markdown-converter/UPDATES.md

PanConverter - Updates & Changelog

Version 4.9.0 (2026-09-14)

New: Visual Flow Chart Editor (Sidebar panel → "Flow Chart")

• Pure flowchart-store.js — graph data store with bounded undo/redo (depth 50) and injectable persistence IO (testable without touching the filesystem)
• 5 node shapes (process, decision, terminator, subroutine, document) × 3 edge kinds (solid, dotted, thick) with full keyboard accessibility
• Hand-rolled SVG canvas: drag nodes, double-click to edit labels, Alt+drag from a node edge to wire connections, in-place label editing, delete + backspace to remove the selection
• flowchart-shapes.js — pure SVG path templates (no DOM, fully unit-tested)
• flowchart-mermaid.js — translates the graph to Mermaid flowchart TD source that renders identically in the preview pane
• Sidebar panel src/sidebar/flowchart-panel.js with debounced preview (250 ms), debounced persistence (500 ms), and Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z / Delete / Backspace shortcuts
• 3 thin IPC channels (get-user-data-path, read-text-file, write-text-file) sandboxed to app.getPath('userData') via path validation
• Auto-save to <userData>/flowchart-session.json; restores on reopen
• Rail button in the sidebar; toggle the panel with Ctrl+Alt+F
• Insert-at-Cursor wraps the generated Mermaid in a fenced ```mermaid block at the current cursor position in the active editor tab
• 73 new tests

New: ASCII Art Generator upgrade

• Pure AsciiArt orchestrator (generate / listFonts / getFontMeta) unifying hand-coded fonts + figlet + 19 named templates behind one API
• 17 hand-coded font tables extracted from inline renderer code (5 existing + 12 new: Big, Small, Lean, Slant, Isometric1-4, 3-D, 3x5, ANSI Shadow, Calvin S)
• 19 named ASCII templates (arrows, flowcharts, banners, frames)
• figlet@^1.8.0 dep with lazy-load + cache adapter (≥328 bundled fonts; pure JS, no native bindings)
• 6 IPC handlers: ascii:generate / list-fonts / get-font-meta / save / copy / last-font
• Standalone window rewrite: removed the ~385-line inline script; added a searchable font picker, Copy to Clipboard, and Save to File
• Major cleanup: -1029 net lines of dead code (the in-app modal #ascii-art-dialog, the 800-line renderer controller, the show-ascii-generator* preload channels, and the obsolete textToASCII/createASCIIBox/etc. helpers)
• 97 new tests

New: Editor Theme Registry (extension)

• 12 new themes added: Catppuccin Latte / Frappé / Macchiato / Mocha, One Light, Tokyo Night Storm, Synthwave '84, Outrun, Winter is Coming (Light + Dark), Solarized Dark High Contrast, Spring Light
• Total: 37 themes (15 light + 22 dark incl. 1 high-contrast), sorted into Light / Dark / High-Contrast tables in the README
• Pure ThemeRegistry module; the View menu generator now reads list() + categories(); new per-theme CSS files live at src/styles/themes/<id>.css
• <link disabled> preload + <link> toggle pattern (sub-millisecond theme switch — no flash, no re-fetch)
• Aria-friendly: the high-contrast option is announced to assistive tech

Bug fixes

• Plan 3: rail button tooltip Ctrl+Alt+F now actually wired (the shortcut existed but the panel toggle was missing)
• Plan 3: destroy() cleanup on panel unmount — timers, listeners, and the store subscription are all released (no leaks when toggling repeatedly)
• Plan 2: standalone window <script src> path corrected (was escaping src/)
• Plan 2: font substitutions reverted — Isometric1-4 and Calvin S are actually restored from figlet's bundled fonts

Housekeeping

• 1093 tests passing across 36 snapshots in 90 suites
• Lint + Prettier clean across all 3 plans
• Linux build verified end-to-end (AppImage + deb + snap produced)

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Version 4.7.1 (2026-09-05)

New: Export Themes (Word + PDF)

• Theme picker in the export dialog (basic and advanced mode) for PDF and DOCX: Default (Pandoc), Modern, Classic, Sepia, Minimal, Elegant
• PDF: LaTeX header recolors/reformats headings + links (xcolor/titlesec, core-TeX packages only); DOCX: styles.xml surgery recolors Heading1-6/Title/ Subtitle/Hyperlink and swaps heading/body fonts
• Themes persist in export presets; unknown ids in old presets fall back to Default instead of failing the export

Branding

• New M↓ brand identity: app icons, favicons, tray icon, welcome mark, README wordmark (vector kit in assets/markdown-converter-assets/)

Fixes

• Windows: pdfjs text/image extraction failed on Windows — standardFontDataUrl is now a proper file:// URL (raw backslash paths failed pdfjs's trailing-slash URL validation)
• Windows: sharp temp-file cleanup (EPERM retry), path-separator test assertions, and pdfjs test timeouts fixed — the Windows CI job is green
• FiraCode tooling downloads pinned to the immutable 6.2 release; .gitattributes stops CRLF checkout rewriting hash-pinned files
• macOS pandoc extractor locates the binary in the archive (layout changed)
• Packaged apps resolve bundled pandoc/markitdown next to the executable (resourcesPath lookup was wrong since 4.5 — packaged builds silently used system pandoc)

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Version 4.7.0 (2026-09-05)

Bundling & Legal Compliance

• MarkItDown is now bundled: npm run bundle:markitdown freezes Microsoft's markitdown (MIT) + embedded Python runtime into a single ~75MB per-platform binary (bin/<platform>/markitdown) via PyInstaller (ML extras excluded); the app prefers the bundled binary and falls back to system installs
• Packaging copies the bundled markitdown for Windows/macOS/Linux alongside Pandoc
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md — full license inventory of everything distributed (bundled binaries, npm runtime deps, fonts, embedded Python packages)
• SOURCES.md — GPL §3(b) written source offer for Pandoc / FFmpeg (GPL build) / PyInstaller bootloader, with pinned versions + SHA-256; LGPL relinking note for libvips
• third-party-licenses/ — canonical texts: GPL-2.0, LGPL-2.1, MPL-2.0, Apache-2.0, OFL-1.1, PSF-Python
• Help → Third-Party Notices & Licenses — in-app viewer for both documents
• download-tools.js now SHA-256 pins and verifies every downloaded artifact (post-download and against the cache on every run; hard-fails on mismatch)
• README gains a "Bundled Dependencies, Legal Notices & Credits" section
• Large optional tools intentionally NOT bundled (documented): LibreOffice, MiKTeX/TeX Live, ImageMagick, PlantUML+JRE, Calibre

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Version 4.6.1 (2026-09-05)

New Features

• MarkItDown import — "File → Import with MarkItDown (Any Format)…" embeds Microsoft's markitdown (MIT) as an any-file → Markdown path: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, Outlook .msg/.eml, EPUB, images, CSV/JSON/XML, ZIP; audio transcription and OCR with the [all] extras
  • Command auto-resolution: markitdown binary, then python -m markitdown / python3 -m markitdown (probed once, cached)
  • Same SEC-1 argv discipline as Pandoc (execFile only, paths never through a shell), 50MB input cap, 120s timeout, path-sanitized errors that surface markitdown's actionable pip install 'markitdown[...]' hints
  • Output written next to the source as <name>.md (numeric suffix instead of overwriting) and opened in a new tab; markitdown:available / markitdown:convert IPC for future renderer flows
• AI Assistant: Anthropic-compatible provider — any base URL speaking the Anthropic messages schema (LiteLLM proxies, Bedrock gateways, local servers); x-api-key + Bearer auth, keyless proxies supported, tolerates bases with or without a trailing /v1

Bug Fixes

• File → Open PDF crashed the PDF editor (null operation matched no section; now defaults to Merge)
• Backlinks panel required the wrong module path (failed at registration)
• writing-studio engines/panels now await their IPC-backed settings/file backends (eliminates JSON.parse("[object Promise]") crashes)
• Manuscript panel's window.prompt (unsupported in Electron) replaced with an inline dialog; collaboration comment store made async to match its IO

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Version 4.6.0 (2026-09-05)

New Features

AI Assistant Plugin (multi-provider)

• Chat sidebar panel with rolling conversation history and insert-reply-into-document
• Providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, LM Studio, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
• All provider traffic proxied through the main process — API keys never enter the renderer and the CSP stays closed to AI endpoints
• Commands: AI Summarize / Improve / Explain / Translate selection
• Answers the writing-studio ai:analyze contract, finally enabling the Proofread panel

Collaboration Plugin (inline comments)

• Anchor-based comments stored in .comments/ sidecar files (never exported, never committed)
• Comments sidebar panel: add at cursor, list, resolve, delete, jump to anchor
• Drift detection flags moved/edited anchors; F8 navigates to the next open comment

Local Knowledge Base (wiki-links + backlinks)

• [[Note]], [[Note|alias]], [[Note#section]] render as links in the preview (code blocks excluded)
• Clicking a wiki-link opens the note or offers to create it
• Backlinks sidebar panel scans the folder (bounded BFS) for documents linking to the current one

Crash Recovery / Session Restore

• Open tabs (paths + unsaved buffer content) snapshotted to localStorage, debounced on edits, on tab changes, on unload, and once a minute
• Restore prompt on launch with per-tab restore, clean-fresh option, and 2MB content budget

Document Version History

• Every save snapshots the previous on-disk content to <userData>/versions/
• History sidebar panel: list, restore (with safety snapshot), unified diff vs. current, delete, manual "save version now"
• Per-document pruning (20 versions), path-hash storage, id-validated reads

Editor

• Vim keybindings (View → Vim Mode, persisted, live toggle via CodeMirror Compartment)
• Snippet Tab-expansion: type a snippet name and press Tab to insert it
• Zen Mode word-goal setter (the HUD progress bar finally has UI)

Export / Conversion

• Real PDF encryption: pdf-lib swapped for @cantoo/pdf-lib — encrypt/decrypt/permissions now actually work (UI auto-enables via the capability probe)
• XLSX export: markdown tables → native Excel workbook, one sheet per table (no Pandoc needed)
• ODT headers/footers + page size: real ODF styles.xml patching replaces the empty stub
• Local PlantUML rendering: diagrams render on-machine via the plantuml CLI when installed; plantuml.com stays as fallback
• KaTeX bundled locally (CSS + fonts): math renders offline, no CDN calls
• Writing heatmap (GitHub-style 30-day grid) in the writing-studio Goals panel

Platform

• Quick Note global scratchpad (Ctrl+Alt+Q, works when unfocused; appends to notes/quick-notes.md)
• Deep link protocol markdownconverter://open?path=…
• REPL confirmation dialog before first code execution per language per session (unsandboxed-execution guard rail)
• Writing-studio's four sidebar panels (Manuscript/Goals/Snapshots/Proofread) are now actually wired with rail icons
• Plugin sidebar panels get automatic rail icons via registerPanel({icon})

Bug Fixes

• Ctrl+Shift+P collision: PDF (Enhanced) export now Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P; Command Palette keeps Ctrl+Shift+P
• Universal Converter's Pandoc tool no longer always reports "not installed" (checkConverterAvailable gained a pandoc case with bundled-binary check)
• CLI headless export: removed dangling --css / --reference-doc flags that made pandoc exit with an error; --self-contained replaced with --standalone (Pandoc 3.x)
• Removed dead "Open Export Options Dialog…" button from the converter dialog
• Removed duplicate styles-zen.css include

Security

• AI provider requests carry size caps (200KB prompt), timeouts (120s), and user-safe error surfaces
• Version-history reads validate ids against traversal; history listing requires a valid document path
• PlantUML local rendering removes the diagram-text exfiltration path when a local CLI exists (CVE-MC-007 follow-up)

Tests

• New suites: OdtStyling, AiProviders, ai-assistant prompts, collaboration comment-store, wiki-links/backlinks, session-store, XlsxExporter, VersionHistory
• PDFOperations encryption tests rewritten for the real-encryption reality

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Version 4.0.0 (2026-03-04)

Major Changes

• CodeMirror 6 Editor — Replaced textarea with CodeMirror 6 featuring syntax highlighting, code folding, bracket matching, multiple cursors, and auto-indent
• Sidebar Panel System — Collapsible sidebar with File Explorer, Git, Snippets, and Templates panels
• Command Palette — Ctrl+Shift+P to search and execute all app actions
• Code Execution (REPL) — Run JavaScript, Python, and Bash code blocks directly from the preview

New Features

• Print Preview dialog with paper size, orientation, margins, scale, and page range controls
• Image paste from clipboard and drag-drop support with auto-save to assets folder
• Document templates library (10 templates: blog post, meeting notes, tech spec, changelog, README, project plan, API docs, tutorial, release notes, comparison)
• Markdown extensions: footnotes, admonitions (note/warning/tip/danger/info), and toc table of contents
• PlantUML diagram rendering alongside Mermaid
• Welcome tab with onboarding and "What's New" feature showcase
• System spell checking with context menu suggestions and dictionary support
• Enhanced status bar with word count, character count, line/column, encoding, and language mode
• Grouped toolbar with visual section separators
• Breadcrumb bar showing current file path

New Export/Import Formats

• Reveal.js slides (.html)
• Beamer slides (.pdf)
• Confluence/Jira wiki markup (.txt)
• MOBI e-books (via Calibre)
• Developer formats: JSON, YAML, XML, TOML

Security

• Content Security Policy (CSP) meta tag
• File size validation (50MB limit)
• Error message sanitization (stripped file paths)
• Conversion rate limiting (2-second debounce)

Dependencies Updated

• marked: 16.x to 17.x (with marked-highlight extension)
• pdfjs-dist: 3.x to 5.x (new worker model)
• html2pdf.js: 0.10 to 0.14
• pdfkit: 0.14 to 0.17
• dompurify, docx, and others updated to latest

Testing

• 80 tests across 7 test suites
• New tests for sidebar manager, command palette, print preview, markdown extensions, and utility functions

Breaking Changes

• Editor is now CodeMirror 6 (replaces textarea)
• marked API changed to use marked.use() instead of marked.setOptions()
• pdfjs-dist upgraded to v5 with new worker model

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Version 2.1.0 (December 14, 2025)

🎨 UI/UX Improvements

Subtle & Small Preview Popout Button

• Redesigned popout button with minimalist aesthetic
• Removed border for cleaner appearance
• Reduced size: 11px font, 2px×6px padding (previously 14px font, 4px×8px padding)
• Added opacity transition: 50% when idle, 100% on hover
• Subtle background effect on hover instead of heavy border styling
• File: src/styles.css:195-211

Simplified Table Headers in Preview

• Removed gradient background from table headers in modern theme
• Changed from var(--primary-gradient) (purple gradient) to simple light gray (#f0f0f0)
• Updated text color to dark (#333333) for better readability
• Clean, professional appearance matching standard themes
• File: src/styles-modern.css:445-449

📥 Enhanced Import Capabilities

Comprehensive Format-to-Markdown Conversion

Dramatically expanded the "Import Document" feature to support 30+ file formats:

Supported Formats:

• Documents: DOCX, ODT, RTF, HTML, HTM, TEX, EPUB, PDF, TXT
• Presentations: PPTX, ODP
• Markup Languages: RST, Textile, MediaWiki, Org-mode, AsciiDoc, TWiki, OPML
• E-book Formats: EPUB, FB2
• LaTeX Formats: TEX, LATEX, LTX
• Web Formats: HTML, HTM, XHTML
• Wiki Formats: MediaWiki, DokuWiki, TikiWiki, TWiki
• Data Formats: CSV, TSV, JSON

Format-Specific Optimizations:

• PDF text extraction with XeLaTeX engine
• CSV/TSV automatic table conversion
• JSON structure handling
• Improved error messages with format hints

Access: File → Import Document (Ctrl+I) File: src/main.js:1933-1994

🎨 Exhaustive ASCII Art Generator

5 New Text Banner Styles

Complete alphabet (A-Z) and numbers (0-9) support for all styles:

1. Standard - Classic ASCII art with slashes and underscores
2. Banner - Large format using # characters (7-line height)
3. Block - Modern Unicode block characters (█ ╔ ╗ ═ ║)
4. Bubble - Circular bubble letters (Ⓐ Ⓑ Ⓒ)
5. Digital - Digital display style (▄ ▀ ▐ ▌)

File: src/renderer.js:3397-3537

19 Professional ASCII Templates

Organized into 4 categories with expanded options:

Arrows & Flow (4 templates):

• Arrow Right - Horizontal flow indicators
• Arrow Down - Vertical flow indicators
• Decision - Binary decision diagrams
• Process Flow - Multi-step process visualization

Diagrams & Charts (6 templates):

• Flowchart - Advanced flowchart with decision branches and loops
• Sequence - Sequence diagrams for User-System-Database interactions
• Network - Server-client network topology
• Hierarchy - Organizational tree structures
• Timeline - Milestone visualization with dates
• Table Simple - Basic table template with borders

Boxes & Containers (4 templates):

• Header - Section header with decorative borders
• Note Box - Important notes with rounded corners (┏━━┓)
• Warning Box - Warning messages with bold borders (╔═══╗)
• Info Box - Information boxes with subtle styling (╭───╮)

Decorative Elements (6 templates):

• Divider - Horizontal section separator (═══)
• Separator Fancy - Elegant rounded divider
• Brackets - Japanese-style brackets 【 】
• Banner Stars - Star-bordered banners
• Checklist - Task lists with ✓ checkmarks
• Progress Bar - Visual progress indicators

Features:

• All ASCII art automatically wrapped in code blocks for proper rendering
• Preserved formatting in markdown preview and all export formats
• Categorized template selection interface
• Real-time preview generation

Access: Tools → ASCII Art Generator Files: src/renderer.js:3513-3671, src/index.html:427-466

📝 Technical Improvements

• Enhanced ASCII art detection in Word template exporter
• Improved monospace font rendering across all export formats
• Better code block preservation in PDF and Word exports
• Optimized template categorization and organization

🔧 Files Modified

• src/styles.css - Preview popout button styling
• src/styles-modern.css - Table header simplification
• src/main.js - Enhanced import function, version update
• src/renderer.js - ASCII art generator enhancements
• src/index.html - ASCII template UI organization
• package.json - Version bump to 2.1.0

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Version 2.0.0 (Previous Release)

Major Features

• Export Profiles - Save and reuse export configurations
• Mermaid.js diagram support
• Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P)
• GitHub Light/Dark preview themes
• Table Generator
• ASCII Art Generator (basic)
• Resizable Preview Pane
• Pop-out Preview Window
• Configurable page sizes (A3-A5, B4-B5, Letter, Legal, Tabloid, Custom)
• Custom Headers & Footers for exports
• Enhanced PDF and Word export with templates
• 22 beautiful themes

Core Capabilities

• Cross-platform markdown editor with live preview
• Universal document conversion (30+ formats)
• PDF Editor (merge, split, compress, rotate, watermark, encrypt)
• Batch file conversion
• File association support
• Advanced export options
• Multi-tab interface

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Installation & Usage

Prerequisites

• Pandoc - Required for document conversion
• Optional: LibreOffice, ImageMagick, FFmpeg for universal converter

Download

Get the latest release from: https://github.com/amitwh/pan-converter/releases

Supported Platforms

• Windows (x64)
• Linux (AppImage, .deb, .snap)
• macOS (planned)

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CLAUDE.md for development guidelines.

Author: Amit Haridas (amit.wh@gmail.com) License: MIT Repository: https://github.com/amitwh/pan-converter