Multilingual manuscripts, footnotes, e-reader preview & a faster app
The biggest release yet. Write your novel in seven languages with the right spellcheck, quotes, and export metadata. Footnotes and Chicago-style citations land in the manuscript. A floating e-reader previewer shows your book as readers will see it. Custom chapter headings flow from the page builder into page view, preview, and EPUB. Sign-in and page view got dramatically faster, snapshot comparison moved into the manuscript itself, and Charc got a brand-new logo and wordmark.
New
- Manuscript language — set your project's language (English, Deutsch, Français, Español, Italiano, Português, Nederlands) in Document Settings. Spellcheck switches to the right dictionary for the manuscript and document editors, hyphenation follows the correct rules, and the special-characters panel leads with your language's quote marks. EPUB exports carry the proper
dc:languageso e-readers hyphenate and look up words correctly, DOCX exports set the document language so Word spellchecks in the right language, and works published to your profile render with the correct language too. - Smart quotes — straight quotes convert to your language's typographic quotes as you type:
„…“in German,« … »with proper narrow no-break spaces in French,«…»in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, curly quotes in English and Dutch. Apostrophes inside words become typographic’automatically. Everything goes through the normal typing pipeline, so undo works as expected. On by default for non-English projects; toggle it in Document Settings. - Footnotes in the manuscript — footnote markers render inline in both writing and page view, with a hover preview of the note text so you never lose your place. Writing view lists each scene's footnotes at the end of the scene; page view runs a two-pass layout to place them at the bottom of the exact page they belong to, without slowing repagination. Footnote appearance is configurable in preferences.
- Chicago-style citations — structured citation fields (author, title, publisher, year, and more) in the References tab, with segmented view tabs to switch between endnotes, footnotes, and bibliography views. Export options let you compile references as endnotes, footnotes, or a formatted bibliography.
- E-reader preview — a draggable, resizable floating previewer that paginates your manuscript like a Kindle: white screen, Times New Roman default, column-accurate page breaks, and your custom chapter headings scaled to the device width. See exactly what readers will get before you export a single file.
- Custom chapter headings — design a chapter heading page in the page builder and assign it to any chapter from the outline. It replaces the standard text heading in page view (with the running header automatically suppressed on that page), appears in the e-reader preview, and exports into the EPUB as a cropped heading image.
- Book cover on the Progress page — mark a page-builder page as Cover, then enable "Cover replaces title" in the progress Customize menu. The cover renders full width at its true aspect ratio in place of the title, series, and subtitle, with your four stat cards displayed above it.
- Per-project tabs — tab visibility is now saved per project, and new projects start with Timeline and Charts hidden to keep the workspace focused. Re-enable them any time in Preferences.
- Manuscript nav context menu — right-click act and chapter rows in the drafting sidebar for quick actions. Collapse state now persists across reloads.
- Outline card view context menus — right-click scene cards, chapter headers, and act headers in the outline's card view for the full command set: insert, move, duplicate, convert, flags, scene colors, and scrap. Scene colors now show on the card's top stripe.
- Element remove controls — the chapter-heading and inline-element pickers now include remove buttons, so clearing an assigned page no longer requires digging through the page builder.
Changes
- New logo & wordmark — Charc has a new logomark (now the favicon in your browser tab) and a new horizontal wordmark across the editor, the landing page, blog, FAQ, and changelog.
- Snapshot compare moved into the manuscript — comparing against a snapshot now highlights insertions and deletions directly in your manuscript text instead of in the reference panel, which shows the clean snapshot alongside. Only one diff can be active at a time, so pinned-draft diffs and the compare diff no longer fight. New preference to underline added text, joining the existing colors, opacity, and strikethrough controls.
- Outline toolbar split into two rows — the view switcher and undo/redo controls moved to their own row above the add buttons and toggles, so everything fits at larger UI scales.
- After-scene pages removed — the short-lived after-scene page attachment was retired; front matter, back matter, and custom chapter headings cover those use cases.
- Progress page Customize button — restyled in the accent color and inset from the header edge so it's easier to spot.
Improved
- Much faster sign-in — account data now loads in parallel and scene content loads on demand per project, so accounts with many large projects sign in near-instantly instead of waiting several seconds. The app also renders from locally cached data immediately on launch while sync completes in the background.
- Page view performance — windowed rendering keeps only the handful of pages around your viewport in the DOM, making long manuscripts smooth to scroll. Pagination measurement was reworked to be accurate for split paragraphs and footnotes, and the total page count now shows in the toolbar.
- Page view zoom — the manuscript zoom control now applies to page view as well, and your scroll position is preserved when the zoom level changes.
- Page view typography — new header and footer vertical-alignment and padding settings, headers and footers aligned flush to the text block edge, the running header suppressed on chapter-opening pages, and precise first-line alignment against the header rule so text starts exactly where it should.
- Scroll position memory — manuscript and page view scroll positions are saved and restored when you switch projects, navigate to another tab and back, or refresh the page entirely.
- Reference panel sizing — drag the reference panel out to the full width of the window. The manuscript hides once it would shrink below a third of the screen and returns when the panel is collapsed or resized down.
- Outline node controls — add buttons (
+CH,+SC) are now proper boxed buttons, custom fields (POV/tag, word target) have visible input boxes with consistent 22px heights, scene-row fields get white backgrounds in the Daylight theme, chapter word counts match the POV/tag contrast, and action buttons are uppercase for a cleaner scan. - Page builder editing — canvas text elements now save as you type instead of only on blur, and editor resize handles no longer leak into the saved page content.
Fixed
- Margin comments failed to save with a "could not save comment" error due to a server-side schema mismatch. The error toast now also reports the status code when something goes wrong.
- EPUB export now correctly embeds page-builder canvas images (an HTML entity in image URLs broke them) and custom chapter heading images, which are auto-cropped to their content.
- Chapter heading pages assigned from the page builder are no longer duplicated into the EPUB's front matter section.
- Custom column width in manuscript view no longer resets when applying unrelated document settings.
- Blank page-builder templates now render their elements instead of an empty page.
- Page view pages now inherit theme fonts and colors correctly (CSS variables are copied into each page shell).
- Entity sidebar re-renders immediately when adding an entity or changing an icon color.
- Removed a stray border seam under the sidebar logo area.