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DramaQueen 4.8 – Update Report

This update brings two major focus areas — writing and exporting. For writing: the new Writing Atmosphere for the Text view (per-document paper look or atmospheric background image) and the expanded Progress Tracker (sessions with word or time targets and a target-reached dialog). For exporting: a new unified export dialog, a fundamentally reworked EPUB export with full EPUB 3 support and accessibility according to EPUB Accessibility 1.1 / EU Accessibility Act, the new Markdown and Fountain formats, and a consistent heading hierarchy and range selection for Word, PDF and RTF exports.

WRITING ATMOSPHERE — NEW DIALOG

  • New Writing Atmosphere… dialog, accessible via the gear menu of the Text view and via a hint link in Program settings ▸ Theme.
  • Two-column layout — Paper Look and Image Background: The two modes are mutually exclusive; clicking a column activates it and deactivates the other. The inactive column remains visible and configurable, but is greyed out.
  • Live preview: Changes are reflected immediately in the editor. The dialog is modeless — the Text view stays scrollable so you can check how the chosen background looks beyond the first page.
  • Reset to defaults: A dedicated button resets the currently visible column to its default values.
  • The settings only affect how text is displayed on screen, not print or export. Pagination (page breaks, headers/footers, page numbers) is fully preserved in both modes.

PAPER LOOK

  • Seven preset textures — Plain, Satin, Grainy, Fine Grain, Ribbed, Linen, Rice Paper — each with a preview thumbnail in the dialog.
  • Custom image: Your own image file (JPG/PNG) can be used as the paper texture.
  • Brightness slider to lighten or darken the texture — adapts to Light and Dark theme.
  • Text contrast slider — shifts the default text color between maximum contrast and neutral grey, without touching explicitly set user highlights.

IMAGE BACKGROUND

  • 14 bundled atmospheric images, split into two tonality columns:
    • Light: Sun, Sea, Snow, Mist, Clouds, Fantasy, Pool — with enforced black text.
    • Dark: Valley, Underwater, Outer Space, Road, Rain, Nature, Desert — with enforced white text.

    The choice of column is independent of the app theme — a light image in dark theme (or vice versa) is possible.

  • Custom image (JPG/PNG) with its own text color slider.
  • Four sliders:
    • Brightness
    • Opacity
    • Saturation
    • Text contrast
  • Full-viewport image background — the image covers page and margins entirely and stays fixed in the viewport while scrolling (parallax effect between text and image).

SIDE-BY-SIDE / FULL SCREEN CONFIGURED SEPARATELY

  • The Writing Atmosphere can be configured separately for the regular side-by-side view and the full-screen view — via the checkboxes “Also for full screen view” / “Only for full screen view” in each column.
  • When switching into full-screen / maximized mode, a not-yet-configured full-screen background is automatically taken over from the side-by-side settings.

PROGRESS TRACKER — COMPLETELY REVISED DIALOG

  • The former word/character counter has been expanded into the Progress Tracker and is now accessible from the gear menu of the Text panel.
  • New ‘Progress Tracker Settings’ dialog with four separated sections:
    • What to count? — words or characters.
    • Length of a section
    • Output period — hour, day, week or month.
    • Session — with two new options:
      • The session target can now additionally be defined as a time period (in minutes) — e.g. “500 words in 30 minutes” or “250 words in any amount of time”. Target and duration are entered in two aligned fields.
      • New option ‘Hide session / Show message when target reached’ — the session keeps running in the background; once the target is reached, a dedicated dialog appears.
  • New ‘Session target reached!’ dialog: square in shape, with a thumbs-up icon and a smiley, showing the achieved target, the duration, the session start and the writing speed (words/characters per minute).
  • If the target or duration is changed while a session is running, the new ‘Session target changed’ dialog asks whether to continue the current session or start a new one.
  • Toggling the ‘Session’ checkbox automatically resets the running session.

NEW EXPORT AND PRINT DIALOG

  • The former export submenus (“Export as…”, “Export text…”, “Generate text…”) as well as the previous print entries (“Print…” and the “Print text” submenu) have been merged into two structurally identical dialogs, opened via File ▸ Export… respectively File ▸ Print… or via the matching icons in the toolbar:
    • Export icon in the toolbar: The global toolbar now shows a new “Export…” icon. It opens the unified export dialog, which lets you export script, outline, notes, ideas and other texts — individually or bundled — into any format in one step. The icon is shown by default; you can hide or restore it like any other toolbar icon via View ▸ Show icons in toolbar. The printer icon opens the new print dialog in the same way.
    • Select multiple texts at once: main text (plot, outline, or script), summaries, annotations, as well as lists, descriptions and profiles of storylines, characters, locations, world elements and ideas — all in a single step.
    • Smart format selection (export only): The format dropdown automatically only offers formats that support all texts currently selected (PDF, DOCX, RTF, Final Draft, Fountain, EPUB, Markdown, HTML). The print dialog has no format dropdown — the output device is picked by the native printer dialog.
    • With annotations: A single checkbox that adapts to the context — either the annotations are embedded into the selected main text, or, if no main text is selected, output on their own.
    • One combined file / one combined print job or separate files / separate jobs: With multiple texts you can choose whether everything is merged into a single file or print job with continuous page numbering, or each text is output on its own (with sensible auto-generated file names on export).
    • Watermark: A watermark with direction can optionally be applied to the entire job — previously PDF-specific on export, now consistently available in the print dialog too.
    • Edit for export / print: Optionally open the chosen texts as a plain text document first, adjust them specifically for this export or print, and only then export / print — without changing the source document.
    • Streamlined options: Both dialogs only show options that are actually available for the current document. Texts and element categories that aren’t activated or are still empty are hidden.

NEW EPUB 3 EXPORT

  • Semantic structure: Chapters, parts and other structural elements are now properly marked up. E-readers and read-aloud software understand the manuscript’s structure and offer matching navigation.
  • Inline images: Images placed in the text are now embedded directly into the EPUB at the correct position — previously they were missing from the export.
  • Footnotes are exported so readers display them as a popup instead of breaking the reading flow.
  • Page breaks within a chapter are now correctly applied.
  • Typography: Default font, font size, line height as well as text and background color are taken from the document. Paragraph spacing (above/below paragraphs and between consecutive paragraphs) is preserved.
  • Per-span colors: Text and background colors set within a paragraph (e.g. highlights) are now exported as well.

ACCESSIBILITY (EPUB 3)

  • Alternative text for images: The image properties dialog now lets you set an alt text for every image — either descriptive text for screen readers or an explicit “decorative image” marker. The text is carried into the EPUB export (WCAG 2.1 § 1.1.1) and stored persistently in the DramaQueen document.
  • Screen-reader support: Chapters, parts, footnote references and footnote backlinks now carry the matching ARIA roles (DPUB-ARIA standard), so screen readers and read-aloud systems recognize the structural semantics correctly.
  • Language tagging: The document language is set on every content document, so read-aloud systems can pick the correct voice (WCAG 2.1 § 3.1.1).
  • Discovery metadata (EPUB Accessibility 1.1): The EPUB now carries the book’s accessibility properties in a machine-readable form. EPUB stores and library systems can therefore automatically detect which requirements the book fulfils — a prerequisite for distribution in the EU under the European Accessibility Act (EAA).
  • Gap-free heading hierarchy: Heading levels (H1–H3) are emitted without skipped levels, so screen readers and tables of contents represent the hierarchy correctly (WCAG 2.1 § 1.3.1).

FONT EMBEDDING WITH LICENSE PROTECTION (EPUB)

  • Before every EPUB export (unless “Do not ask again” has been activated) a dialog with three options appears:
    • Embed only free fonts (recommended, always safe) — only fonts released under a publicly documented free license (SIL OFL, Apache, Creative Commons etc.) are embedded.
    • Embed all technically permitted fonts (advanced) — embeds any font whose vendor flagged it as embeddable, even without a publicly documented free license.
    • Do not embed any fonts — the e-reader picks a similar font on its own.

    The chosen mode is stored per document. It can be changed at any time via the Change button in the EPUB export dialog — even after the picker has been disabled via “Do not ask again”.

  • During embedding, each font’s embedding flag is checked. Fonts whose vendor disallows embedding are skipped and replaced by the reader’s default font — font licenses are respected on a technical level.
  • For every embedded font, the origin (vendor, license, license URL where available) is written into the EPUB, so the font’s license remains traceable.

NEW EXPORT FORMATS: MARKDOWN AND FOUNTAIN

  • New export format Markdown (.md): DramaQueen writes the document as a CommonMark-compatible file with standard conventions — **bold**, *italic*, ## heading. Screenplay structures like scene headings, character cues and transitions become bold-uppercase, parentheticals become italic. Underline and strikethrough are preserved too; tabs turn into four spaces. The file starts with a YAML frontmatter block carrying the title and author (when set on the title page) — automatically picked up as metadata by Pandoc, Hugo, Jekyll and Obsidian. Handy for further processing in web workflows, notes apps or as input for AI tools. Markdown is offered in the export menu for all document types — for screenplay documents as an alternative to Fountain.
  • Markdown import (.md): Markdown sources (e.g. from Obsidian, Bear, AI tools or a plain text editor) can now be opened directly. Inline formatting is preserved as character style, and Markdown headings (#/##/###) map to the heading styles 1–3. Embedded HTML tags (<u>, <br> and others) are stripped cleanly instead of showing up as literal text, and common HTML entities (&amp;, &nbsp; etc.) are decoded. Since Markdown doesn’t know any screenplay syntax, the importer is mainly useful for prose documents (novel, treatment, exposé); for screenplay content, Fountain is the right format.
  • New format Fountain (.fountain) for export and import: Fountain is the de-facto exchange format for screenplays (supported by Final Draft and others) and — unlike Markdown — knows real screenplay syntax: scene headings, character cues, parentheticals, transitions, page breaks, and act/sequence/beat sections. On import the elements land in the matching DramaQueen styles instead of plain action; on export, inline formatting (bold/italic/underline), dual dialog and the title-page fields are transferred bidirectionally as well. The legacy Highland extension .spmd is additionally accepted on import. Fountain is offered in the export menu for screenplay, stage and audio documents; not for novel documents, since Markdown is the better fit there.

WORD, PDF AND RTF EXPORT

Word, LibreOffice, Pages and PDF readers can now recognize chapters and sub-sections, generate a table of contents automatically, and navigate via a bookmarks / outline pane. The heading hierarchy is derived automatically from DramaQueen’s Heading, Heading 1..Heading 9 paragraph types as well as from primary/secondary script headings — anyone already using headings in their manuscript benefits immediately after the update, with no manual configuration required. There is also a unified range selection available for all formats.

  • Word export (.docx): Heading paragraphs (Heading 1 through Heading 9) are now marked with the corresponding outline level, so Word recognizes them as headings. References → Table of Contents → Automatic Table now inserts a complete table of contents, and the Navigation pane shows the manuscript’s chapter structure.
  • RTF export and Word 97-2003 export (.doc): Heading paragraphs 1 through 9 are tagged with the matching Word paragraph styles, so the automatic table of contents and the structural overview work here as well.
  • Page and scene selection for Word, RTF and EPUB export: You can now also export selected pages, steps or scenes when using Word, RTF and EPUB export, as well as include or exclude the title page. Previously, range selection was only available for PDF export.
  • PDF export — Bookmarks: The PDF now contains a hierarchical bookmarks list (outline). Adobe Acrobat, Apple Preview, Skim and all common PDF readers show the list in a side panel — clicking an entry jumps directly to the corresponding chapter.
  • PDF export — Scenes with changes: When change tracking is enabled, a new range option “Scenes with changes” is now available. It exports all scenes containing recorded text changes, complementing the existing “Pages with changes” option, which outputs the individual modified pages.
  • PDF export — Highlight changed pages: Changed pages can now be highlighted with a configurable background colour. As soon as the document contains recorded text changes, the page-range dialog shows a “Highlight changed pages with background colour” checkbox plus a colour button. The highlight works independently of the chosen page range — so you can e.g. export the entire script and have only the changed pages tinted in yellow, or export only the changed pages and tint them. The chosen colour and toggle are preserved across sessions. This makes it straightforward to follow the film-industry convention of coloured revision pages for screenplay drafts (Blue → Pink → Yellow → Green → Goldenrod → Buff) directly from DramaQueen.

REFERENCES & RESEARCH

  • Import folder contents as a file collection: In the References & research section of the element panels, the “Add reference” icon now offers an additional option Folder contents…. Pick a folder and DramaQueen recursively adds every file inside as an individual file reference on the current element.
  • Double-clicking a dq-document reference now opens the referenced document directly in the running DramaQueen instance — analogous to other file formats that open in their respective default application.

IMPROVEMENTS

  • Significantly expanded font selection: The font library bundled with DramaQueen has grown from 11 to 33 font families — roughly three times as many as before. New additions include classic book serifs for novels, contemporary sans-serifs for modern layouts, additional monospace fonts for screenwriting and code, plus two typefaces specifically designed for accessible reading.
  • Guided transition between text levels: The status bar of the Text view now shows a centered arrow icon that expands on hover to “Continue to Outline” or “Continue to Script”. A click opens the dialog to activate the next level. Any open Board panel automatically switches to the matching level.
  • When using the AI functions, the latest model from OpenAI, GPT-5.5, is now available.
  • In the Activate AI / Enter API Key dialog, the former Check button has been turned into a dynamic Connect / Disconnect toggle: After successful validation the button switches to Disconnect and the status reads Connected in green. Clicking Disconnect explicitly deactivates AI for this provider (status: Disconnected, red) — the API key itself stays in the input field, so a single click on Connect reactivates it any time. The disconnected state persists across dialog close/reopen and app restarts until the user actively clicks Connect again.
  • The prompt templates of the ‘Revise with AI’ dialog have been adapted to the capabilities of the new AI models.

BUG FIXES

  • PDF export could crash for documents using certain OpenType fonts (CFF format). Such fonts are now embedded correctly.
  • In the formatting popup (e.g. opened via repeated ENTER on an empty line), choosing “Normal” in NOVEL SCRIPT documents didn’t move the cursor to the next line.
  • Generate annotations — no more duplicate element label: In the document produced by “Generate annotations” the element label appeared twice: once as the heading “Annotations for Scene X” and again on the line below as “Scene X”. The redundant second line is now removed.
  • Season board shows the episodes again as column headings: In Series mode, the labels “Episode 1”, “Episode 2” etc. above the columns of the Season board were no longer displayed — the columns were grouped by episode but unlabeled. Fixed.
  • Fixed a Board crash when switching to certain cards: Very short summaries on a card column of a particular length could trigger an error when the card became visible or was hovered over, causing the application to crash.
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