Release Notes for Blockpad 1.4

November 2023

Summary

New features with this release include:

• Comments feature in documents and spreadsheets
• New built-in functions
• Improved tables of contents
• User interface improvements
• Improved handling of image resources
• Other improvements

Comments

To insert a comment at a point in a document or at an equation, image, or range of cells, right click the point or object, and click Add Comment. When created, comments will appear when you select the area.

You can put any content in a comment, just like a textbox. This includes equations, images, etc. Note that comments can refer to outside objects through formulas, but outside objects cannot refer to objects inside the comment.

Improved tables of contents

With tables of contents, it is now possible to show page numbers. It is also possible to style the headings as regular text so that they not appear as blue links.

Also, it is possible to remove some headings from the list. For example, you can use the new Drop function to remove a given count of headings from the beginning of the list, or you can use the Filter function to remove empty headings.

New built-in functions

• Take
• Drop

User interface improvements

• Keyboard accessibility
• Status bar
• Click to add reference in visual editor, block inputs
• Improvements to Create Block tool
• Resize guidelines now shown while resizing images in header and footer

Improved handling of image resources

• When deleting or changing images, old unused image resources are now properly cleaned up, allowing file sizes to be kept as small as possible.
• The Resources and External References windows are improved, including counts of how many places each resource is used.
• It is now possible to specify external references (whether images or otherwise) by path relative to the user profile directory. To do so, in the External References window (under the File menu), click Add (or, for an existing external reference, Change Path) and enter a path beginning with ~. For example, a file in a user's Pictures folder may be specified as ~\Pictures\img3984293.jpg.
• When copying and pasting images, the correct image sources (whether embedded resources or external references) are now copied, fixing an issue where external references could be replaced by an embedded resource if pasting within the same file, as well as an issue where the wrong images could be pasted if pasting between files.
• In case many images (or other content) have been deleted from a file and it is necessary to remove those from the undo history to save memory, there is now a tool in the Action History window (under the Edit menu) to Clear Action History to do so, without needing to restart the program.

Other improvements

• Further protection in case saving to disk or network is interrupted
• Restored Browse Values tool
• Style rules for hyperlinks
• Exponent symbol in dropdown
• Improvements to library system - now library content stays properly cached
• New secure password-less login, to activate Blockpad for accounts with linked accounts or 2FA
• Improved handling of fractions in math layout
• Fixed issue where sometimes formulas would not calculate

See also

• Known Issues and Workarounds