Release Notes for Blockpad 1.2

August 2022

Notebooks

This version introduces notebook frames. A notebook is a new type of top-level frame in Blockpad, like a report, spreadsheet, or drawing. To create a new file with a notebook, click the New Notebook button on the blank tab page. To add a notebook to an existing file, click the new item in the insert frame menu.

A notebook is a freeform canvas onto which you can directly type text or draw. To insert text or equations, simply click anywhere in the notebook, and begin typing. As usual, typing = will begin an equation.

In a notebook, equations can be within a textbox or can be floating. Floating equations are their own shapes and can be moved individually around the notebook, whereas equations in a textbox are positioned in paragraphs along with text and other content.

To insert a floating equation, press = after placing the caret at an empty point in the notebook. Alternatively, to insert an equation in a textbox, place the caret in a textbox, and type = as you would in a report. Note that you can create an empty textbox by placing the caret at an empty point and pressing Enter.

Notebooks by default are shown as a continuous page. You can uncheck View > Collapse Margins to show the notebook as separate pages. This will show the notebook as it would be to print or save to PDF. Notebooks may have headers and footers like reports and spreadsheets.

Languages and default settings

In the Settings page, there are 3 new settings:

• Default Document Language — sets the language for spell checking for new default documents.
• Default Page Size — sets the default page size for new reports, notebooks, and spreadsheets.
• Default Frame Units — sets the base length unit for new files and new frames.

These new settings affect newly created files and frames, but they do not affect existing files. Existing files may be changed by setting the Page Size property, the Frame Unit property, and the Language property. Also, custom templates are not affected by these settings.

When Blockpad is newly installed, the program will attempt to set these settings based on the operating system's settings. To change these settings on existing installs, go to the App menu (logo to left of the File menu) > Settings.

The page size control is also improved. It is now possible to easily select page sizes like A4, A3, Letter, Tabloid (11 in x 17 in), and others.

When changing the page size, any custom header and footer is now automatically adjusted to fit the new page size.

The previous property Base Unit for drawings is now named Frame Unit, and it may now be set for reports and notebooks as well. Available options are inches, millimeters, centimeters, and virtual pixels.

The following languages are newly available for spell checking:

• English (Canada)
• English (Australia)
• English (New Zealand)
• Ukrainian
• Greek
• Catalan
• Lithuanian
• Latvian
• Estonian
• Hindi
• Bengali

Spell checking now ignores words with any subscripts or superscripts in them, and for latin alphabet languages it also ignores words with Greek letters.

The Insert Symbol tool is improved to show a description of each symbol before inserting. Also, right clicking a symbol inserts the symbol while keeping the symbol panel open.

Improvements to Named Table Regions

Named table regions may now be used directly as arrays. Such arrays may be used both for value definition options and in regular formulas.

For named table regions with headers (default is 1 header row at top), the array value will be an array of record objects. Each record object has properties for each cell, corresponding to the header labels.

For named table regions without headers, the array value is simply the table range array.

With this version, formula dependencies with table region values are properly considered. So, if you have a region called Region1, a cell in that region is changed, and a formula elsewhere refers to Region1, that dependent formula will update immediately.

Improvements to Value Definitions

Value definitions of option lists are now automatically rewritten both when tables are adjusted and when referenced values are renamed.

Other features

Several improvements have been made to copying and pasting, including the ability now to copy images from Blockpad and paste to other programs.

The Insert Symbol tool can now be used by keyboard alone, if desired. Press Ctrl+\, then start typing the key characters for the desired symbol, and press Enter. Alternatively, pressing Tab instead of Enter keeps the symbol palette open, to continue inserting more symbols. (Note that the Ctrl+\ shortcut may not yet work properly on some regional keyboard layouts.)

Built-in functions and units

• IsBlank
• IsLogical
• IsNonText
• IsEven
• IsOdd
• Char
• Unicode
• Find
• Search
• Units mF, μF, nF, pF, dpi, dpcm, dppx, kHz, MHz, GHz, bit, byte, kiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, kbps, Mbps, Gbps

Bug fixes

• The LinearSeries function now works with dates.
• Several issues with saving to PDF are fixed.
• An issue is fixed with how textboxes are scaled in frames with units set to cm or mm.
• An issue is fixed where, in some files, formulas did not adjust properly when inserting or deleting rows or columns.
• Numerous other bugs are fixed.

See also

• Known Issues and Workarounds