What's new in WordCraft 0.5.0

WordCraft 0.5.0 came out on 11 October 2026, a day after 0.4.0, with about 130 changes. It added older and password-protected Word files, and made typing behave more like Word.

Files

Word 97–2003 .doc files open. They can’t be saved as .doc.
Password-protected .docx files open and save. WordCraft asks for the password, and File › Info can add or remove one. This covers the encryption Word has used by default since Word 2010.
LaTeX (.tex) files can be opened and saved.
Charts, SmartArt and embedded objects from Word are drawn instead of left out, and kept when you save. WMF and EMF pictures are drawn instead of showing a grey box.
Macro-enabled documents (.docm) keep their macros and signatures when saved, though WordCraft doesn’t run them.
Before New, Open or Close, WordCraft asks whether to save your changes. AutoSave only saves files you’ve saved yourself.

Typing and editing like Word

Lists, AutoFormat and AutoCorrect behave as in Word while you type: * starts a bulleted list and 1. a numbered one.
An equation editor like Word’s, with Word equations opened, edited and saved. Long equations wrap across lines.
Paste Special (formatted text, RTF, HTML or plain text), pasting pictures and screenshots, and a Clipboard pane with the last 24 things you copied.
Column selection with Alt+drag, Advanced Find, a Style Inspector, and dialogs to manage your styles and table styles.
Find and Replace respects tracked changes, and formatting changes are tracked too.
Comments can be edited right in their balloons, and page margins dragged on the ruler.
Zotero. A Zotero tab lets you cite from a running Zotero while you write.
Read Aloud reads the document with speed control and sentence skipping.

Layout and objects

Text boxes and floating pictures, shapes and tables are placed, wrapped, dragged and resized the way Word does it.
Group, rotate and flip objects, and add shadow, glow and soft edges to shapes.
The Draw tab: draw and erase ink with pens, pencils and highlighters, and draw tables with a pen and eraser.
Long footnotes continue onto the next page.
Right-to-left text, including Persian, with right-to-left paragraphs.
The Paragraph dialog gets an Asian Typography tab, and line breaks follow the East Asian punctuation rules.
New dialogs: Columns, Symbol, Field, Tabs, Borders and Shading, Table Properties, Define New Multilevel List and Track Changes Options.

Interface

New interface languages: Spanish, Ukrainian, Brazilian Portuguese, Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin) and Estonian. On Windows, the Chinese interface shows every character instead of boxes.
KeyTips and the mini toolbar, a System theme that follows your light or dark setting, and a dark page mode.
Ctrl+scroll or a pinch zooms the page, zoomed-out pages sit side by side, and touchpad scrolling coasts after a flick.
The font list offers every installed weight, and you can type in the font box to find a font.

Platforms and security

macOS. Documents open from Finder, the Dock and open -a.
Linux. File dialogs no longer freeze the window. A RISC-V build was added.
Windows. Smooth again on older graphics without a DirectX 12 driver, and the installer shows a finish page.
Security. The control port needs a per-window key, a parsing library with a known flaw was updated, and hostile Markdown or HTML files can no longer slow WordCraft down.
Printing. File › Print opens the document in your system’s PDF viewer. The web version prints through the browser.

Updating

Later versions have replaced 0.5.0. Get the latest version unless you need this one in particular.

This summary is ours, written from the list of changes below. We haven’t tested each change ourselves.

All 132 changes

The list comes from the release on GitHub, in the developers’ own words.

Typing parity with Word: lists, AutoFormat and AutoCorrect as you type #204
Desktop: keep the off-screen check until the monitor size is known (#23) #76
DOCX: keep a line break written directly in a paragraph (#96) #101
Page break (Ctrl+Enter) survives ODT/TXT/Markdown/HTML export and no longer glues words (#84) #86
HTML import: tables without borders stay borderless in .docx (#99) #102
Control server closes on non-JSON input; hyperlinks follow only http/https/mailto (#34) #72
Tests: don't read the sample document aloud on every run #75
Import: HTML without </head> keeps its body; RTF pictures inside \shppict are kept #154
M6: TOC follow-ups from #52 review, and a whole TOC heading in LibreOffice #74
Dark page: View › Switch Modes shows the page dark with inverted colours #194
Reject unknown WordCraft CLI options before side effects #166
Issue #126: Web hosting guide no longer lists the unsupported ?cpu renderer flag #177
PDF: draw fonts krilla can't subset as outlines instead of failing #132
Lists: honour a list's own level definitions (w:lvlOverride/w:lvl) #134
Add Brazilian Portuguese (pt-br) interface translation #128
Desktop: send the window title only when it changes, so an idle app stops redrawing (#117) #180
Zoom the page with Ctrl+scroll and pinch (#139) #179
Find/Replace skips text deleted under Track Changes (#89); a failed command keeps undo history #153
Find and Replace: Replace All now respects Track Changes (#88) #92
#147: wire Picture Format UI for inserted pictures #150
DOCX: keep a .docm's macros and signatures on save; right content types for .docm/.dotx/.dotm #172
M2: styles.apply (Apply Styles) command; parity 355/405 #114
Tables: draw style borders when w:tblBorders is empty (#143) #148
Lists: a numbered list after a bulleted list keeps its numbering in ODT, RTF and Markdown (#83) #87
Control port: require a per-window key (split from #54) #124
DOCX: a style's East Asian / complex-script font no longer replaces the Latin font (#93) #111
Issue #174: Footnotes and endnotes from Word files show their number #103
PDF: put the shown text of fields and note numbers in the text layer #133
LaTeX (.tex) import and export (#7) #11
Add Spanish interface language, and make ribbon overflow visible #129
Layout: place floating pictures and shapes the way Word does #136
Tables: Word 2013 table edge, and floating tables (w:tblpPr) #137
Character border (Home > Font > Character Border) #60
Align WordCraft page rasters to physical texels #165
Add Ukrainian (uk) interface translation #91
Layout: picture line heights, body top below the header, table row heights #138
Render: draw on-screen text like macOS, on whole pixels #110
Layout: shrink spaces in justified lines like Word 2013+ (compatibility mode 15) #109
HTML import: pictures referenced by a relative path are embedded (#98) #113
UI: keytips, mini-toolbar, ribbon overflow, macOS typography #43
Desktop and web: ask to save changes before New, Open or Close; AutoSave only files you saved #151
Envelopes, Labels, Finish & Merge: ask to save changes first (depends on #151) #171
Hidden text: no line breaks, hyphens, wrap areas or bookmark text from text that isn't shown (builds on #152) #173
Zotero integration: cite while you write, with a Zotero tab #189
Read Aloud: player with speed control, sentence skipping, skips citations #190
Import Word 97-2003 .doc files (#28) #145
Text boxes and floating objects: editing, drag/resize, wrapping, overflow, footnotes #46
Issue #175: Tables: cell text takes its table style's formatting; derived table styles keep their base #104
Equations: Word (OMML) import, layout and save, plus an equation editor like Word's #191
Track changes: keep other authors' deletions, credit paragraph splits, exact edit snapshots (split from #54) #125
Right-to-left and Persian text support (bidi, shaping, RTL paragraphs, DOCX) #207
macOS: open documents from Finder, the Dock and open -a (#27) #223
Use the browser clock for comment and tracked-change dates on the web #214
Shift+F3 runs Change Case again, not Find Previous (#186) #221
web: print straight to the system print dialog, not just export #209
Headless: name the author of tracked changes, and list review.trackChanges' value param #224
Cross-references point at real bookmarks, and Update Field refreshes them #227
Tests: shapes and pictures can be clicked, resized, dragged and nudged (#142, #82) #228
DOCX: absolutely positioned VML text boxes float instead of pushing the body down (#149) #242
Add a System interface theme that follows the OS light/dark appearance (#115) #249
Reject All removes paragraph breaks inserted with Track Changes on #244
Web: use the browser clock everywhere on wasm (follow-up to #214) #230
On macOS, the window buttons sit centred in the title bar and the File back button no longer crowds them #255
File ▸ Home and File ▸ New are no longer the same page (#141) #254
Zoomed out, pages sit side by side in rows, like Print Layout in Word #251
Windows installer: show a finish page after installing (#198) #257
Font picker: build only the visible rows, cache font fallbacks (#121, #59) #233
Contributors: add dkhlapov #238
Font list offers every installed weight (Light, Medium, SemiBold, Black…), as Word does #239
Chinese interface shows every character instead of boxes on Windows #248
Table Layout › Text Direction turns the cell's text (#226) #245
File dialogs (Open, Save As, Export) no longer freeze the window on Linux (#94) #246
Select Recipients lets you type a list or pick a CSV, instead of a parameters error #247
Mailings: Start Mail Merge and Rules open menus, and Match Fields and Check for Errors show what they found #259
Touchpad scrolling follows your fingers and coasts after a flick; the mouse wheel scrolls further (#122) #252
View tab: Zoom In/Out buttons that step from the shown zoom (#67) #232
View › Gridlines shows the page grid; Table Layout › View Gridlines outlines table cells (#69) #243
Create and modify your own table styles, and they stay in the .docx (#146) #256
Advanced Find: every match, Reading Highlight, search within a selection #234
Paste Special: paste as formatted text, RTF, HTML or unformatted text #235
Style Inspector: pane, styles.inspect query and per-level clearing #236
Column Selection: Alt+drag or Ctrl+Shift+F8 selects a block of text #237
i18n: add Serbian, both scripts (sr, sr-latn) #250
Tests: layout and PDF tests no longer depend on the fonts installed on the machine; PDF text of field results keeps ligature letters #261
File › Info keeps the Title, Author and other properties you type, and browser saves update the revision and modified stamps (#260, #262) #268
Show/Hide ¶: paragraph mark no longer overlaps text in mixed-direction paragraphs #278
Progress docs: re-measure against Word 16.113.4 (alpha, ~60% ready for real work) to the craftrules standard #277
i18n: translate the remaining untranslated interface strings; test the font fallback cache with legacy names #276
Desktop: File › Print opens the document in the system PDF viewer for printing #286
Tables: autofit by content, and floating tables inside cells #291
Pictures: draw WMF and EMF pictures instead of a grey box #293
Tests: the floating header text box test passes on FreeBSD (no font-dependent numbers) #284
Gridlines: the document's own grid spacing, and table gridlines on by default (follow-up to #243) #283
Edit comments right in their balloons, and drag page margins on the ruler #289
Charts and SmartArt: draw them instead of dropping them #292
Table sizing: Height/Width boxes, AutoFit to contents and a Table Properties dialog #287
Clipboard pane: the last 24 things you copied or cut, ready to paste again #264
Table styles: format every region with a live preview, delete your own styles, and see new ones first (#146) #263
Manage your styles: list, preview, delete and show or hide them in the gallery (#266) #270
Paste pictures from the clipboard: screenshots, Copy Image and copied picture files (#45) #272
Paragraph dialog gets an Asian Typography tab; layout honours kinsoku and mid-word Latin wrapping (#269) #271
Group and ungroup pictures, shapes and text boxes (Layout › Arrange › Group) #267
Shape Effects: shadow, glow and soft edges for shapes #280
UI: draw icons instead of symbols the interface fonts lack (✕ ✎ 💬 ➕ 📂 ⋯ ➢) #305
AutoSave switch is greyed out, with the reason, when AutoSave can't save #302
UI: hover and pressed feedback for the drawn icon buttons (follow-up to #305) #314
Re-land #264, #263, #270, #271, #267, #280 (their squash merges came out empty) #323
Open and save password-protected Word documents (#55) #281
Windows: smooth again on older graphics without a DirectX 12 driver #325
System interface theme follows OS changes again, and Dark page no longer darkens the interface #317
Long display equations wrap across lines like Word #329
Tests: equation-wrap test passes without a math font (FreeBSD CI red) #348
Rotate and flip pictures, shapes and text boxes freely #340
Define New Multilevel List and Track Changes Options dialogs #342
Equation gallery: group multi-letter operands in two templates (Yields, n×n Matrix) #347
Import: hostile Markdown and HTML no longer take quadratic time #355
Long footnotes continue onto the next page #357
Charts, SmartArt and OLE objects are no longer lost when you save a .docx #333
Columns, Symbol and Field dialogs #335
Tabs and Borders and Shading dialogs #327
Bump quick-xml to 0.41: the namespace-declaration DoS was reachable (RUSTSEC-2026-0195) #363
Draw tables and split or merge cells with a pen and eraser #308
Draw tab: draw with pen, pencil and highlighter, erase ink, and hide ink #315
i18n: send interface text that skipped translation through the catalog #313
Add Estonian interface translation #294
Type in the font box to find a font #367
Rotated or flipped OLE objects keep their turn when saved to .docx #370
Layout: a drop cap in a font over 1000 pt no longer panics #389
Layout and render: extreme page numbers and wave borders no longer overflow or run away #393
Tables: Delete Columns never leaves a table with no rows #397
Track Changes: formatting revisions (w:rPrChange/w:pPrChange) (#41) #399
Bump version to 0.5.0; add Linux riscv64 release build #394

All changes on GitHub →