Version History

Fixed: Crashes when opening documents

Two separate causes of crashes were found. Both occurred when opening a document, which often made it seem as if the crash was simply happening instantly at startup.

One crash was due to errors in the CSV file. (We thought that was impossible, but one user produced an astonishingly badly-formatted CSV file, and demonstrated that we were wrong.) The other was a bug triggered when an older Multideck document was opened while running on macOS Mojave (and possibly some later pre-Ventura systems). Both kinds of crash have been fixed. In the case of the bad CSV, a proper diagnosis is provided by the Validation system.

Fixed: Untitled columns in CSV

Formerly, CSV columns without titles would be listed in the Content popup as blank lines. Because this is useless, such columns are now silently ignored. (Always give every CSV column a printable title, if it has any content whatsoever.)

Tell me more about CSV files.

Changed, maybe fixed: Empty columns in CSV

In the previous update, we made a change so that trailing, empty columns in your spreadsheet or CSV were not reported as errors or warnings (similar to the way that trailing empty lines are ignored and do not produce blank cards). Since then, we've rethought this issue and found a better way to handle it. Hopefully you will notice no difference.

Tell me more about CSV files.

Fixed: The {.bgc…} markup command works correctly now

It apparently stopped working a while back. Now it's fixed.

Tell me more about Rich Text Markup.

Fixed: Suffixes "-F" and "-B" now correctly used in exported filenames.

Exported files should include the suffix "-F" for card faces, and "-B" for card backs, and now they do.

Tell me more about Exporting.

New: Options for exporting to a custom filename.

You can now specify your own base name for exported files, so that (for example) you could specify "Battle" and your exported files would then have names like "Battle-F-001".

Tell me more about Exporting.

Changed: Confirmation may be required for Exporting.

Formerly, any and all files in your selected export folder could be silently overwritten by newly-exported files. Now by default you will be asked to confirm your export if the target folder is not empty.

There is also a new option in the Export panel to disable confirmation, effectively restoring the old behavior.

Tell me more about Exporting.

Changed: Trailing fully-empty columns in your CSV are now ignored.

Formerly these would produce "unused column" warnings.

Tell me more about CSV files.

Fixed: The Modern Text Layout Notice was too big.

On small screens the bottom of the notice panel was hidden or off-screen; and the Done button did not respond to keyboard presses, leaving some users unable to dismiss the notice. These issues have now been addressed.

Tell me more about Text Layout.

Important Change: Text Layout

Previous versions of Multideck were inconsistent and in some cases buggy when laying out text within text items. For this version, text layout has been sigificantly revamped to be more consistent, and more flexible.

The old layout mechanisms are now referred to as "Legacy Text Layout" (or just "Legacy Layout"). The new system is called "Modern Text Layout" (or just "Modern Layout"). Modern Layout may change the look of your cards. Text may be in somewhat different locations, may be truncated because it no longer completely fits within the item, or may be shrunk (via the shrink-to-fit feature) to a greater degree than before.

You may still use the Legacy Layout mechanisms, to avoid changes to the look of your cards. Select the "Use Legacy Layout" checkbox, found in the upper-right corner of the Effects Toolbars.

Legacy Text Layout may not be available forever. If future changes to text layout turn out to be incompatible with legacy code, or if Apple changes the way text layout is done, we may have to stop supporting Legacy Layout. For now, we have no such plans, but we recommend updating your Multideck documents to use Modern Layout as soon as is convenient for you.

Tell me more about Text Layout.

New: Text Inset Control

You may now choose the width of the text margins that are used for text items. If you don't, Multideck will automatically supply reasonable margins; the new control allows you to override that behavior.

Text Inset control is part of the Modern Text Layout system (see above), and is not available when using Legacy Text Layout.

Tell me more about Text Inset.
Tell me more about Text Layout.

Fixed: Crashes when Editing Table Cell Sizes

Crashes could occur when a table cell size field was empty, even if that only happened momentarily while editing. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about Table items.

Fixed: Scaling in Export and Copy Card Image

When exporting or copying card images, the need for higher resolution requires images to be scaled. The scaling code in previous versions wasn't perfect and could result in items being slightly out of place, or text being inconsistently formatted. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about Export.

Fixed: Margins with Round Corners by Percent

Margins did not respond correctly to changes in corner-rounding when the "percent" option for rounding was used. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about Margins.

Fixed: Layout Updates after Export

Exporting card backs while fronts are displayed in the Layout tab, or vice-versa, could cause inappropriate display in the Layout tab. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about Export.

Fixed: Undo/Redo for Change Item Style

Undo/Redo now works correctly when you change the Style of a card item by using the Style popup menu in the Item Info area.

Tell me more about Styles.

New: Guides and Snapping

You can now add guides to your layouts. A guide is a horizontal or vertical line that is never printed or exported, but that helps you align and arrange the items on your cards. When you drag an item or items near a guide, the edges or center (whichever is nearest the guide) will snap to the guide's location. Dragged edges will also snap to guides when you are resizing items.

Guides can be moved to any position, disabled when you don't need them, and deleted when you're sure you're done with them. They're especially useful for precisely positioning groups of items without disarranging the items within the group.

You can find commands for adding Guides in the Arrange menu.

Tell me more about Guides.

Fixed: Display of Cell W/H for Table Items in Item Info

A small bug in version 3.1 caused the cell width to not be shown in Item Info when you select a Table item. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about Table items.

New: The "Expand Content" button

The Content field in the Item Info area is not very wide. Most of the time this is fine, as you will usually just be referencing the title of a column from your CSV. But sometimes you may want to enter and edit a longer string of text, which can be inconvenient in that short edit field.

The new Expand Content button opens a special panel with a much larger text field. Use it when you want to edit lengthy text for your Content. The button is just to the right of the Content field itself:

Tell me more about specifying content.

New: Copying and Pasting Styles

You can now copy styles from one document and paste them into another, so that both documents can use the same styles. Use the Copy Styles and Paste commands in the Edit menu or the new buttons in the Styles tab to copy and paste styles.

Copied styles do not automatically update, so if you change a "shared" style in one document and want your other documents to get those changes, you'll have to copy and paste again.

Tell me more about copying and pasting styles.

Fixed: Exporting Double-Sided Cards

The "Fronts/Backs/Fronts with One Back" option in the Export panel was not properly enabled, making it impossible to export card backs. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about Export Options.

New: Effects Toolbars

The old Effects Panel (in the Layout tab, on the right) is gone. There were so many controls in that panel that it had become too cumbersome to find the ones you want to use. And with the Effects panel gone, now there is more room in that column for your list of card items, and for the Tags panel.

All of the Effects controls are now in the new Effects Toolbars, at the top of the window. Every control is visible, always, so it's easy to find and use the one you want. There are three Effects toolbars:

• The General toolbar contains controls useful for any kind of card items.
• The Text toolbar contains controls for formatting text in text-based card items.
• The Font toolbar contains controls for choosing fonts and typefaces.

The Font toolbar also means that you won't need the Font Panel much anymore. You can control your fonts right from the toolbar.

Tell me more about the Effects Toolbars.

Changed: Vertical Text Alignment

The old on/off switch for "Center Text Vertically" has been replaced by the new "Vertical Text Alignment" controls, available in both the Text Effects toolbar and the Styles Tab. Vertical Text Alignment allows you to choose from Top, Middle, or Bottom for vertical placement of text within text items.

Your documents will be silently updated to use the new controls.

Tell me more about vertical text alignment.

New: "Snugging" to fit text item size to its content

The new "Snug Vertical" and "Snug Horizontal" options (available in both the Text Effects toolbar and the Styles tab) allow you to specify that text items will shrink as needed to eliminate unused space. That is, a large text item that contains only a small amount of text will automatically reduce its size so that its text content fits without any unused space. (Note that this doesn't matter for items that have no visible margins or background color.)

This feature is in response to users who requested that items be able to increase in size to accommodate their content. But by making it a size reduction, we ensure that no item will ever be larger than the size you specify for it, so you don't have to worry about items growing too large and accidentally overlapping other items.

Tell me more about Snug Vertical and Snug Horizontal.

New: Proportional Resizing by Dragging

Previously, when dragging to resize an item, you could choose between just dragging the one side, or having the opposite side move symmetrically (so that the center of the item remains unchanged).

Now there is a third option: to drag any side to resize the item proportionally. The item's center remains unchanged, and its width and height change as you drag, retaining its original aspect ratio.

Tell me more about placing and sizing items.
Tell me more about the Card Layout Toolbar.

New: Copy Count for No CSV option

The No CSV option in the Deck tab allows you to create output that doesn't need a CSV file for input: that is, where all content can be specified literally right in the Multideck document. This is useful for things like player aids, player mats, side boards, and even main boards, where you don't actually need a deck of cards that differ from each other.

But you may still want a deck rather than a single card. The new "Copies" field in the Deck tab is enabled when you select the No CSV option for a template, and you can enter the number of copies you'd like printed for your deck. For example, if you make a player-aid card for a game that allows up to five players, you'd enter "5" to make 5 copies of the player aid in a single print run.

Tell me more about working with templates.

Fixed: No need to save document after Export

In previous versions, exporting your deck has made the document need to be saved, even if you had made no changes to your deck. This has been fixed.

Fixed: Item Rotation menu didn't work

Use of the Rotation menu in the Effects panel was broken in v2.6.2. This release fixes that problem.

Tell me more about rotating items on cards.

Fixed: Editing text in the Styles Tab

Editing of Style names, and names and values of Content Attributes, was broken in v2.6.2. This release fixes that problem.

Changed: Locale now honored for decimal fractions

In various places in Multideck's user interface, one can edit numbers that can be decimal fractions, including font size, card item location and size, card spacing preferences, and so on. Previous versions did not honor the user's locale when displaying decimal fractions, and always used a period for the decimal point. Now that preference is honored.

This means that if your locale uses the 12 345,67 format for decimal fractions, you will have to type a comma instead of a period when entering a number with a decimal point.

Fixed: Fontsize in Styles

Users in most non-English-language locales (and a few English-language ones) would see a specified fontsize, which had been set in their Styles, revert to zero whenever the document is re-opened. This has been fixed. The bug would appear in any locale using the 12 345,67 format for decimal fractions instead of the 12,345.67 format.

Fixed: "Reload CSV" with "No CSV" option

In the previous version, we introduced the "No CSV" option, allowing Multideck documents with all-literal content to work without specifying a CSV file.

In such documents, you may still occasionally want to "Reload CSV" because this also reloads all images, so you can update your cards after adding or changing images. This was causing errors; now it's fixed and works properly.

Fixed: Image folders outside the document folder

We find it most convenient to keep our card images in a sub-folder in the same parent folder as the Multideck document itself. While that was never intended to be a requirement, we found that external image folder paths were not correctly saved in the Multideck document, and had to be re-selected every time the document was opened. This has been fixed.

Fixed: Canceling editing in the Styles tab

Multideck will now behave properly if you press the ESCAPE key while editing a text field in the Styles tab. When you do, editing will end and the original value of the text field will be restored.

Fixed: Use of {&comma} incorrectly flagged as error

In text tables, literal commas must be written using {&comma} to avoid having them interpreted as element separators. Although this did work, it was also incorrectly flagged as a "missing image" error. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about specifying content in Image Tables.

New: "No CSV File" option for templates

Sometimes you may want to use Multideck for things like small boards, player mats, or player aids, things you can accomplish with literal text and images and without needing a CSV file.

Multideck used to require a CSV file in all cases, even if your card items never use it. Now you can select the "No CSV File" option in the Deck tab to specify that the template does not need a CSV file.

New: Move to corners in the Arrange menu

The Arrange menu (and the pop-up version when you right- or control-click a card item) now includes options for moving the selected item to a corner of the Cut or Safe Margin of the card as a single menu item. For example, selecting Move to Safe Margin > Top Left is equivalent to first selecting Move to Safe Margin > Top and then selecting Move to Safe Margin > Left.

Fixed: Bugs in Undo/Redo

A number of bugs involving the Undo and Redo commands have been fixed.

Fixed: Crashes due to missing fonts

If you use a font in a Multideck document, then later either remove the font from your system or move the document to a system that lacks that font, earlier versions of Multideck would crash when that document was opened and Multideck needed to use the font.

In this release those crashes are fixed. Helvetica will be substituted for the missing fonts for display purposes. The document itself will not be changed and will work as expected if the missing fonts are restored.

Validation will issue a warning about each missing font.

New: 'Move to...' in the Arrange menu

The Arrange menu has been re-arranged for compactness, with more groups of related items now in submenus. What's new are the "Move to" submenus that will align selected items precisely to "safe" or "cut" margins of the card.

Tell me more about placing items, and the Arrange menu.

New: Item popup 'Arrange' menu

To make accessing the (now rather large) Arrange menu easier, you can right- or control-click on items in the Card Layout panel to pop up the Arrange menu under the mouse.

New: Maximum cards per printed page

Multideck will now rotate your cards 90° when laying them out on printed pages, if by doing so it can fit more cards per page.

Tell me more about printing.

New: Corner Radius as points or percent

In previous versions, the corner radius of items was specified solely in points. This meant that the corner radius would not change when the item was resized.

The Effects and Style panels now offer a switch where you can choose points or percentage as the units for corner radius. If you choose percentage, the corner radii will scale appropriately when you resize the item.

Percentage also makes it easier to create circle or oval-shaped items: just select percentage for the units, and set the amounts to 50.

Tell me more about Setting an Item's Background.

Fixed: Editing Corner Radius in the Styles tab

The text fields for entering values for Corner Radius in the Styles tab were ridiculously small and therefore nearly impossible to edit. This is now fixed.

Tell me more about Styles.

Fixed: Card Sets reload correctly when CSV is reloaded

The CardSets popup menus in the Filter tab now correctly show the current CardSets after the CSV is reloaded.

Tell me more about Filtering.

Fixed: Behavior for invalid image paths

One user recently discovered that Multideck will behave very badly (issuing repeated requests to authorize access) if a lone slash character appears as the name of an image file in the CSV file. This behavior is now fixed, and the app will simply report "image not found" as usual in these cases.

New: Export Card Image command

The new Export Card Image command creates a single PNG file at 300dpi for the card you are currently viewing in the Layout tab. This is the same image you would get from the Copy Card Image command, but instead of putting the image on the clipboard, the new command prompts you to save the image to a file.

This is a convenient way to create sample card images for use in rulebooks, player aids, sell sheets, and advertising copy.

Tell me more about exporting single card images.
Tell me more about exporting in general.

Fixed: Default Scale in Export

Sometimes, in a document that has never been exported, the default value of the Scale field will be zero. This makes no sense, and disables the Export button without explanation, which is confusing.

Now the default value for Scale is always 1.0, avoiding that problem.

Tell me more about Exporting Card Images.

New: Filter column ordering and sorting

The Filter panel now allows you to select which columns are visible, and how you want the columns to be sorted. To use these features, open the Filter panel and control-click or right-click a column title.

Tell me more about Filtering.

New: Selections get fancy

Most cards, perhaps, do not have complex layouts. But some do; and Multideck can also be used to create larger things such as player mats and game boards. When there are many items in a layout, and especially if they overlap, selecting items can get difficult.

This version of Multideck now offers "fancy selections". You can select items by dragging out a rectangle, or by using the new Select menu, and by using the new Tags feature to select and deselect items that share a tag.

Tell me more about Selections.

New: Item Tags

Item tags are a new organizational tool. You can create "item tags" (basically, words or short phrases) and assign them to card items. Items that share a tag are effectively grouped, and can be selected, deselected, hidden, and revealed by their tag. Special tags allow always hiding items when printing and/or when exporting.

Tell me more about Item Tags.

Changed: Hide When Printing

Previous versions of Multideck had a checkbox in the Layout Options panel named Hide When Printing. That checkbox is now gone. Instead, use the new special Item Tag "Do not print this item" which has the same effect. Your existing projects will be silently updated to assign that tag to all items that used the old Hide When Printing feature.

Tell me more about Hiding by Tag.

New: Image Fit Options

The new Image section of the Effects panel offers the Image Fit popup menu. For all varieties of Image items (Image, Image with Markup, and Image Table) you can now specify how your images will be sized within the bounds of the item. It is no longer necessary for an image to have the same aspect ratio as the item to avoid stretching the image!

Tell me more about Image Fit options.

New: Line Height effect now available in Styles

The Line Height feature introduced in the previous release is now also included by the Styles feature.

Tell me more about Line Height.
Tell me more about Styles.

Fixed: Arrow-key "nudge" in rotated Card Layout

When you have used the Rotate Card Layout View button in the Card Layout Toolbar to rotate the card layout, using the arrow keys to move selected items would move them in unexpected directions. Now the arrow keys work intuitively to move the selection in the direction you'd expect.

Tell me more about the Card Layout Toolbar.

New: Line Height Controls

The Text section of the Effects panel now includes controls for controlling line height: that is, the total amount of vertical space occupied by each line of text in a multi-line field.

You should not normally need to use these controls, and by default they are turned off. But you may use them when you want to rigidly enforce a consistent or non-default line height.

Tell me more about Line Height.

New: Export Settings are saved

When you use the Export feature, your selected settings are now saved with your document and will be pre-selected the next time you use the feature. This is handy, for example, when you are frequently exporting and re-exporting in sheets during development: you won't have to keep re-entering the Sheet Size values.

Tell me more about Export Options.

Fixed: CSV in Mac OS Roman and other encodings

CSV not encoded in UTF-8 could cause failure to successfully read the CSV file. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about selecting the CSV file text encoding choices.

New: Text Table item type

A new item type lays out rich text strings in tables, with optional gridlines.

This feature is similar to the Image Matrix feature which does the same thing for images. (And for consistency, Image Matrix items are now called "Image Tables".)

Tell me more about Using Text and Image Tables.

New: {&comma} Markup Command creates literal commas

Use {&comma} in the content of a Text Table when you want a literal comma in your displayed text. This is necessary because actual commas would be interpreted as separator characters between strings in the Text Table content.

Tell me more about Using Text and Image Tables.

Changed: #{image} is now #image:

In previous versions, the syntax #{image}filename was used to indicate "constant" image content (that is, an image that would be the same on every card, and not read from the CSV). To make the overall syntax more consistent, you should now use #image:filename instead.

You should not need to make any changes to your projects because of this. Multideck will recognize the old syntax and silently update your projects to use the new syntax.

Tell me more about Special Column Names and Values.

Fixed: Assorted bugs

- A problem that could cause crashes or incorrect validation failures has been fixed.
- Multideck will no longer crash if you are previewing a card and the CSV file changes so that the previewed card no longer exists.
- Missing fonts will no longer cause a crash.
- Invalid markup {.} will no longer cause a crash.

Tell me more about CSV files.

New: Auto Reload feature now fully supported

For some time Multideck has offered the "Auto Reload" feature, which makes Multideck automatically reload CSV files when they have been changed. When original introduced, this feature came with a warning that it was experimental and "use at your own risk".

This feature has now been re-written and fully tested, and is no longer considered experimental. You may use it with confidence.

New: Card Layout Toolbar

A new vertical toolbar now appears at the left of the Card Layout panel. The buttons in this toolbar are conveniences to streamline your work. These new buttons and their effects are described below.

New: Validation is now automatic

Validation now happens automatically in the background as you work. The toolbar Validate button still shows a full list of errors and warnings found by validation.

In addition, any card items that produce errors or warnings now display a badge (a small icon). Hovering the mouse pointer over the badge will display a tooltip that describes the problem. Badges are not displayed in Preview mode.

Badge display is optional. If you find it distracting, you can turn it off by clicking the Validation Display button in the Card Layout Toolbar, which will cycle through three states: show all badges, show only error badges, and show no badges

Tell me more about Validation.

New: Movement Lock feature

Select the Movement Lock button in the Card Layout toolbar to turn the Movement Lock feature on and off.

The Movement Lock feature allows you to turn off the ability to drag or resize card items using the mouse. Unlike the Lock feature for individual card items, it applies to all items in the template, and allows all (unlocked) items to be selected with the mouse.

Use this feature to avoid accidentally nudging items out of place when you want to select them and make changes, but don't want to accidentally move or resize them with an imprecise mouse motion.

New: Drag-to-Resize Behavior button

Select the Drag-to-Resize Behavior button in the Card Layout toolbar to toggle between "Don't change the item's center" and "Don't change the item's far edge" when you are dragging an item's edge to change its size.

This button has the same effect as using the "Item Drag-to-Resize Behavior" selector in the Preferences window. Having it also in the Card Layout Toolbar allows you to change resize behavior easily while you work.

New: Rotate Card Layout View button

Select the Rotate View button in the Card Layout toolbar to rotate the Card Layout View contents by 90°. (Four successive clicks will return it to its original orientation.)

This button simply rotates the entire card view. If your cards feature items that are rotated, you may find them difficult to edit because of that rotation. Use the Rotate View button to rotate the entire card in the window, so that the items you want to work with are conveniently right-side up. (Rotating the view does not affect printing or exporting in any way.)

New: Clear Filter button

Select the Clear Filter button to remove all filtering.

This button has the same effect as the Include All button in the Filter sheet. It cancels any filter currently in effect.

Tell me more about Filtering.

Changed: 'Digital Gaming' option in Export now uses 300 dpi

In the Export sheet, the convenience button Digital Gaming is a shortcut for a useful combination of options when you are creating art assets for online gaming. Previously, this button selected 72 dpi for the output resolution. Now it selects 300 dpi. (Author's note: It's good to eat your own dog food, as they say. We discovered that 300dpi was preferable by using Multideck to export artwork for use with Tabletop Simulator.)

Fixed: Assorted bugs

The status and options shown in Preview now update consistently when there is a change in the Filter.
Tell me more about Filtering.

The Card Layout display and the Front/Back selector now update consistently when you select a different template.
Tell me more about making double-sided decks.

Sometimes selecting 'No Style' from the Style popup in the Item Info area would behave as if there were a style named 'No Style', instead of removing any style from the item as it is supposed to. This is now fixed.
Tell me more about Styles.
Tell me more about the Style popup menu.

New: Validation warnings for text alignment issues

It has always been true that multi-line rich text items may not show correct text alignment. This is due to an Apple bug (meaning, sadly, that we can't fix it) and it happens when an inline image in rich text immediately follows a forced line break (that is, a {.n} markup command or a literal newline character).

If the item in which this content appears uses centered or align-right text alignment, the lines that begin with images will incorrectly be left-aligned.

Multideck will now issue validation warnings if it looks as though your content may trigger this bug. You may ignore these warnings if you have reviewed your deck and you are happy with it. You can turn off these warnings by unselecting the Warn about text alignment issues in Validation Options.

If the bug is affecting your card layouts, there are workarounds you can use to prevent or minimize the effect.

Tell me more about how to deal with text alignment problems.
Tell me more about Validation.

Fixed: Slashes and colons in document and template names

The Export function uses the Multideck document filename and template filenames as part of the names of exported files. But the Mac filesystem has trouble with certain characters in filenames. In previous versions of Multideck, names containing slash and/or colon characters could cause Export to fail.

Multideck now correctly handles document filenames and template names in a manner compatible with the filesystem's requirements. The new rule is:

Colon characters ':' are no longer allowed in template names, because they are not allowed in filenames.

If you attempt to give a template a name containing colons, the colons will be changed to slashes (and you will be notified). If you open an existing Multideck document whose template names contain colons, they will be changed to slashes (and you will be notified).

Tell me more about Working with Templates.

Fixed: Sometimes inline images do not appear in rich text items.

This is due to an Apple bug. Multideck relies on Apple's line-layout module to format text in text items. This includes the insertion of inline images. In some circumstances, an inline image may not be drawn in the text, leaving only a blank space where the image should be.

Because this is an Apple bug, Multideck can't actually fix it; and we cannot guarantee that it won't happen again in the right circumstances. A similar problem was found several releases back, and we included a workaround that, at that time, seemed to prevent the bug from occurring. Now that problem has resurfaced in a different form.

Once again, we have found and implemented a way to work around the problem. At least for the time being, inline images seem to show up correctly in rich text. We can only hope that this problem will not resurface again in future.

(We also note an oddity: the images seem only to go missing in the Layout tab when using the preview feature. The images seem to be correctly present in printed output and in exported card images. Speaking as a Mac developer with over 30 years' experience, that's just weird.)

Tell me more about images in Rich Text Markup.

New: Movement Lock button in Layout

The Movement Lock button, at the upper-left of the Card Layout panel, prevents all items in the template from being moved or resized by dragging. Turn it on when you don't want to accidentally jiggle any items out of place. When it's on, you can still select items and make changes (including size and location) by using the controls in Item Info and Effects, but not by dragging.

Tell me more about editing item in Card Layout.

New: Card Sets in the Filters tab

You can now create named subsets of your card deck, and easily print out only the members of whichever set or sets you like, or exclude any set or sets from printing, using the Filters feature.

Tell me more about using Filters.

New: Item background color in rich text markup

You may now specify an item's background color in rich text markup. Use {.bgc:color-spec} in rich text content to set the background color. Note that this markup will affect the entire item; it does not matter where in the content the markup appears.

Tell me more about color in Rich Text Markup.

New ways to specify colors

Color components may now be specified using a range of 0 - 255 instead of 0 - 100, if you prefer that style. In addition, Multideck now supports the HTML (Web) style of specifying color (for example, #ff00ff is purple.)

Tell me more about color in Rich Text Markup.

New: Suppressing warnings for deliberately unused columns

If you give a spreadsheet column a named that begins with hashtag-dash (for example, #-Notes) then Validation will not produce an "Unused Column" warning for that column.

Tell me more about validating my project.

Changed: All cutting guides are now hairline-width

This should have been changed many revisions ago, but the change somehow got lost. All cutting guides are now printed at hairline-width instead of the previous 1/72" width.

Tell me more about cutting guides and Print Options.

Fixed: New CSV parser allows literal newlines in field content

In previous versions, including literal newline characters (whether LF, CR, or CRLF) in field content was problematic. Depending on the way in which newlines were included, Multideck might or might not be able to correctly read in the CSV content. In addition, even if the content was successfully read, Multideck might not correctly format rich text items containing literal newlines.

In this release, literal newlines are acceptable and correctly handled, if the field content is quoted as CSV syntax requires. Note that spreadsheet apps that export to CSV will automatically add the required quoting.

Tell me more about CSV files.

Fixed: Inline images could have wrong size in multiline text.

A rich text item whose content included both literal newline characters and inline images would display the images at overly-large sizes. This is now fixed.

Tell me more about Rich Text Markup.

Fixed: Color item misbehavior in Styles tab

Clicking a color well control (such as Text Color or Background Color) in the Styles tab and selecting a new color could result in other color items also being affected.

Tell me more about Styles.

Fixed: Crash caused by incorrect Rich Text Markup

A trailing "{" in the content of a rich text field could cause Multideck to crash. Now it does not crash, and the content is flagged as a warning in Validate.

Tell me more about Rich Text Markup.

Fixed: Exporting at high resolution

A bug in the Export function caused problems when any resolution higher than 72 dpi was selected. This has been fixed. In addition, card outlines and the 1/8" bleed option in exported card images now scale correctly and have been generally improved.

Tell me more about Export Options.

Fixed: Exporting with Filter

The Export function now works correctly with the Filters function, exporting all and only those cards that pass the current Filter.

Tell me more about Filtering.
Tell me more about Exporting.
Tell me more about exporting two-sided cards.

Changed: Image With Markup syntax

Image With Markup items allow the use of certain markup commands to dynamically assemble an image filename at runtime. This feature was not well thought out when it was first introduced (sorry about that!), so in this release it has been revamped. It is now both more flexible and more congruent with Rich Text markup.

Certain constructs that were previously allowed in Image With Markup content are now deprecated. This means that they will continue to work for a few more releases, but they will also produce a warning in the Validation output. Eventually they will be illegal. Please validate your projects, look for those warnings, and update your projects to the new syntax so they will still work when the old syntax is no longer supported.

If your projects do not use Image With Markup items, you don't have to worry about any of this.

Tell me more about Image With Markup items.

Fixed: Editing numeric values in Styles tab

In the previous release, typing a digit into a numeric input field in the Styles tab would immediately end editing, making it difficult to enter multiple-digit values. This has been fixed.

Changed: Behavior of "in/mm" setting

This setting, which controls whether measurements are shown in inches or millimeters, is now a global preference setting. Controls to change this setting appear in various different places for convenience, but all such controls now affect the same global value, in all your documents.

Note that all measurements in the Item Info panel are in points, at 72 points-per-inch. These values are not affected by the in/mm setting.

New: "Swap width and height" cardsize button

A new button in the Deck tab allows you to swap the width and height values for the card size, so that you can easily switch between portrait and landscape orientation.

Changed: Placeholder value in new Style Content Attributes

When you add a new Content Attribute to a Style, the user interface now displays a placeholder value until you enter a real value. This is because it is sometimes difficult to begin editing the value when the field is totally empty.

Fixed: False reporting of columns used only by reference as "Unused"

Previously, if your project used a CSV column only by reference (i.e. in markup of the form {..columnName}) the column would incorrectly be reported as unused in the Validation report. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about Embedded References in rich text markup.

Fixed: Single-sided documents printed as double-sided

Occasionally a document marked as "single-sided" might produce output as if it were marked as "double-sided". This could happen if the document had been double-sided in the past, then changed back to single-sided. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about double-sided printing.

Fixed: Unexpected change in font after Undo

Previously, if you change an item's font family and then undo the change, then change (for example) the item from plain to italic, you might find that the font family had also changed again. This has been fixed.

Fixed: Handling of blank lines in CSV files

Blank lines in CSV files (lines with no text, not even spaces or tabs) are now silently ignored instead of producing an "invalid CSV file" error. This was a common problem with hand-edited CSV files, if there happened to be a carriage-return or linefeed character at the end of the last valid line of the file: an easy mistake to make and one which was not reported in a sensible, understandable fashion. This is no longer a problem.

Fixed: Help page for Rotors

A sentence in the Help page for Rotors incorrectly specified #count instead of #repeat. This has been fixed.

Tell me more about Rotors.

New: Typefaces in Styles

In the Styles tab, the attribute formerly called "Font" is now called "Font Family", and beneath it is a new attribute: "Font Typeface".

Font Typeface lets you select a specific variant of a font family. For example, if you've selected the font Optima, instead of turning on the Bold attribute you can now directly select Bold or Extra Bold from the Font Typeface popup menu. Previously, you could not use Extra Bold as part of a Style (although in the Layout tab you could assign it as the font for an item, by using the system standard Font Panel).

Use of the Font Typeface attribute is optional, like all attributes in a Style. You can still just use Font Family and Italic and Bold as before.

Tell me more about fonts and typefaces in the Style tab.

Changed: Unapplied Attributes in Styles

Previously, if you used an attribute in the Styles tab but later de-selected its "Apply" checkbox, its value would return to the default setting. Now each attribute retains its value even when no longer applied.

To make it a bit easier to recognize which attributes are applied, in addition to the checkbox each applied attribute's name is displayed in boldface.

New: Validation for Rich Text Typeface Markup

Validation now also checks your rich text markup, and warns you when a markup command to change the typeface cannot be honored. For example, some fonts cannot be made italic; if a rich text item uses such a font and also contains the {.i} markup command, validation will issue a warning that the markup cannot successfully be applied.

Tell me more about Validating My Project.

Fixed: Image Size in Rich Text

Images embedded in Rich Text items did not scale correctly in exported images nor in the output of the Copy Card Image command.

Tell me more about embedded images in Rich Text Markup.

Fixed: Relative Image Size Field in Effects

The editable field for "Relative image size" in the Effects panel got lost offscreen somewhere. It's now back where it belongs.

Tell me more about Relative Image Size.

Fixed: Empty Image Matrix Grid

If a grid is specified for an Image Matrix item, the grid is now drawn even when the item's content is empty. This allows using the feature to create a track or grid that does not display any content.

Tell me more about gridlines for Image Matrix items.

Fixed: Outlined Sample Text in the Styles Tab

Formerly, the "Sample Text" display in the Styles tab did not display outlined fonts when those attributes were used. Now it does—but note that while it is legal to apply either Text Outline Color or Text Outline Width singly, the Sample Text cannot display the effect unless both are applied.

Tell me more about Outline Fonts.

New: Gridlines for Image Matrix items

Image matrix items let you lay out a series of images in a neat rectangular array. Now you can also specify gridlines around the images, to frame them nicely. You may specify no gridlines, or gridlines of any thickness and color.

This feature also makes it easy to create tracks, such as score tracks and tracks where your players can move a token to show their possessions or progress. (This might not seem useful on playing cards, but remember you can specify an arbitrarily large card size, and use Multideck to create your player mats and even your playing board!)

Also, a light-grey grid is now always shown when not in Preview mode. This makes it easy to drag out the size of an Image Matrix item and see that it has the desired number of rows and columns. You can drag it to be a big larger than necessary, and then use the Trim to Fit button in the Item Info area to automatically make its borders snug around its content.

Tell me more about Image Matrix items.

Changed: Effects panel is now in the document window

In previous releases, the Effects panel was a separate window opened via a "Show Effects" button. But this was confusing when multiple document windows were open, because each document had its own Effects window and yet there was no way to tell which Effects window went with each document.

The Effects panel is now in the document window, at the right side underneath the Item List panel. Both the Item List panel and the Effects panel now have vertical scrollbars when necessary. You can drag the divider between them up or down to change how tall they are.

The various categories in the Effects panel (Text, Background Color, etc.) now have disclosure buttons in their headers, allowing you to hide or reveal each section independently. Hiding an unused category will reduce or eliminate the amount of scrolling you may have to do to find the controls you do want to use.

Tell me more about the Effects panel.

Changed: The Item Info area

We have rearranged the controls in the Item Info area to improve ergonomics and workflow.

The most important of these changes is that the "Add New Item" button is now in Item Info, at the upper left of the panel. Below it is Item Type, so after clicking "Add New Item" you can easily proceed to selecting the type, and then move on to Title, Content, and the rest of Item Info.

New: Autotitle button in Item Info

The new Autotitle button creates an appropriate and unique title for a card item, derived from the item's content. It's a one-click way to sensibly title your card items. It looks like this: ↖️ Look for it next to the Content control in Item Info.

Tell me more about the Autotitle button.

Changed: Auto Reload setting is persistent

The setting of the Auto Reload button in the Layout tab is now remembered, so you no longer have to turn it on every time you re-open a document that had it on before.

The Auto Reload feature is still beta software. Use with care. You will still see a warning the first time you turn on Auto Reload by clicking the checkbox in each session.

New: Validation for Styles by Reference

A "style by reference" is a style specified by obtaining the style name from a column in the CSV file. Validation now checks these references and reports cases where the referenced style does not exist.

Tell me more about Styles by Reference.

New: Card Index markup honored by Image with Markup items

Items that have the type "Image with Markup" can utilize some limited style markup commands in their content, in order to construct an image filename dynamically. The markup command {.#} is now also supported, allowing a card's serial number to be used when constructing an image filename.

Tell me more about Embedded Serial Numbers in Rich Text Markup.
Tell me more about the Image with Markup item type.

Fixed: Crashes when opening an incorrect Multideck document

Previous versions could crash or misbehave badly when attempting to open a document whose CSV file is no longer available. This release is more robust.

Fixed: Removing styles from a multiple selection

Removing the style from multiple selected items now correctly affects all selected items. The layout view is correctly updated, and the action is undo-able.

Fixed: Checkmarks in the Format menu

Checkmarks on text alignment menu commands in the Format > Text menu are now properly updated for the current selection.

Fixed: {.ts:black} is no longer an error

The markup command {.ts:black} worked in previous versions, but was flagged as an error anyway.

Fixed: Assorted Validation issues

Several problems with the Validate command have been fixed. These problems included failing to detect and report some unused columns, warnings that were detected but never displayed to the user, and some errors and warnings that continued to be reported even after being properly fixed by the user. In addition, a rare problem that could result in the Done button being ignored (meaning that the Validation report sheet could not be dismissed) has also been fixed.

Tell me more about Validating My Project.

Fixed: Scaling in Export and Copy Card Image

The absolute font size markup command (example: {.fs:16}) now scales correctly to higher resolutions when exporting or copying card images.

Similarly, the Shrink to Fit and Margin Width options now also scale correctly to higher resolutions when exporting or copying card images.

Fixed: Empty template names no longer allowed

Multideck will no longer permit editing a template name so that it contains no visible, printable characters. Such names can make the template list look as though it contains fewer templates than are actually there.

Fixed: Align Center undo/redo menu command titles

The Align Horizontal Centers and Align Vertical Centers commands created undo and redo menu commands that were incorrectly titled.

Fixed: Crashes and other annoyances caused by weird image filenames

In some extreme circumstances, Multideck could crash or could show dozens of permission dialogs one after another if image filenames were incorrectly specified.

New: Outlined Fonts

You can overlay text onto an image by placing a text field overlapping, and on top of, an image field. But dark text will not display well when placed over a dark image, nor light text over a light image.

Using an outlined font can be a good solution for this problem. You can use black for the basic text color, but specify that the text is to be outlined in white. Then the white outline shows well against dark backgrounds, while the black text shows well against light backgrounds.

Outline font controls are found in the Effects panel, and in the Styles user interface.

Tell me more about outlined fonts.

Fixed: Changing font size of Plain Text items

This was broken in a recent release, but is now working again.

(This release followed versions 1.7 and 1.7.1 very quickly, so if you are upgrading from any earlier version, be sure to scroll down to find the more substantial changes that appeared in v1.7.)

New: Auto-reload CSV

There is now a checkbox by the Reload CSV button in the Layout tab, labeled "Auto-reload CSV". Selecting this option will cause Multideck to watch your CSV file for changes, and to reload the CSV automatically when that happens. This means you will see your changes in Preview mode without having to press the Reload CSV button every time you change your CSV file.

This is an experimental feature. It relies upon Apple beta features in AppKit. This means that we cannot guarantee that it will work correctly, because there may still be bugs in Apple's software. It also means that even if it is working correctly now, Apple may make changes in the future that will prevent it from working until we have updated Multideck to match.

Because this feature is experimental, there is no preference setting that will automatically turn it on when you start up Multideck. You must always select the option explicitly if you want it on, and the first time you do so in each Multideck session, you will see a warning to remind you of all this. In future releases, we may make a permanent setting for this; but for now, we are opting for caution and safety.

We strongly recommend backing up your data regularly. Of course this is always a good idea, but it is even more important when using beta-level software. In the event of something going horribly wrong, having a recent backup will help you recover and avoid losing all your work.

Tell me more about Preview mode and reloading CSV files.

Changed: Add New Item

Newly-added items used to appear at the lower-left of the card area. This felt inconvenient, since that's as far as possible from both the Add New Item button, and from everywhere else on the card that you might want to place the item. So now, new items appear in the center of the card.

Tell me more about adding items to layouts.

Fixed: Inline images and "Shrink Text to Fit"

A recent change to the "Shrink Text to Fit" feature caused inline images to not shrink to match the text size. This is now fixed and working correctly.

Tell me more about the Shrink Text to Fit option.

Fixed: Invisible items when no valid CSV is selected

Card items created while no valid CSV file was selected were not drawn in the Layout display. This is now fixed.

Tell me more about adding items to layouts.

Fixed: Undo Add New Item

It didn't work. Now it does.

Tell me more about adding items to layouts.

(This release followed version 1.7 very quickly, so if you are upgrading from any earlier version, be sure to scroll down to find the more substantial changes that appeared in v1.7.)

Fixed: Using "Shrink Text to Fit" in Styles

In prior versions, setting the Shrink Text to Fit option to "On" in a Style (instead of, or overriding, that option in the Effects panel) would cause the app to freeze. This is now fixed and working correctly.

As part of this fix, the Shrink Text to Fit option will not reduce the font size below 3.0. Text at this size is nearly illegible anyway, and this prevents the freeze in extreme cases where fitting the text would require absurdly small font sizes.

Tell me more about the Shrink Text to Fit option.

Multiple Selections

After selecting a card item, you can now shift-click to add other card items to your selection. All features will now affect all selected items.

Tell me more about making card item selections.

Align and Space Functions

New functions allow aligning the edges or centers of multiple selected items, and evenly spacing their locations horizontally and vertically.

These functions are available in the new Align/Space panel in the Layout tab, and also from the Arrange menu.

Tell me more about item placement.

Margin and Margin Color

Items can now have colored (or uncolored) borders.

The Effects Panel and the Styles tab now include controls for setting an item's Margin Width and Margin Color. By default, these options are not used. Setting a margin width insets the item's content within the item's rectangle, leaving more space between the content and the edges of the item.

If you specify a margin color along with a non-zero margin width, the margin will display that color: this allows you to put a colored border around the item's content that is different from the item's background color.

Tell me more about using margins.

Default Image Size in Image Matrix

New controls in the Image Matrix portion of the Item Info panel allow specifying a default image size that is different from the cell size. (It is still possible to specify the image size in the CVS content, overriding this new setting.)

Tell me more about image sizes in image matrices.

Single Undo for Multiple Arrow-Key Presses

Previously, if you used the arrow keys to nudge a card item's location, each individual keypress became a new Undo operation. To undo ten such keypresses, you had to Undo ten times. Now, each unbroken sequence of nudge keypresses becomes a single Undo operation.

Tell me more about item placement.

Improved Vertical Placement of Images in Rich Text

Small improvements have been made to the vertical placement of images in Rich Text items.

Tell me more about images in Rich Text items.

Space Characters Ignored in Image Matrix Content

Image matrix content (which specifies a list of images) lists the image filenames separated by commas. You may now use space characters before and/or after each image name, to improve readability; these space characters will be ignored. (Space characters occuring within filenames are not ignored.)

Tell me more about specifying image matrix content.

New Special Content: #empty

Selecting #empty from the Content popup specifies that an item has no content. This is useful for creating colored shapes without text or images.

Tell me more about special column names.
Show me how to draw lines, rectangles, and ovals.

Fixed: Image matrix images now print at correct scale when exporting and using Copy Card Image

Previous versions did not always scale the images in an Image Matrix item correctly, even if they looked right in Preview mode and in printed output.

Fixed: Cards too big for the printed page no longer cause a crash

You can use Multideck for printed material larger than cards, such as player mats or even a full gameboard. But in previous versions, attempting to print a "card" that is larger than your paper size would cause a crash.

This is now fixed, and no crash will occur. However, you are not warned if yours "cards" are too large for the printer, and you will see that only what fits gets printed.

Fixed: Printing with a filter that excludes all cards in a template.

Multideck will issue a warning when you print, if any template in your document contains no cards. Formerly, this warning was also sometimes issued for templates that did contain cards, but all of whose cards were filtered out. This preventing printing, and could even cause crashes.

There is no longer any warning given if a template contains no unfiltered cards, so it won't interfere with your filtering. The warning is still issued when a template contains no cards at all.

Tell me more about Filtering.

Fixed: Selecting Items in the Item List

Fixed a bug that failed to update the Layout pane correctly when a different item is selected in the Item List panel.

Fixed: Images in Rich Text

Version 1.6, when run under macOS 10.14 "Mojave", failed to draw inline images in rich text in preview mode. (Weirdly, the images were drawn correctly when printing or exporting; they only failed to appear on-screen in preview mode.)

Version 1.6.1 fixes this problem so that inline images appear correctly in all cases.

Two-Sided Cards

Multideck now supports creating, printing, and exporting card decks containing two-sided cards. The backs of cards in a deck can be all alike or all different, or any mix.

If your printer supports printing both sides of a sheet of paper, Multideck can print your two-sided decks automatically. If not, you can print fronts only, then reload that paper and print backs only.

Be warned: Double-sided printing is tricky and may be difficult to get right. Be sure to read all relevant Help pages before trying it, or you may encounter a lot of frustration and waste a lot of paper and ink.

Tell me more about making double-sided decks.

Exporting Large Decks

When you export your deck as a sheet, previous versions of Multideck assumed that all of your deck would fit into a single sheet, and warned you if it did not. Multideck can now export decks of any size to sheets of any size; if the deck does not fit on one sheet, multiple sheets are created to ensure that all cards are exported.

Tell me more about exporting.

Exported File Names

Multideck chooses appropriate file names for the output files created by the Export feature. The pattern for creating those names has changed in order to support multiple sheets and two-sided cards.

Tell me more about exporting.

Validation Options

The new Validation Options feature lets you customize validation warnings. You can choose to ignore warnings about unused columns, and you can choose to ignore all warnings (but not errors) when printing or exporting.

Tell me more about Validation Options.

Assorted bug fixes and stability improvements

We've fixed some potential problems with Undo and Redo, and a few other things that should improve Multideck's reliability.

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