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+title: New features in weltschmerz 1.4.0
+date: 2021-07-03
+author: Wolfgang Müller
+
+After more than a year of hibernation, the last two weeks have seen a greatly
+increased amount of work dedicated to [weltschmerz](weltschmerz). The initial
+impetus to pick up on development came after a whole bunch of contributions and
+bug reports from a new user, [nortti](https://ahti.space/~nortti/). Thanks a lot
+for those and for jump-starting further work on the project!
+
+Read on to take a look at noteworthy changes and all the new features, or head
+on over to the [project page](weltschmerz) to get 1.4.0 right away.
+
+## Controlling cursor blinking
+
+The first feature nortti
+[proposed and implemented](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/commit/?id=0774a46257bdc6daa1c6a1c3485d75bd07ef849c)
+is the new **`cursor_blink`** setting. Modifying cursor blink behaviour was not
+possible before; weltschmerz simply relied on GTK's default setting of `SYSTEM`.
+This falls back to whatever is set for
+[`gtk-cursor-blink`](https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkSettings.html#GtkSettings--gtk-cursor-blink)
+which in almost all cases[^1] will be `TRUE`.
+
+Now users may enable or disable cursor blinking within weltschmerz. The default
+value for `cursor_blink` is `SYSTEM` which means that there is nothing to do if
+the current behaviour already works for you.
+
+## Open terminal
+
+<figure>
+	<img src="img/weltschmerz-open-terminal.png" alt="The 'Open
+	terminal' feature in weltschmerz 1.4.0"/>
+	<figcaption>The 'Open terminal' feature in weltschmerz 1.4.0</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+The
+[second contribution](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/commit/?id=b70083a5f4404e2422ff0a0aadd023a661164fae)
+they made is the incredibly handy **Open terminal** feature. Similar to
+[**Open directory**](new-features-in-weltschmerz#Open%20directory),
+this feature leverages `OSC 7` support[^2] to open a new instance of weltschmerz in
+the current directory. This is bound to `Ctrl+Shift+T` for quick and easy access.
+
+## URL copying
+
+Up until now, weltschmerz only populated the `CLIPBOARD` selection when copying
+URLs to the clipboard via the **Copy URL** context menu entry. Since all other
+copy operations set the `PRIMARY` selection as well,
+[1.4.0 changes this](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/commit/?id=b497a49d8bd2a345dd30a9f55dc4976560df157f).
+Now, **Copy URL** populates both `CLIPBOARD` and `PRIMARY`, making weltschmerz
+behave like other GTK and QT apps[^3].
+
+## A handful of bugfixes
+
+weltschmerz now has a minimum size of 28 × 3 cells, reports its window geometry
+correctly at all times, and always draws the scrollbar if the user or
+distribution turns overlay scrolling off. The latter may seem inconsequential,
+but the journey to the fix was a very long and arduous one.
+
+I've written about these changes extensively in the relevant commit messages
+[here](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/commit/?id=ff708b2251ffdc209f23a2275c721532dff2fddb),
+[here](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/commit/?id=89f8571cbcf48b7810c7027faf26ee5cf4b968b1),
+and
+[here](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/commit/?id=ff27c3da1266df519aa15d95cfc32ad9d0d7b5e5).
+Definitely check those out if you are a fan of weird issues and possibly even
+weirder workarounds.
+
+## Internationalization
+
+Finally, I'm glad to announce that weltschmerz is now translatable! The 1.4.0
+release comes with a German and a Finnish translation of the program, excluding
+the manual (a bigger effort, and I did not want to drag 1.4.0 out even further).
+
+This introduces [gettext](https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext) as new
+dependency. In almost all cases it should already be installed since it is the
+de-facto standard for translations in GNOME and GNU-adjacent projects.
+
+If your language is missing and you want to contribute, have a look at the
+[`TRANSLATE`](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/tree/TRANSLATE#n1) file in the
+project repository.
+
+## Closing & Thanks
+
+That's it for this release. Thanks a lot again to nortti for all their
+contributions and for providing valuable feedback throughout the entire 1.4.0
+development process!
+
+See [`NEWS`](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/tree/NEWS) for the full set
+of changes, and
+[`1.3.0..1.4.0`](https://git.oriole.systems/weltschmerz/log/?qt=range&q=1.3.0..1.4.0)
+for all relevant commits.
+
+[^1]: I'd love to hear from you if your distribution disables blinking cursors
+  by default.
+[^2]: This particular escape is
+  [not yet fully specified](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/terminal-wg/specifications/-/issues/20).
+[^3]: See
+  [here](https://specifications.freedesktop.org/clipboards-spec/clipboards-latest.txt)
+  for freedesktop's consensus on how clipboards should work in X11.