Release Notes

Added

• cmark-gfm now replaces Sundown as the default Markdown processor for live previews an export.
• Syntax highlighting now utilizes cmark-gfm for better accuracy, especially with nested blocks.
• HUDs have been replaced with a side bar.
• Theming has been revamped to include more color options, but to exclude background images.
• CSS for HTML Preview now adaptively changes colors based on the current theme.
• Fonts can be customized for the HTML preview in the Preview Options dialog.
• Themes are now composed of two color schemes: a light mode and a dark mode.
• A new dark mode button in the status bar allows users to switch to the current theme's dark mode.
• Find and replace dialog has been revamped into a panel at the bottom of the application.
• Find and replace now supports highlighting all matches.
• Export dialog now uses native file selector dialog.
• Any two spaces at the end of a line are marked with dots by default.
• Selected text now reveals tabs and spaces.
• Source code has been refactored to follow KDE Frameworks and Qt coding style guides.
• ghostwriter now uses React to update only what changed in the live preview since the last keystroke, significantly reducing the live preview rendering time for large documents.

Fixed

• Issue #281: Removal of HUD windows will facilitate Alt+Tab switching.
• Issue #382, #539: IME selection window/IBUS candidate window should no longer be displaced.
• Issue #401: Single column tables are now highlighted.
• Issue #439: README file was updated to remove the installation of qt5-default on Debian-based systems.
• Issue #480: Menu bar is now accessible on relaunching ghostwriter in full screen mode.
• Issue #494: MathJax JavaScript syntax error that was being printed to the terminal and which prevented inline math from being displayed with the $ sign has been fixed.
• Issue #500: Preview Options dialog will now only open once.
• Issue #507: Multilevel lists are highlighted correctly in the editor with the switch to cmark-gfm handling the syntax highlighting.
• Issue #508: HUD windows have been replaced with a side bar for compatibility with Wayland.
• Issue #517: README.md has been updated with correct instructions location for building on MacOS.
• Issue #503: MathJax has now been included inside the application rather than fetching it externally.
• Issue #532: Insert spaces for tabs now works on startup.
• Issue #536: Added missing Markdown file extensions to file dialog filter when opening and saving files.

Removed

• Discount support was removed due to its conflicting executable name with MultiMarkdown.

Download

Fixes

• Issue #443: MathJax 3.0 is now built into the HTML preview. Note that this feature works best with Pandoc and requires an Internet connection. Other Markdown processors are not currently supported.
• Issue #447: Cursor is no longer shown when editor is not in focus.
• Issue #461: Fixed Cheat Sheet to have correct image example.
• Issue #471: HUD window styling is fixed for Qt 5.13.
• Issue #472: Fixed typing paused timers for session statistics and for hiding HUD windows.
• Discount is not listed as an available Markdown processor if MultiMarkdown is installed.
• New application translations are available for the following languages:
  • Arabic
  • Dutch

Windows Download

A volunteer has kindly stepped up to provide a Windows installer here:

https://github.com/michelolvera/vs-ghostwriter

Since I will no longer be able to provide new releases of ghostwriter for Windows personally, please consider helping out our volunteer at issue #367 if you are interested.

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu and Derivatives

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Bionic (18.04)
• Eoan (19.10)
• Focal (20.04)

Note: It is recommended for users of Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) to use the Flatpak package (detailed below), since QtWebEngine is unavailable on that version of Ubuntu, thus preventing supplying ghostwriter via the PPA.

Fedora

Fedora users can install ghostwriter from (Copr)[https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/] by opening a terminal and entering the following commands:

$ sudo dnf copr enable wereturtle/stable
$ sudo dnf install ghostwriter

Flatpak

ghostwriter is also available as a Flatpak package at Flathub.

Other

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that you may have to wait for them to be updated to the latest version of ghostwriter.

• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR

New Features

• HTML preview has been ported from QtWebKit to QtWebEngine (Chromium).

Fixes

• Issue #206: ghostwriter now has right-to-left language support.
• Issue #391: mathml option for pandoc is now used to render math equations for preview and export.
• Issue #411: Fixed crash when adding a new theme with no theme selected.
• Issue #412: Fixed export to PDF (wkhtmltopdf) failure with Pandoc.
• Issue #430: Fixed issue extra spaces appearing between <br/> tags in the HTML preview.
• Removed print support, since it has some odd bugs on some platforms, and most users would want to print their exported content anyway.
• Removed graphics fade effect for the bottom of the editor, as it is a risky feature that has caused bugs in the past and does not work on HiDPI screens.

Notes

Version 1.5.0 brings various HiDPI improvements. However, SVG icons for the full screen button and the HUD window buttons will look overly large and clipped. Drop shadows on text and buttons will also look somewhat pixelated. This is due to QTBUG-60026, which has been fixed in Qt 5.9. It is recommended for users using Qt versions below 5.9 to use FHD screen resolution when using ghostwriter.

Version 1.6.0 and above will no longer compile with Qt 4 due to new features that depend on Qt 5. Please use Qt 5 when building ghostwriter from the source code.

Windows Download

A volunteer has kindly stepped up to provide a Windows installer here:

https://github.com/michelolvera/vs-ghostwriter

Since I will no longer be able to provide new releases of ghostwriter for Windows personally, please consider helping out our volunteer at issue #367 if you are interested.

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Bionic (18.04)
• Disco (19.04)
• Eoan (19.10)

Note: It is recommended for users of Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) to use the Flatpak package (detailed below), since QtWebEngine is unavailable on that version of Ubuntu, thus preventing supplying ghostwriter via the PPA.

ghostwriter is also available as a Flatpak package at Flathub.

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that you may have to wait for them to be updated to the latest version of ghostwriter.

• Fedora (Click "Show community packages")
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR

Fixes

• Issue #178: Only use --quiet option for Pandoc version 2 or greater.
• Fixed words-per-minute calculations to not be jumpy or overly high.
• Fixed issue where creating a new theme resulted in inconsistent selection and display of themes in the Theme Selection dialog.
• Fixed broken icon when running under Wayland.
• Fixed screenshots in appdata.
• Issue #385: Updated resource files license to CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notes

Version 1.5.0 brings various HiDPI improvements. However, SVG icons for the full screen button and the HUD window buttons will look overly large and clipped. Drop shadows on text and buttons will also look somewhat pixelated. This is due to QTBUG-60026, which has been fixed in Qt 5.9. It is recommended for users using Qt versions below 5.9 to use FHD screen resolution when using ghostwriter.

Version 1.6.0 and above will no longer compile with Qt 4 due to new features that depend on Qt 5. Please use Qt 5 when building ghostwriter from the source code.

Windows Download

A volunteer has kindly stepped up to provide a Windows installer here:

https://github.com/michelolvera/vs-ghostwriter

Since I will no longer be able to provide new releases of ghostwriter for Windows personally, please consider helping out our volunteer at issue #367 if you are interested.

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Xenial (16.04)
• Bionic (18.04)
• Cosmic (18.10)

ghostwriter is also now available as a Flatpak package at Flathub. Please note that Flatpak has not yet reached version 1.0.0, and you may encounter some bugs. But if you are feeling brave and want to help make Flatpak better, please test the Flatpak version of ghostwriter and report any Flatpak-specific issues at the Flatpak issue tracker.

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that you may have to wait for them to be updated to the latest version of ghostwriter.

• Fedora (Click "Show community packages")
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR

Fixes

• Issue #369: Fixed segfault that occurred when changing the theme or interface style after opening the Preview Options dialog.

Notes

Version 1.5.0 brings various HiDPI improvements. However, SVG icons for the full screen button and the HUD window buttons will look overly large and clipped. Drop shadows on text and buttons will also look somewhat pixelated. This is due to QTBUG-60026, which has been fixed in Qt 5.9. It is recommended for users using Qt versions below 5.9 to use FHD screen resolution when using ghostwriter.

Version 1.6.0 and above will no longer compile with Qt 4 due to new features that depend on Qt 5. Please use Qt 5 when building ghostwriter from the source code.

Windows Download

A volunteer has kindly stepped up to provide a Windows installer here:

https://github.com/michelolvera/vs-ghostwriter

Since I will no longer be able to provide new releases of ghostwriter for Windows personally, please consider helping out our volunteer at issue #367 if you are interested.

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Xenial (16.04)
• Bionic (18.04)
• Cosmic (18.10)

ghostwriter is also now available as a Flatpak package at Flathub. Please note that Flatpak has not yet reached version 1.0.0, and you may encounter some bugs. But if you are feeling brave and want to help make Flatpak better, please test the Flatpak version of ghostwriter and report any Flatpak-specific issues at the Flatpak issue tracker.

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that you may have to wait for them to be updated to the latest version of ghostwriter.

• Fedora (Click "Show community packages")
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR

Fixes

• Fixed issue where the --quiet option was mistakenly used with older Pandoc versions that did not support its use.
• Worked around Qt 5.11 qinstall bug where running qmake and make would fail when installing the translation files

Important Notice

I'm sorry to announce that I will no longer be able to provide new releases of ghostwriter for Windows.

Unless...you volunteer! Please leave me a note at issue #367 if you are interested.

In the meantime, this current release (1.7.2) is not necessary to enjoy ghostwriter on Windows. Please see release 1.7.1 for a Windows version to download.

Notes

Since version 1.4.0, if you are using the portable version of ghostwriter for Windows, please note that you no longer require the translations folder in your data folder. The translations folder has been moved up one folder, so you don't need to have your settings and themes mixed with an application dependency. When moving the contents of your old data folder to the new one, please delete the old data\translations folder.

Version 1.5.0 brings various HiDPI improvements. However, SVG icons for the full screen button and the HUD window buttons will look overly large and clipped. Drop shadows on text and buttons will also look somewhat pixelated. This is due to QTBUG-60026, which has been fixed in Qt 5.9. It is recommended for users using Qt versions below 5.9 to use FHD screen resolution when using ghostwriter.

Version 1.6.0 and above will no longer compile with Qt 4 due to new features that depend on Qt 5. Please use Qt 5 when building ghostwriter from the source code. Also, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows editions come bundled with Qt 5.10.1. As such, you might enjoy using FreeType font rendering with ghostwriter, which looks superb under this Qt version. Please see the wiki page for a quick guide on how to enable this feature. Finally, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows edition comes bundled with annulen's QtWebKit for displaying the HTML preview. Special thanks goes out to this hard-working team for providing a QtWebKit build for newer Qt versions!

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Xenial (16.04)
• Bionic (18.04)
• Cosmic (18.10)

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that you may have to wait for them to be updated to the latest version of ghostwriter.

• Fedora (Click "Show community packages")
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR

Fixes

• Fixed regression in full screen mode where menu bar was not showing on mouse-over.
• Fixed regression where wrong theme was shown as selected on opening the Theme Selection dialog.
• Fixed issue #366 where warnings from Pandoc that were resulting in error dialogs on successful export.
• Fixed issue #292 where saving a document under Windows resulted in end-of-line characters being written as \n instead of \r\n.
• Fixed issue #360 where a graphical glitch under MacOS disabled the Theme Selection dialog's remove theme button.

Important Notice

I'm sorry to announce that very soon, I will no longer be able to provide new releases of ghostwriter for Windows.

Unless...you volunteer! Please leave me a note at issue #367 if you are interested.

Notes

Since version 1.4.0, if you are using the portable version of ghostwriter for Windows, please note that you no longer require the translations folder in your data folder. The translations folder has been moved up one folder, so you don't need to have your settings and themes mixed with an application dependency. When moving the contents of your old data folder to the new one, please delete the old data\translations folder.

Version 1.5.0 brings various HiDPI improvements. However, SVG icons for the full screen button and the HUD window buttons will look overly large and clipped. Drop shadows on text and buttons will also look somewhat pixelated. This is due to QTBUG-60026, which has been fixed in Qt 5.9. It is recommended for users using Qt versions below 5.9 to use FHD screen resolution when using ghostwriter.

Version 1.6.0 and above will no longer compile with Qt 4 due to new features that depend on Qt 5. Please use Qt 5 when building ghostwriter from the source code. Also, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows editions come bundled with Qt 5.10.1. As such, you might enjoy using FreeType font rendering with ghostwriter, which looks superb under this Qt version. Please see the wiki page for a quick guide on how to enable this feature. Finally, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows edition comes bundled with annulen's QtWebKit for displaying the HTML preview. Special thanks goes out to this hard-working team for providing a QtWebKit build for newer Qt versions!

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Xenial (16.04)
• Bionic (18.04)
• Cosmic (18.10)

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that you may have to wait for them to be updated to the latest version of ghostwriter.

• Fedora (Click "Show community packages")
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR

New Features

• Added light and dark built-in themes based on the community Ulysses III theme Plainstraction.
• @sbrl added a new Github Dark built-in stylesheet for use with the live preview.
• Live preview has been optimized to show the preview for typed characters immediately on smaller documents.
• Added ODT and EPUB 3 as export options for MultiMarkdown 6.
• Theme selection dialog now displays a grid instead of a list.

Fixes

• The menu bar is now hidden again in full screen mode when the user presses Alt+Tab to switch to a different application.
• Fixed issue #354 to disable hard line breaks for Pandoc's Github-flavored Markdown.
• Worked around issue in Qt 5.11 where changing the theme causes the app to crash.
• Worked around issue in Qt 5.10 where opening a new document with a document already loaded can cause the app to crash.

Notes

Since version 1.4.0, if you are using the portable version of ghostwriter for Windows, please note that you no longer require the translations folder in your data folder. The translations folder has been moved up one folder, so you don't need to have your settings and themes mixed with an application dependency. When moving the contents of your old data folder to the new one, please delete the old data\translations folder.

Version 1.5.0 brings various HiDPI improvements. However, SVG icons for the full screen button and the HUD window buttons will look overly large and clipped. Drop shadows on text and buttons will also look somewhat pixelated. This is due to QTBUG-60026, which has been fixed in Qt 5.9. It is recommended for users using Qt versions below 5.9 to use FHD screen resolution when using ghostwriter.

Version 1.6.0 and above will no longer compile with Qt 4 due to new features that depend on Qt 5. Please use Qt 5 when building ghostwriter from the source code. Also, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows editions come bundled with Qt 5.10.1. As such, you might enjoy using FreeType font rendering with ghostwriter, which looks superb under this Qt version. Please see the wiki page for a quick guide on how to enable this feature. Finally, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows edition comes bundled with annulen's QtWebKit for displaying the HTML preview. Special thanks goes out to this hard-working team for providing a QtWebKit build for newer Qt versions!

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Xenial (16.04)
• Artful (17.10)
• Bionic (18.04)
• Cosmic (18.10)

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that you may have to wait for them to be updated to the latest version of ghostwriter.

• Fedora (Click "Show community packages")
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR

Fixes

• Issue #315: Worked around slow load of QPrinter constructor in Fedora 27 by lazy loading the printer settings only when needed for printing or print preview rather than during application startup.
• Fixed line break tokenizing to not include paragraph breaks.

Notes

Since version 1.4.0, if you are using the portable version of ghostwriter for Windows, please note that you no longer require the translations folder in your data folder. The translations folder has been moved up one folder, so you don't need to have your settings and themes mixed with an application dependency. When moving the contents of your old data folder to the new one, please delete the old data\translations folder.

Version 1.5.0 brings various HiDPI improvements. However, SVG icons for the full screen button and the HUD window buttons will look overly large and clipped. Drop shadows on text and buttons will also look somewhat pixelated. This is due to QTBUG-60026, which has been fixed in Qt 5.9. At the time of this release, Qt 5.9 is still in beta. It is recommended for users using Qt versions below 5.9 to use a FHD screen resolution when using ghostwriter.

Version 1.6.0 and above will no longer compile with Qt 4 due to new features that depend on Qt 5. Please use Qt 5 when building ghostwriter from the source code. Also, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows editions come bundled with Qt 5.10.1. As such, you might enjoy using FreeType font rendering with ghostwriter, which looks superb under this Qt version. Please see the wiki page for a quick guide on how to enable this feature. Moreover, this version removes print support from the HTML live preview, as future versions of ghostwriter will switch from QtWebKit to QtWebEngine, which does not support printing. Finally, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows edition comes bundled with annulen's QtWebKit for displaying the HTML preview. Special thanks goes out to this hard-working team for providing a QtWebKit build for newer Qt versions!

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Xenial (16.04)
• Artful (17.10)
• Bionic (18.04)

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that they may not have been updated to the latest version of ghostwriter, but may be in the future.

• Fedora
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR

Fixes

• Worked around an issue with Qt version 5.10 that causes the application to occasionally crash when reloading the currently opened document or when opening a new document due to the text cursor not being set to the beginning of the document before clearing the editor and loading the new document.

Notes

Since version 1.4.0, if you are using the portable version of ghostwriter for Windows, please note that you no longer require the translations folder in your data folder. The translations folder has been moved up one folder, so you don't need to have your settings and themes mixed with an application dependency. When moving the contents of your old data folder to the new one, please delete the old data\translations folder.

Version 1.5.0 brings various HiDPI improvements. However, SVG icons for the full screen button and the HUD window buttons will look overly large and clipped. Drop shadows on text and buttons will also look somewhat pixelated. This is due to QTBUG-60026, which has been fixed in Qt 5.9. At the time of this release, Qt 5.9 is still in beta. It is recommended for users using Qt versions below 5.9 to use a FHD screen resolution when using ghostwriter.

Version 1.6.0 and above will no longer compile with Qt 4 due to new features that depend on Qt 5. Please use Qt 5 when building ghostwriter from the source code. Also, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows editions come bundled with Qt 5.10.1. As such, you might enjoy using FreeType font rendering with ghostwriter, which looks superb under this Qt version. Please see the wiki page for a quick guide on how to enable this feature. Moreover, this version removes print support from the HTML live preview, as future versions of ghostwriter will switch from QtWebKit to QtWebEngine, which does not support printing. Finally, as of version 1.6.0, the Windows edition comes bundled with annulen's QtWebKit for displaying the HTML preview. Special thanks goes out to this hard-working team for providing a QtWebKit build for newer Qt versions!

Linux Downloads

Ubuntu Linux users can download the latest version of ghostwriter from the Launchpad PPA using the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostwriter

You may also visit the wereturtle package archive page directly. For more information on how to add a PPA to your system, please see the Launchpad guide. Note that this version of ghostwriter has been packaged in the PPA solely for the following Ubuntu versions:

• Xenial (16.04)
• Artful (17.10)
• Bionic (18.04)

The following are links to unofficial packages/repositories for other Linux distros, kindly provided by volunteers. Note that they may not have been updated to the latest version of ghostwriter, but may be in the future.

• Fedora
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux AUR