettlr is a reliable companion for writing scientific texts and taking notes. It is made for academics in the humanities and arts and is intended to keep your content apart from your design, but close to the notes you take. To reach this goal, Zettlr incorporates several important features:

• File-agnostic editing. Zettlr does not store any information about your files, except in your files. This way you can always switch to and from Zettlr. Every file you see inside the preview pane corresponds to a file on your disk. With no special additions that might render the use of your files difficult for other editors.
• Zettelkasten-Methods implemented directly into the app. With Zettlr, you can link files and searches using "Wiki-Links" in the format [[your search text|@ID:ID]], give IDs by typing @ID:Your-ID-Here and tag your files using Twitter-like hashtags: #hashtag. Holding down the Alt-key and clicking on links will try to open exact-match files and also initiate searches, while Alt-clicks on tags will simply initiate searches. More features are likely to come.
• A directory list. This list contains all open directories and files. You can open new directories by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+O. New files can be opened simply by double clicking them in your file browser or by dragging them onto the app. Every time you start the app, all previously opened paths will be re-loaded.
• A preview pane that lists all the files that are inside the currently selected directory and separates them by their subdirectory. Just click on a file to open it in …
• … the editor, which takes the most space and is the crucial component that actually makes Zettlr an editor. You are able to write Markdown-files in the area, a slim text format that keeps formatting to a bare minimum.
• Exporting options. Using the open source software pandoc and LaTeX, Zettlr enables you to export all files on the fly in a variety of formats; currently HTML, DOCX, ODT and PDF. Just open a file and press Cmd/Ctrl+E.
• Searching. Zettlr enables you to quickly search through your files to find what you are looking for in a fraction of the time you'd need if you store all your information in several word documents that you'd have to open and search.
• A toolbar containing all functions in handy button-form.

GUI and functionality

• Fixed a bug during import that resulted in crashing the app if no Pandoc was found
• Updated the styling of the app to make it feel more modern
• To open a file directly by typing its name into the search bar you don't have to get the capitalisation correct anymore
• It is now possible to traverse the file tree directly by clicking on the directories inside the preview pane. Use a single click to make that directory your current one, or use an Alt-click to traverse back up to its parent directory
• Now the "Save changes before quitting?"-Dialog won't appear - all your files will be saved immediately before quitting
• Zettlr now remembers your last opened file and the last selected directory and restores them on each restart (if they still exist)
• Images can now also have pandoc attributes assigned (in curly brackets after the image tag) and will both render correctly inside Zettlr and work as intended on export
• The app will now remember its size and position on screen and restore it after a restart
• Changes to the design of the dark mode. It's now a little bit blue-ish and the colours are finally adapted to the brand
• The directory list is now way less cluttered and looks way better than before
• Dropping images onto the app is now possible
• Added the long-commented-out blockquote command to the context menu
• iframes will now be rendered as well (such as the embed codes by YouTube or Vimeo). Note that only iframe>-tags will be rendered, so Twitter embed won't work, for example
• Removed a small bug that would use the text selection cursor over directories after you've dragged a file
• Zettlr now remembers the last directories you were in when you successfully imported a file or opened a directory
• Added Droid Sans Mono as monospaced font family and updated the fonts around the app
• The Zettelkasten ID doesn't need to be in the format @ID: anymore. Also the zkn-links can be customised
• The generation of IDs is now up to your creativity
• Made the search progress indication better. Now, instead of the background filling up with sometimes ugly colours, a circle just as for the Pomodoro timer is used
• The file snippets now hold additional information, such as the ID of the given file or the amount of tags. Additionally, if you hover over the number of tags, a popup will tell you which tags the file holds. Directories also now show their number of children elements (both directories and files)
• The text snippets have been removed from the app
• The Quicklook windows now follow the application's theme
• Fixed a bug that generated a falsy first search cursor and prevented case insensitive searching
• Added extended statistics. Now you can exactly see when you've written how many words by clicking the new button in the small statistics popup
• You may now use #-characters inside tags
• macOS users now have an inset titlebar to make the app feel more immersive while not in fullscreen as well
• QuickLook windows now display the headings in the correct size again
• On smaller displays, Zettlr now has smaller margins and paddings so that each display size's space is used best
• Removed the ID-button from the toolbar. The command is still present in the menu and still works using the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+L
• Fixed the bug that the attachment pane tooltip was partially hidden
• Quicklook windows are now constrained to the body area, and cannot be dragged over the toolbar
• Added validation to the settings so that you can't accidentally set wrong values
• The default buttons for dialogs are now reactivated, so you can remove files and folders by simply hitting Return to confirm the removal
• Anything markdown-specific (links, tasks, images) won't be rendered in any mode other than markdown anymore. So you can now rest assured that your links won't be converted and comments won't be displayed the size of headings in comment blocks or something
• Indented tasks are now rendered
• The table of contents now ignores comments in comment-blocks (no matter which language) and also has a better detection for the level of these
• Fixed a bug that threw errors on moving directories around
• Added Math inline-rendering

Under the hood

• Implemented the try/catch construct around ZettlrImport to actually catch the errors that were thrown by this function.
• Added globally accessible config getters and setters so that the ZettlrConfig-object is now reachable from within all classes in the app.
• Changes to ZettlrWindow to create windows using programmatical boundaries.
• Updated the image finding regex again.
• Reorganised the font families in the less resources.
• The popup is now much simpler to call.
• Removed instantiation from both ZettlrImport and ZettlrExport.
• All Zettlr installations now receive a unique UUID.
• Using global.config.get it is now possible in the renderer to access the configuration programmatically without the need to send events.
• Replaced all renderer configuration requests with the new, faster and synchronous method.
• Fixed a missing dependency in ZettlrAttachment.
• Updated to electron 3.
• Changed app.makeSingleInstance to app.requestSingleInstanceLock as recommended by the docs.
• Updated dependencies to the newest versions.
• Image preview rendering is now independent of path.
• Refactored the complete configuration setting process.
• Explicitly set defaultId on confirmation dialogs.
• detach() is now called only after the move operation of a ZettlrDir has been completed to remove the parent-pointer.