So, there it is: Daedalus Touch 1.2 — available now at every iTunes App Store known to man. Only on iPad. Only on iOS5.

This is the second feature-update we’ve put out since the original release. We’ve added lots of stuff, but the two most prominent new features are Markdown support and ePub export. So allow me to elaborate on these a bit.

First off, we’ve added Markdown as an export option, available if you export to PDF or ePub. You can choose it by switching the “style” setting from “none” to, well… Markdown. We support most of Markdown’s syntax: Six levels of headers, ordered and unordered lists, links, emphasis, code, block quotes, line breaks, you name it.

There’s no support for images, as Daedalus can’t handle images and iOS won’t let you access anything outside of an app’s own space. There’s also neither support for tables nor for nested lists or nested block quotes within nested lists of block quotes. More on that in another post.

Then again, you’ll be pleased to know that we now *do* support all kinds of special file.extensions. So if you’re in the camp of .mdown or .md, we got you covered — during import, synching and export.

Which brings me to… ePub. ePub is the HTML-based, open standard in electronic books. It’s what Apple chose for iBooks and what Amazon refuses to acknowledge, but I’ll get to that later. The important part is, that you can now export single or multiple sheets as well as single or multiple stacks to ePub and have them open as a *book* in iBooks.

The exporter will transform stack titles to chapters and sheet titles to sections, will generate a table of contents and also apply a nice layout/theme. You can of course both add some author information and choose any photo from your library as cover image. iBooks then is smart enough to recognize image dimensions, so there’s no stopping you from creating a square-looking book on that digital wooden shelf.

As for Amazon and its new KF8: We’re as baffled as everybody that they went with their own format instead of ePub. However, our exporter is more than capable to output KF8, so we will add support for the new Kindles with the next update.

That, I guess, means future-proof. :)

And that’s… a wrap.

Have fun,
Marcus

Puh, these days are just packed. Laying finishing touches on some interface elements, squashing late bugs, collecting localizations, squashing new bugs, creating PR letters and product information pages, double-checking new Help content, the new registration system, squashing bugs, the new updater (works!), and finally moving every little bit over to SOULMEN CI.

Apart from standard pre-release craziness, you won’t believe how much blue-tec stuff has amassed over the years, and how much work it is to completely switch out company names and logos and colors and all… no going back, of course. :)

But not much time to blog-post, either.

So, release date. You want a release date? A fixed and firm release date? And a price tag? Standard price and update-fee? Like… Ulysses 2.0, available at the-soulmen.com, beginning… beginning… beginning, uhm, or rather starting at… at…