v5.5 — Edit becomes a place to write Markdown

Edit gets a format bar, tables, and lists that carry on

• A format bar above the text. In a Markdown note, Source — and Split's Source half — now has a
  bar of the Markup verbs, a capsule to each group: the Body menu, which names the style the
  caret is in and shows each style as it looks; B, I and S; the lists; Code, Code Block
  and Quote; and Link, Table and Divider. A button is lit when pressing it would take that
  formatting off. Where there is room each button carries a word beside its icon; a narrower window
  drops the words, then folds the groups one by one, and keeps Bold, Italic and Strikethrough to the
  last. Right-click the bar for Icon and Text, Icon Only or Hide Format Bar. View ▸
  Format Bar turns it back on, as does the same item on the text's own right-click menu.
• Tables without typing pipes. Markup has a Table submenu, and the bar a Table button: Insert
  Table, Make Table from Selection (tab- or comma-separated lines), add and delete rows and columns,
  and Format Table, which lines the columns up. With the caret in a table, a Table capsule appears
  on the bar. An edit keeps a table's style: one written lined up stays lined up, and one typed by
  hand changes only in the row or column you touched, so a synced file shows a one-line change.
• Lists carry on. Return at the end of a list item starts the next one — the same bullet, the
  next number, or an empty box after a task — and one ⌘Z takes back the Return and the marker
  together. Return on an empty item ends the list. Tab and ⇧Tab move an item in and out a level.
  Text ▸ Continue Lists turns this off. Return and Tab follow the same rules in Preview, and ⇧Return
  or ⌃Return writes a plain line break.
• Bullets, Numbered, Tasks, the headings and Quote work on a blank line. On an empty line or in
  an empty note they did nothing; they now start the item, with the caret after its marker, and a
  numbered item carries on from the one above. Pressed again, the marker comes off.
• Paste an address over words to link them. Pasting one http or https address over selected
  words makes [words](address). Every other paste is unchanged.
• Drop a picture into a note. An image dropped from Finder, or pasted, is copied into an
  Images folder beside the note as <note>-1.png and so on, and linked on a line of its own. An
  existing file is never replaced, and ⌘Z takes the link back but leaves the copy. JPEG, HEIC, GIF
  and WebP pictures keep their format, and a drop or paste whose pictures total more than 25 MB is
  refused before anything is copied.
• Horizontal Rule is now Divider, in the Markup menu, the bar and the right-click menu.
• Each Markup verb is its own undo step. A verb used straight after typing was undone together
  with the typing: type "foo", choose Bold, and one ⌘Z took both back. Now it takes back the verb.
• The Markup verbs write only where they belong. A line verb leaves code blocks, front matter
  and dividers alone and finds nested, indented and quoted markers; Italic over bold keeps the bold;
  an inline style never takes in a line break or a trailing space; and undoing a verb gives back its
  selection. Markup is greyed in files that are not Markdown.
• Bold, Strikethrough and Inline Code no longer turn two spans inside out. Over a selection
  reaching from one bold word into another, Bold read the two as one span and turned them inside
  out; it now adds a pair.

Type in Preview — experimental

• A Markdown note's Preview can be typed in. Fix a word, add a sentence, press Return for a new
  paragraph or list item, tick a box, change a table cell: each change is written to the Markdown as
  you type, and ⌘Z undoes it, a run of typing at a time, as in Source. The format bar, the Markup
  menu and ⌘F work there too. In Split both halves can be typed in, and scrolling either one
  moves the other.
• It is on unless you turn it off — with Edit in the top-right corner of Preview, or Text ▸
  Edit in Preview (Experimental). It is marked experimental, and the first time a Preview becomes
  editable a note says what that means.
• It never guesses. A change Preview cannot make faithfully — joining two paragraphs, say — is
  not made: the file is left as it was, and the line under the document says That change needs
  Source., with Show in Source beside it. Markdown files only, and a note longer than 256 KB
  stays read-only in Preview.

Edit around the document

• Expand gives the document the window. "Just the text" was a ≡ that read as "justify", with no
  menu item or key. It is now Expand, a button of its own at the end of the header, and Text ▸
  Expand (⌃⌘E). It folds the file pane, the Text Files list and the sidebar, and leaving puts
  back exactly what was showing.
• The sidebar works beside a folded pane. In Edit the sidebar (⌃⌘S) existed only while the file
  pane was open, and the pane starts folded, so the switch was greyed most of the time. It now stays,
  and a click in it still re-points the Text Files list.
• The status line names the heading you are in. In a Markdown note with headings it starts
  "in Heading ▾", and its menu lists every heading to jump to.
• It counts the selection — "12 of 78 words", "64 characters selected" — and goes to a line:
  click "Line, Col", or Text ▸ Go to Line… (⌃⌘L), and type a line or line:column.
• Readable Line Length. Text ▸ Readable Line Length keeps wrapped text in a centred column
  as wide as Preview's, so a wide window no longer runs a paragraph 150 characters across. Off by
  default; also on the text's right-click menu, beside Wrap Lines.
• Edit notices when its file changes elsewhere. It learned only at the next save, so a note
  showed stale text, and one moved away was written back at its old path. Now, with nothing unsaved,
  the new version loads quietly and the caret stays put. With unsaved typing, a banner offers
  Compare, Keep Mine and Use the Disk's, and holds autosave until you choose. A moved or
  renamed file is followed, and a deleted one keeps its text, with Save Again to write it back.
• Edit writes plain LF line breaks only. In a file with Windows (CRLF) or old-Mac (CR) line
  breaks, Return, the list and block verbs, and a multi-line paste wrote LF breaks in among the old
  ones, and the status line read "Mixed". Now the first edit converts the whole file to LF, inside
  that edit's undo step, so one ⌘Z gives back the file exactly as it was opened. A file you only
  read is never touched.
• ⌘Z in Edit undoes your typing, never a file operation. In the find field, or right after
  switching between Source, Split and Preview, ⌘Z could undo your last file move, copy or rename
  instead. Now, whenever the document, Preview or the find bar was the last thing used, ⌘Z takes
  back text; file operations are undone from the file pane.
• ⌘Z is saved. An undo put the old text back on screen while the document — and so autosave
  and the unsaved dot — kept the undone version. After switching between Source, Split and Preview,
  ⌘Z could also undo a view that was no longer showing and use up the step. Both are fixed, and a
  box ticked in Preview can be undone.

Opening files into Edit

• SyncCloud is in Finder's Open With for text files. A file opened that way, dropped on the Dock
  icon or passed to open -a lands in Edit, fetched first if it is still in the cloud. SyncCloud is
  offered, never made the default. Opening several files at once opens the first and gives each
  other folder a tab, its files selected. A launch from Finder opens in Expand.
• The file pane follows the file you open, by tab. Opening a file from ⌘O, the Info inspector,
  a duplicate or the palette switches to the tab already showing its folder, or opens a new tab
  there, on whichever source holds it — instead of re-rooting the tab you were in. From Compare and
  Organize it moves only within the pane's own source, so your comparison and Organize's results stay
  put.
• ⌘N makes its file in Notes when the pane's folder is no place for one. On a whole-disk source
  it offered the top of the disk or /Applications, and with no folder open it was greyed. A system
  folder, the top of the home folder, a Trash, a folder you cannot write to, or none, now sends the
  new file to ~/Documents/Notes, made if it is missing.

Compare: faster after a switch, and right about linked folders

• Compare after a switch reuses what a pane already read. Switching a pane's source or tab
  emptied every cached folder walk, so the next Compare read both folders from disk: Home against
  Dropbox's Documents took 4–6 seconds instead of under 2. The other pane's walk is now kept, and
  the scan's status dates the comparison by the walks it read rather than by when it ran.
• The differences come out faster. Every file present on one side only got a full row built, then
  most were folded into their folder's row. Now only the rows that survive are built: on a Home
  scan of about 200,000 entries against 13,766, that step went from about 1.06 s to 0.35 s.
• iCloud Drive's Documents and Desktop compare as what they hold. With a pane on iCloud Drive ▸
  Documents, the scan read the link instead of the folder, found nothing, and reported every item on
  the other side as "Folder missing on left" — 15 such rows on every iCloud-against-Dropbox launch.
  At the iCloud Drive container itself, rows could offer to copy into a path spelled
  <other side>/Users/…. Both read through the link now.
• Folders reached through a link behave like any other. Below a folder symlink, under a root
  reached through one (such as /var), and above iCloud's linked Documents:
  • Compare only this folder and Open no longer refuse with "Can't Focus Folder".
  • Columns opens the next column instead of showing it empty.
  • A file saved there from Edit, ⌘N or Export as PDF now refreshes the pane and Compare.
  • A Compare of Home against a mirror no longer offers to copy the mirror's folder back into the
    iCloud container, through the link, onto ~/Documents.
• A cloud folder that never answers no longer stalls Compare — or anything else. With OneDrive
  not running, its Trash folders block anything that lists them, so a Compare of Home never
  finished, and each Refresh left another stuck reader behind. Such a folder is now given 5 seconds,
  then marked unexplored, and Compare runs without it — reporting nothing under it as missing. The
  same limit now covers every other place that lists a folder: the destination picker, undoing a
  rename or move, merging folders, Look for Names, Edit's Text Files list and the sidebar's folder
  sizes.
• Rows stay inside their folder's row. Compare folds everything inside a folder missing on one
  side into that folder's row. A name beginning with an accent mark, or a folder and a file whose
  names differ only by an invisible trailing space, let rows escape: copying one could make a second
  folder beside the first, and bulk sync could handle it twice.

The panes: one busy indicator, and columns at their own width

• A pane reading its folder shows one busy indicator, a labelled chip in its bottom-right
  corner, instead of up to three spinners at once — one in the middle, one in the corner, and one in
  every empty column. A column spins only while it alone is waiting for its listing.
• Compare no longer flashes "Scanning" on a quick rescan. Most rescans take well under half a
  second, and each flashed the scanning card, the count and the Stop button. They now appear only
  once a scan has run for three quarters of a second.
• A Columns pane at rest shows its column at its own width, with empty space after it, as Finder
  does. It used to span the whole pane and then snap back on the first click, resizing the column
  under the pointer. The empty space has the column's right-click menu.

Organize acts only on the folder its profile was built from

• Refresh what's learned reads the profile's own folder. It read whatever folder the focused
  pane showed. With the left pane on Home, one click would have rebuilt your ~/Documents filing
  memory from your whole home folder. It now always surveys the profile's folder, and refuses a
  profile that records none or a folder that has been emptied.
• The first document survey and Restructure do the same. Started with the pane elsewhere, the
  survey spent hours on the wrong tree; Restructure, given a profile without a recorded folder, acted
  under your home folder. Both now refuse rather than guess.

Glass that moves

• In Frosted and Clear, the marker that shows your choice is a lens of glass that glides between
  choices — in segmented controls, tab strips, the Settings rail, the destination picker and the
  other places that mark one choice among several. On light glass the chosen label is black, where
  white all but vanished. Solid is unchanged.
• Bar and toolbar buttons get glass capsules, as Finder's do: the pane bar, the breadcrumb, the
  tab strip, the Compare, Organize and Edit headers, close buttons, the Activity Log and Sync History.

Smaller fixes

• ⌘K can no longer send the app into a spin. Once, the app sat at full CPU for seven minutes
  after ⌘K: an AppKit password-field check, which SyncCloud has no use for, was walking every
  focusable view in the window. That check is now switched off.
• The tab chip's iCloud mark is drawn at its proper size. When a pane's tabs folded into one
  chip, the iCloud mark could draw as a large blue cloud across the top of the pane.
• PDF previews in Columns open in the background. Each selected PDF was opened on the app's main
  thread, so stepping through a folder of them waited on every one; now the window stays responsive
  while the page loads. A damaged, empty or locked PDF shows its icon and says why, where the pane
  was blank.
• Closing a document mid-search can no longer crash the app. Closing it while Find was still
  looking for its first match left AppKit's find highlight asking a freed text view to redraw.

Full changelog: v5.4...v5.5