MacJournal 2.7 hits beta

Download the release at danschimpf.com.

Welcome to the first beta release of MacJournal 2.7! This release fixes a lot of problems with the newer stuff introduced in the alpha. Specifically, Full Screen mode is much improved. It now has its own preference pane and some cool settings that you can customize for it. There is a new look for the scrollbar that should make it fit in a little better. Tagging along with Full Screen mode is Text Zoom, which finally has working line wrapping when zoomed past 100%. Huzzah!

As a refresher, this is how the different milestones for this release will look:

Alpha: all features are in and functional. No known crashers. No features will be added afterwards.
Beta: all UI is frozen and localizations will begin to be updated. No known bugs.

This is an beta release which means there might still be bugs lurking. A backup of your data will be made automatically, but whenever you use pre-release software (from any source) it's good to back up your important data.

Here are some of the changes for beta 1:

- New preference pane for Full Screen customizations
- New scrollbar for full screen mode
- Text zoom new can wrap lines
- No longer fully capturing the display when entering full screen mode (a la games). This means some other things will start working, such as Exposé, Command-Tab, text dragging, and contextual menus.
- Selecting a number of lines and then changing the List Style will apply that list style to each selected line (not just the first as before)
- Fixed a bunch of preferences that were broken by a big rewrite of the Prefs window
- Journals created in the Journals drawer will end up at the top-level in more cases, which is usually what you want. You can always drag them around.

There are plenty more fixes; be sure to read the Version History.

Some of the larger changes and/or additions in 2.7 as a whole:

- Nested journals. Drag a journal into another journal to put it inside the other one. This has been a long time in the making.
- Manual sorting of entries. Drag entries (or journals) around inside their journals to manually place them were you want them. Note that this disables sorting for every journal when you do this. Re-enable it in the Entry menu if you choose.
- Wiki links. Create links that link to other entries automatically by formatting it in the "wiki" style (Google for "wiki" for a full explanation). Short version: something like "CamelCase" in your entry text will become a link to an entry named "CamelCase" or "Camel Case" or even "Camel, Case!" in the same journal.
- Sort Lines, Change Case, Remove Line Breaks. New text clean-up options in the normal place.
- Copy As HTML. The same functionality found in exporting to HTML but without all the hassle of creating a file.
- Full Screen. View menu item, toolbar item, and the F8 key all bring the text area of the window full screen so you can concentrate just on the text, or make a presentation.
- Menu Item Reorganization. Moved some menu items to make the menus shorter and put things in the expected places.
- Bug Fixes. Bugs have been fixed. High priority fixes will be in 2.6.1. The crasher in "Multiple Spaces to Space" has been fixed here.

Those are just the big ones. There are smaller ones (like Smileys) that are also there. Please read the version history file! If you had the Hidden Preferences window enabled in 2.6 (via the "IncludeHiddenPreferencesMenuItem" preference) note that it has changed. You need to re-set the preference in the Terminal using the new key "IncludeHiddenPreferences" since the Hidden Prefs are now found in the actual Preferences window.

Reporting Bugs

Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.

If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include what release of MacJournal you are using in your e-mail. I appreciate your feedback!