v1.18.3

iwo Helper Desktop v1.18.3

Added

• PDF operations from the command line. Merge, extract, split (by ranges, every N, or
  bookmarks), compress, grayscale, repair, pages to images and text to .txt — the same
  operations as in the windows, for batch work and scripts. Nothing new is computed: the
  command line parses arguments into a description and hands it to the very service the
  button calls, so the two cannot drift apart in behaviour. Exit codes match the Excel mode:
  0 done, 1 failed, 2 bad usage; --help prints the list. A mistyped option gives 2 with an explanation rather
  than quietly doing something else. Sources are never modified here either: commands that
  change a file work on a copy, and input equal to output is refused.

• Recent files on the start screen. The last few files the app produced sit in the bottom
  row as links — one click opens the one you were just working on, without hunting for the
  folder. Built on the history that was already kept, so nothing new is recorded and the
  privacy switch that turns history off turns this off too. Files that have since been moved
  or deleted are not listed: a quick-access list where half the entries fail to open is worse
  than no list. Nothing is shown at all when there is nothing to return to.

• A blank sheet can be inserted into the page grid. In More operations, from the page grid's
  context menu: the sheet goes in after the selected page (at the end if nothing is selected) and
  takes the format of its neighbour, because a sheet of a different size in the middle of
  a document reads as a mistake rather than an intention. From there it is an ordinary page —
  move it, rotate it, print it, save it. It arrives the same way an image does: as a one-page
  wrapper in the window's temporary folder, so nothing in the grid needs a special case for it.

• Print now shows what will come out. Choosing a printer is followed by a preview of the
  sheets, with Print and Cancel — paper is spent only after it has been looked at. The preview
  draws the very same print job that is then sent, so the two cannot disagree. It shows the
  first few sheets rather than the whole job, and says so: the question a preview answers is
  "how will this lay out", and the control it is built on renders every shown sheet at once
  and keeps the rasters — a hundred pages would mean a hundred rasters and a frozen window.
  Printing itself is unchanged: still in the background, with progress and cancellation.

• Password-protected PDFs open now. Until this version such a file simply did not load —
  the tool refused exactly when it was needed. The password is asked for in a dialog that
  names the file, so a batch where only one document is protected makes it obvious which
  one is being asked about. A wrong password asks again and says so. Cancelling skips that
  file and the reason appears in the summary of what was not added — and the dialog warns
  about this before you cancel, rather than putting a second window in the way
  afterwards: ten protected files would otherwise mean twenty windows to close.
  The password reaches everything that opens the file — pages, thumbnails, text, document
  composition — through one registry, so it is entered once per file per session. It never
  touches the disk: not the settings, not the reports, not the crash log.

Fixed

• Work that belonged in the background had slipped onto the UI thread — twice, in this very
  version. Inserting a blank sheet read its neighbour's size by parsing the document (278 ms
  on a 900-page file, measured), and the recent-files row called on start — about
  a second per path when the path is on a disconnected network share, which would have delayed
  the start screen by seconds. Both now run in the background, and a test pins them there,
  because catching this by hand needs an unplugged network at the right moment.
• A failure while asking for a password could leave a window locked forever — the load
  state was never cleared, so buttons and grid stayed disabled until the tool was closed.
• ** opened a window instead of printing help.** An unknown first argument sends the
  app down the normal GUI path, so the console got nothing at all.
• "The file is already optimized" was a lie for scans. A four-page scan of 1.6 MB: no
  text at all, four images making up 99.8 % of the file. The "Very good" level leaves images
  alone by definition, so the rebuilt document came out 0.1 % larger, was rejected, and the
  status reported the file as already optimized — while the very same file shrank by 64 % on
  "Good" and by 88 % on "Normal". The message was formally true and substantially false.
  When compression gains nothing, the document is now looked at: if it is mostly images and
  the chosen level does not recompute them, the status says so and points at what to pick
  instead. The look costs nothing on the normal path — it only happens when compression
  already failed to help.
• Merging and splitting silently dropped the table of contents. Pages were copied one by
  one, and the bookmarks stayed behind in the source: a four-page document with three
  bookmarks came out of a merge with none, and out of a split with none. The file opened,
  looked intact, and had lost its navigation — the worst kind of data loss, because nothing
  reports it. Bookmarks are now carried across in all five paths (merge, extract, by ranges,
  every N, by bookmarks), pointing at wherever their page ended up: reverse the page order
  and the contents follow. A bookmark whose page did not make it into the result is dropped,
  but its children are lifted to the freed level rather than vanishing with it — removing one
  section must not take half the contents with it.

Files: iwoHelperDesktop-1.18.3.exe / iwoHelperDesktop-1.18.3-x86.exe - portable (single file, 64-bit / 32-bit); iwoHelperDesktop-setup-1.18.3.exe / iwoHelperDesktop-setup-1.18.3-x86.exe - installers with bundled Ghostscript (per-user install, no administrator rights). Take x64 unless your Windows is 32-bit.