Release notes.

A typography release. Self-publish exports pick up the polish of a professionally typeset book, and the editor learns the substitutions a word processor makes as you type.

Exports

• Five new fonts for self-publish exports: Crimson Pro, EB Garamond, Libertinus Serif, STIX Two Text, and Atkinson Hyperlegible, alongside Liberation Serif and Liberation Sans. Libertinus Serif is the new default. Fonts are embedded in PDF and DOCX exports, so the book looks the same on any machine.
• Auto font size and line height, tuned for each font and trim size, so the defaults look right without adjusting anything. Both remain adjustable.
• Justified text with hyphenation, the way printed books are set. Paragraph indents now match the line spacing.
• Drop caps are sized from each font’s actual letterforms, so they sit on the baseline and line up with the text beside them in every font and size.
• Header styles for running heads: small caps (the new default), italic, all caps, or plain. Running heads and page numbers are now set one point below the body text.

Editor

• Smart typography as you type. Straight quotes become curly quotes, two hyphens become an em dash, and three periods become an ellipsis, the way Word and Google Docs handle them. Undo reverts a substitution on its own.
• Apply to existing text with a new toolbar button that runs the same substitutions over a whole scene in one undoable step.
• Find & replace matches straight and curly quotes interchangeably, and replacement text picks up the right quotes and dashes.
• Manuscript import gains a toggle to apply smart typography to the imported text.

A small update for Windows and Linux. The macOS build is unchanged.

• Fixed license key verification, which rejected valid keys during activation.

Vellerune 1.0.0 is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

• Improved compatibility with a wider range of Linux distributions.

The last stop before release. The macOS 1.0.0 build is final and through its last round of testing; the Windows and Linux builds are built and in final verification. Everything below landed since the alpha.

Worldbuilding

• Organizations — a fourth templated entity type alongside characters, locations, and magic systems, for guilds, kingdoms, faiths, companies, and anything else your world organizes itself into.
• Reference fields — two new field types, Reference and Reference Multiple, that link entities to each other. A reference can point at a character, location, organization, magic system, glossary entry, or note.
• Backlinks — every entity shows what references it, so relationships read in both directions.

Maps

• Location maps — attach a map image to any location. Very large maps are tiled automatically so panning and zooming stay smooth.
• Markers — pin places onto the map with customizable icons, colors, sizes, and labels. Every pin links to a location in your world.
• Regions — mark territories with shaded shapes, with control over fill, borders, and corners.
• Measure tool — set the map’s real-world scale, then measure the road between any two points.
• Map exports — export a map as an image, or include maps in a book’s front matter when exporting.

Writing

• Find & replace in the editor — the alpha’s to-do list item, closed. Ctrl/Cmd + F.
• Import Manuscript — create a book from a submission-format Word document (.docx): chapters starting on new pages, scenes separated by # or ***, with a structure preview before the book is created.
• Quick lookup and name generators in notes — the writing tools follow you into the wiki.

Getting ready for release

• Learn Vellerune — every fresh install now starts with a guidebook world that teaches the app using real content: a worked example of characters, maps, storylines, and a manuscript.
• 30-day trial on Windows and Linux that counts only the days you actually use the app, with license key activation when you’re ready.
• The app remembers window size, position, and where you were in each section between launches.
• Smoother drag and drop, easier-to-select connection lines on the storyline canvas, an image lightbox for viewing artwork and maps, and a long tail of polish and fixes across every view.

A snapshot of where Vellerune stands today, ahead of release. Everything described below is built and working in the current build for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Worldbuilding

• Worlds as the top-level container. Each world holds books, characters, locations, magic systems, storylines, glossary, and notes — reusable across every book in that world.
• Custom templates for characters, locations, and magic systems. Seven field types (text input, text area, rich text, dropdown, tags, toggle, image), reorderable, with a “Save as Template” button to lock in a layout for every new entity.
• Glossary with a fixed dictionary-style schema (Word, Definition, Etymology, Usage, Language, Part of Speech, Pronunciation).
• Notes as a hierarchical rich-text wiki for everything that doesn’t fit a structured schema.
• Name generators — a syllable-based fantasy generator with five harshness levels, plus a Markov-chain generator covering nearly 60 styles across characters, mythology, surnames, locations, space, creatures, and objects. Star favorites for later.

Plotting

• Storylines that span any number of books, containing plots, containing ordered plot events.
• Twelve plot archetypes built in (Comedy, Heist, Hero’s Journey, Mystery, Overcoming the Monster, Pursuit, Quest, Rags to Riches, Rebirth, Romance, Tragedy, Voyage and Return), with a freeform combobox if none of those fit.
• Two views, one set of data: a linear plot detail page for beat-by-beat outlining, and a 2D storyline canvas for spatial layout — drag events from a sidebar inventory, draw connections between them, snap to grid, mini-map, filters by plot or book.
• Canvas exports to PNG (visible area or full diagram).

Writing

• Rich-text editor shaped like a novel page. Bold/italic/underline/strikethrough, headings, alignment, and a quiet toolbar that stays out of the way.
• Quick lookup (Ctrl/Cmd + L) on any word in your prose — surfaces matching characters (including aliases), locations, magic systems, glossary entries, plus a built-in dictionary and thesaurus.
• Sentence swap (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + ↑/↓) to reorder sentences without selecting and pasting.
• Focus mode for distraction-free fullscreen writing.
• Automatic scene snapshots with a rich-text diff view and one-click restore.
• Books organized into drafts → chapters/acts → scenes. Drafts let you keep an old version preserved while you revise on a new one; create a new draft empty or as a copy.

Activity & goals

• Daily goals for writing time, words, and net words. Each is independent and disabled at zero.
• Per-scene word targets with a live progress indicator in the editor footer.
• Activity dashboard with three bar charts (writing time, words, net words) over a 7-, 14-, or 28-day window, with goal lines overlaid.
• Continue Writing card on the dashboard to drop straight back into the last scene you edited.

Publishing

• Manuscript export to PDF or DOCX — standard cover page, 12pt double-spaced body, indented paragraphs, scene breaks marked with #.
• Self-publish export to PDF, DOCX, or EPUB with a live preview pane and full typographic control: six trim sizes, font and line-height options, scene-break ornaments, drop caps, even/odd headers, page numbers, chapter images, right-hand chapter starts, automatic table of contents, glossary as back matter.
• Per-entity DOCX export for characters, locations, magic systems, glossary entries, notes (individual and bulk) and plots (individual).

Privacy & data

• No accounts. Your work lives on your machine as a SQLite database file per world.
• iCloud sync as an opt-in on macOS, implemented through a sandbox folder that macOS itself synchronizes — Vellerune doesn’t talk to iCloud APIs directly.
• Backup and Import actions on the dashboard for moving worlds between machines.
• The Mac App Store build makes no network calls of its own. The Windows and Linux builds make a once-weekly update check and a once-every-15-days license check, neither of which sends user-identifying data.

Theming

• Three themes mirroring the in-app feel: light, dark, and parchment.

Still on the list before release

A few items being worked on ahead of the public release:

• Wiring up Ctrl + F (find in editor).
• Making connection lines on the storyline canvas easier to click and select.

Plus general polish, testing, and the usual round of small fixes.