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TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 12 October 2015

Nisus Writer Pro 2.1.2 — Nisus Software has released Nisus Writer Pro 2.1.2 with a variety of improvements and fixes for the venerable word processor. The update restores a preference that controls how often autosave is triggered, improves import and export of DOCX and DOC documents, adds the capability to import documents from Apple Pages (but only from iWork ’09), resolves a scrolling problem that occurred on Macs with certain kinds of trackpads, fixes several issues related to editing with tracked changes, closes some memory leaks, and fixes several instances of crashes. ($79 new, free update, 221 MB, release notes, 10.8.5+)

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Lightroom CC 2015.2.1 and Lightroom 6.2.1 — At the beginning of last week, Adobe issued updates to the two editions of its professional photo cataloging and editing application: the standalone Lightroom 6.2 and Lightroom CC 2015.2 (available as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan; for more details, see “Photos Everywhere with Lightroom CC and Photos for OS X,” 11 May 2015). The update brought the new Dehaze adjustment to Lightroom CC, and revamped the Import function for both editions of Lightroom in an effort to make the workflow more
explicit and potentially easier.

However, many users found these releases to be riddled with slowdowns and crashes (which Adobe acknowledged), while other users found the changes to the Import function frustrating due to loss of features (see this Fstoppers article for details on the changes). At the end of last week, Adobe released Lightroom CC 2015.2.1 and Lightroom 6.2.1 to address the stability issues, and issued an apology regarding both the introduction of the buggy behavior and how the “simplification of the import experience” was handled and communicated.

Other changes to Lightroom CC 2015.2 and Lightroom 6.2 that carry over to versions 2015.2.1 and 6.2.1 include added support for new cameras (including DxO ONE, Leica S (Typ 007), Olympus E-M10 Mark II, and Sony A7SM2) and a wide range of new lenses, a fix for a bug that migrated previously rejected face regions from Photoshop Elements, and resolution for a bug that caused Lightroom CC to export JPEG files that were incompatible with some other applications due to a non-standard header. Both Lightroom CC 2015.2.1 and Lightroom 6.2.1 can be downloaded via Help > Check for Updates. ($9.99 monthly subscription or $149 for the standalone app, release notes, 10.8+)

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ChronoSync 4.6.4 — Econ Technologies has released ChronoSync 4.6.4, providing full compatibility with OS X 10.11 El Capitan plus fixes for various user interface glitches and visual artifacts related to El Capitan. The synchronization and backup app also fixes some problems with establishing IPv6 network connections, resolves a problem setting the new El Capitan “restricted” flag on symbolic links, and fixes an issue with the core copy engine that sometimes reported an incorrect target as the source for certain types of errors. (Free update, $49.99 new for ChronoSync with a 20 percent
discount for TidBITS members, 28.7 MB, release notes, 10.8+)

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Microsoft Office 2011 14.5.6 — Microsoft has issued version 14.5.6 of its Office 2011 suite to correct an Exchange syncing issue that bedeviled users who had migrated to OS X 10.11 El Capitan. In particular, a bug with Outlook caused unending hangs, making it impossible to download new email when running El Capitan. While Office 2011 has received a fix, Office 2016 users are still awaiting relief (and are being vocal about it in this Microsoft Community thread) from repeated crashes suffered not just by Outlook but also by Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (as noted by this Computerworld article). (Free update from the Microsoft Download Center or through Microsoft AutoUpdate, 113 MB, release notes, 10.5.8+)

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Tweetbot 2.1 — Tapbots has released Tweetbot 2.1 for the Mac (see “How to Mute Unwanted Tweets in Tweetbot,” 4 September 2015) with the addition of the Activity View (ported over from Tweetbot for iOS), which displays recent favorites, retweets, and other interactions. The Twitter client also now displays quoted tweets in mentions; plays Twitter, Instagram, and Vine video within the app; adds support for uploading video to Twitter; displays images in direct messages; fixes an
issue that prevented a selected tweet from being fully visible when using the keyboard to navigate; and improves memory management. ($9.99 new from the Mac App Store, free update, 11.8 MB, 10.10+)

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Typinator 6.7 — Now scriptable, the new Typinator 6.7 from Ergonis enables you to perform a variety of actions using AppleScript or JavaScript (as well as other scripting languages, such as Bash, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby). Additionally, the text expansion tool enables scripts to be stored in compiled form (within the Included folder) for faster execution. The update also adds new built-in functions for inserting arbitrary Unicode characters in expansions and pasting the contents of the clipboard, adds support for Baidu Pinyin input methods for Chinese, works around a bug with Microsoft Word 2016 that caused
bookmarks to be created around copied text fragments, adds new diagnostics for analyzing issues with expansions, resolves a bug related to expansions in Messenger for Facebook, and fixes an issue that caused checks for new versions to fail on OS X 10.11 El Capitan. (€24.99 new with a 25 percent discount for TidBITS members, free update, 7.1 MB, release notes, 10.6.8+)

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iBooks Author 2.4 — Apple’s iBooks Author has been updated to version 2.4 with improvements to its EPUB templates, plus the added capability to add Pop-Over widgets with text or images to an EPUB template. The free authoring software also improves the import function for Pages and Microsoft Word documents, and in an email message sent to users of iTunes Connect, Apple notes that it’s best to use section breaks between chapters when writing in either Pages or Word. (Free from the Mac App Store, 446 MB, 10.10+)

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