ePublisher 2026.1 Release Notes

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This page lists every improvement and fixed issue in the ePublisher 2026.1 release, organized by build with the most recent build first. For the release highlights, see What's New in the ePublisher online help.

Build 2026.1.4785 (2026-10-30)

Build 4785, posted 2026-10-30, updates ePublisher 2026.1 with the improvements and fixed issues below. If you maintain project-level format or adapter overrides, review the Format File Changes since 2026.1.4754 page for files your overrides may need to pick up.

Improvements

Reverb 2.0

• Fixed WebWorks Reverb 2.0 output never revealing the landing page when the first entry in the table of contents has Table of Contents Display disabled. A title or front-matter page that is the first document in the group and hidden from the table of contents caused a script error during the first page load, so the page loading indicator never cleared and readers saw only the header and toolbar. Navigating to any hidden entry at the top of the table of contents failed the same way. Such pages now load normally, and the table of contents simply shows no highlighted entry for them (EPUB2965).
• Fixed the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant showing a placeholder assistant when WebWorks Platform refuses the configured one. With an Assistant ID set, a refused request left the panel displaying the built-in "Reverb 2.0 Assistant" and its sample questions, which looked like a working assistant and told the owner nothing. The panel now shows an Assistant Unavailable notice with the platform's reason in place of the conversation starters and message box: "This assistant is not available." means the assistant's In Deployment switch is off, "Origin not allowed" means the site's domain is missing from the assistant's Origin Domains, and a not-found notice means the Assistant ID matches no assistant. A message refused mid-conversation shows the same reason, and the browser console carries the full detail. The assistant also now loads when the browser blocks conversation storage, which previously produced the placeholder as well. Output opened from a local file or served from localhost is treated as a preview: WebWorks Platform never accepts those origins, so the panel shows the placeholder assistant with a note saying so, and it can still be reviewed and styled before the output is deployed. The placeholder answers every message itself, without contacting WebWorks Platform: a sample response that says plainly it is a placeholder, explains why it is showing, and lists the steps for setting up an assistant across WebWorks Platform and ePublisher, so answer formatting can be reviewed and the setup steps are at hand. Links in an assistant's answers also now open where they should: a web link opens in a new browser tab instead of loading the external site inside the help's content frame, and a link into the help navigates to that page. Output generated before this release picks up the fix when it is regenerated (EPUB2966).
• Fixed the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base taking minutes to hours to generate for large documents, which made generation look hung. With Generate Knowledge Base turned on, the knowledge base stage reread the entire document's intermediate file for every paragraph, so its time grew far faster than the document's size: the generation log stopped at Processing pipeline 'Page' and Designer showed no progress for fifteen minutes or more on each large page. The stage now reads the paragraph styles it needs from data already loaded, and takes about as long as the regular page stage; a test document whose knowledge base took ten minutes now takes ten seconds. The knowledge base content is unchanged. Editing or overriding the knowledge base content transform in a project now also regenerates the knowledge base pages, and the project knowledge base archive now records every page it contains for incremental builds (EPUB2980).
• Fixed the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base coming out incomplete when two generations ran at the same time. Every generation staged its knowledge base pages in one shared Knowledge Base folder in the user's temporary folder and deleted that folder when it finished, so another generation running at the same time, such as Designer and AutoMap together, two Designer windows, or scheduled AutoMap jobs, lost the pages it had already written: the generation log showed Unable to find file warnings and the knowledge base archive was missing those pages. Projects with the same group and document names could also overwrite each other's pages. Each output target now stages its knowledge base pages in its own working data folder (EPUB2981).
• Fixed the root sitemap.xml of a composed WebWorks Reverb 2.0 site on an Amazon S3 destination listing none of the site's content pages. The composition indexed only the site shell's own page sitemap and skipped every parcel's, and it wrote relative addresses with no last-modified date, which the sitemap protocol does not allow, so search engines could not reach the content pages through the sitemap. A composition now reads each parcel's page sitemap from the destination and lists the shell's and every parcel's page sitemap as an absolute address under the shell's Sitemap Base URL, each with its last-modified date. The site shell now records its Sitemap Base URL for this purpose: until the shell is republished with this release, or when the shell has no Sitemap Base URL, the composition writes an empty sitemap index and logs a warning (EPUB3007).
• Fixed the robots.txt of a WebWorks Reverb 2.0 site pointing search engines to its sitemap with a relative address, Sitemap: sitemap.xml, which the sitemap protocol does not allow. The line now gives the absolute address of the site's sitemap.xml, built from the Sitemap Base URL target setting, such as Sitemap: https://docs.example.com/help/sitemap.xml. When Sitemap Base URL is empty or Generate Sitemap is off, the line is left out. A customized robots.txt page template is read as UTF-8, the encoding robots.txt requires, and handled the same way: each Sitemap: line with a relative address is completed from Sitemap Base URL, and every other line is copied unchanged (EPUB3009).
• Fixed WebWorks Reverb 2.0 opening topics scrolled past their breadcrumbs and page toolbar. After a reader moved to another topic with Next, Previous, or the table of contents, a topic taller than the window opened scrolled down so its first heading sat directly under the toolbar, hiding the breadcrumbs and page toolbar buttons such as print and share. Topics now open at the top, and keyboard focus still moves to the topic content for keyboard and screen reader users (EPUB3049).
• The WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant now sends the page the reader is on as structured page context beside each question, instead of appending the page's text to the question. Along with the page text, the assistant receives the page's address and title, its breadcrumb trail, the heading of the section the reader has navigated to, and any text the reader has selected on the page, so it can tell which product a page belongs to and answer about the passage in front of the reader. The page text keeps headings, list items and table rows on their own lines, so words on either side of a heading or paragraph no longer run together. A page longer than 20,000 characters is sent from a little before the reader's section rather than from its top. The page text is no longer stored with the conversation, and conversations saved by earlier versions continue to work (EPUB3071).
• Fixed WebWorks Reverb 2.0 landmark IDs set to Source ID not matching the Markdown++ anchors for FrameMaker paragraphs that contain markers. A paragraph with an index, cross-reference, hypertext, or other marker took its landmark ID from an ID that ePublisher assigns to the marker, such as 1fm1033533, while Markdown++ output used the paragraph's own FrameMaker unique ID, so a project with both output targets wrote two different IDs for the same paragraph. Source ID now uses the paragraph's unique ID for FrameMaker documents, so both outputs match. FrameMaker paragraphs that contain markers get new Source ID landmark IDs. Hashed (16 char) and Hashed (8 char) landmark IDs, and Source ID landmark IDs for Word, DITA, and Markdown documents, do not change (EPUB3072).
• Fixed Reverb 2.0 ignoring the Merge Settings hierarchy when every group is nested inside a container: the output listed every top-level group flat, in project order, dropping the containers and each group's Table of contents title. The containers and titles now publish as arranged; keeping at least one group at the top level of the hierarchy was the workaround (EPUB3075).

Formats

• Fixed images disappearing from PDF - XSL-FO output when a table cell holds only an image without alt text, such as the symbol column of an icon legend or safety-symbol table. The cell published empty, with no warning in the generation log, while the same image with alt text, and the same table in other output formats, published correctly. A table cell that contains an image or a nested table now always publishes it, and a cell with no content still publishes as an empty cell (EPUB3048).
• The 2025.1 format version archives bundled with ePublisher 2026.1 now include the fixes backported to the 2025.1 post-releases, so projects that keep an older Base Format Version build with that version's latest formats (EPUB2746).
• Fixed images without alternate text from FrameMaker, Word, and DITA sources publishing their output file name as a tooltip, such as title="x-gen-flow-objects.1.2260.1.jpg" - an accessibility failure (WCAG technique H67) regressed by this release's alt-text mapping change (EPUB2725). An image with neither an authored title nor alternate text now gets no tooltip - in WebWorks Reverb 2.0, WebWorks Reverb, WebWorks Help 5.0, Dynamic HTML, and the image links of Markdown++ output and the Reverb knowledge base - and images with alternate text keep it as the tooltip (EPUB3074).

Adapters

• Fixed Microsoft Word document conversions failing intermittently with Cannot create a file when that file already exists followed by Unable to create WIF document, most often on servers whose endpoint security software scans files as they are written. While preparing a .docx document, the Word adapter extracts it into a temporary folder and rewrites its relationships file by deleting the extracted copy and renaming the rewritten one into its place. When another process, such as a real-time virus scanner, search indexer, or backup agent, still held the extracted copy open at that instant, Windows kept its name reserved until the handle closed (on Windows Server 2016 and earlier, and on network or FAT volumes on any release), so the rename failed, the whole job stopped on a random document, and a rerun succeeded. The adapter now renames the extracted copy aside instead of deleting it, so the rewritten file takes its name immediately, and it retries both that step and the extraction of a document whose previous extraction is still held open, logging each retry as a warning. If the file stays held open, the error now names the file, states that another process is holding it open, and recommends excluding the folder from real-time scanning. The silent installation guide for IT gains a matching section on real-time scanning exclusions for the folders ePublisher writes while publishing (EPUB2970).
• Improved diagnosis of Microsoft Word conversions blocked by security policy. When Microsoft Defender's attack surface reduction rule Block Win32 API calls from Office macros is enforced in block mode, Word refuses to run ePublisher's macro template (wwdoc.dotm): the conversion failed with Adapter "Word" failed in method "DuplicateDocumentAndApplySettings" at step "3: Word.BeginPreProcessPhase", generation quietly continued, and output could look complete while images and edits from the Word documents were stale or missing. The generation log now names the likely cause when the conversion macros do not run, and the silent installation guide for IT gains a section on the attack surface reduction rule, the per-rule exclusion for every installed wwdoc.dotm copy, and where to find the Microsoft Defender block events (EPUB2976).
• Improved the speed of Microsoft Word document conversions. So that generated output uses the style names Word displays, such as Heading 1 rather than the internal name heading 1, ePublisher renamed the built-in styles of every Word document inside Word while applying the project's settings, closing and reopening documents that use many styles. With Microsoft 365 Word this took several seconds per document. Word now provides the display names once, when the first document is converted, and ePublisher records them in each converted document itself, saving about 5 to 9 seconds per document in testing with Microsoft 365 Word. Style names in generated output are unchanged, including with a non-English Word display language (EPUB3032).
• Further improved the speed of Microsoft Word document conversions. While applying the project's settings, ePublisher saved each document up to a dozen times, and Microsoft 365 Word saves large documents far more slowly than earlier versions of Word. ePublisher now saves only where a later step reads the saved file, which saved about 8 seconds per conversion of a document with 4,000 paragraphs in testing with Microsoft 365 Word (EPUB3033).
• Further improved the speed of Microsoft Word document conversions. While applying the project's settings, ePublisher examined every hyperlink, updated the document's fields twice and repaginated the document, even where this could not change the result. It now examines only hyperlinks to files, updates fields a second time only when results can depend on other fields, and repaginates only documents with page number fields, which saved about 3 to 4 seconds per conversion of a document with 4,000 paragraphs and 760 hyperlinks in testing with Microsoft 365 Word. Generated output is unchanged (EPUB3035).
• Further improved the speed of Microsoft Word document conversions. After applying the project's settings, ePublisher switched each document to print layout and saved a second copy of it that was never used. It no longer does, which saved about 5 to 8 seconds per conversion of a document with 4,000 paragraphs in testing with Microsoft 365 Word (EPUB3038).
• Improved the speed of Microsoft Word document conversions by keeping Microsoft Word running between documents. While applying the project's settings, ePublisher started and closed Word for every document, and again for its PDF conversion, which takes several seconds each time with Microsoft 365 Word. Word now handles up to 10 conversions before ePublisher restarts it, and is restarted as before when a conversion fails or needs a retry. This saved 5 to 9 seconds per conversion of small and medium-sized documents in testing with Microsoft 365 Word. The new Microsoft Word adapter setting Documents per Word session sets the number; 1 restarts Word for every conversion as in earlier versions. Page number fields (PAGE, NUMPAGES) in the body text of a document can show a different number in online output than before; they did not show the printed page numbers before either (EPUB3020).
• Further improved the speed of Microsoft Word document conversions. While applying the project's settings, ePublisher opened each .docx document in Word and saved it again in the same format before working on it. It now copies .docx documents, and Word converts only documents in other formats (.doc, .rtf, .docm and Strict Open XML) as before. This saved about 3 seconds per conversion of a document with 4,000 paragraphs and about 6 seconds per conversion of a 157-page document in testing with Microsoft 365 Word. Generated output is unchanged (EPUB3034).
• Improved diagnosis of Microsoft Word conversions that fail because Word stops unexpectedly. When Word crashed while ePublisher applied the project's settings to a document, the generation log reported only the step that failed. It now says that Word stopped unexpectedly and names the document, and notes that Microsoft Office may reopen Word with a recovered copy of the document, which can be closed without saving (EPUB3036).
• Fixed Microsoft Word conversions that crashed Microsoft 365 Word. For a document in Word 2003 compatibility mode (every Word 97-2003 .doc document, and .docx documents that were never converted to a newer format) that contains a floating picture linked to an image file, applying the project's settings crashed Microsoft 365 Word when ePublisher pointed the picture's link back at the image file, and the document was not converted. ePublisher now corrects these picture links in the document file itself before Word opens it, so Word no longer changes them, and the pictures appear in generated output (EPUB3043).
• Microsoft Word conversions no longer wait indefinitely on a Word dialog. ePublisher runs Word hidden, so when Word opened a dialog during a conversion, such as Microsoft 365 Word's security notice about fields that bring in other files (INCLUDETEXT, INCLUDEPICTURE), nobody could answer it and an unattended AutoMap run waited until someone did. ePublisher now closes Word once such a dialog has been waiting for an answer for 30 seconds, logs a warning that names the document and the dialog, and does not convert that document. For the field security notice, the warning names the Word setting an administrator can use to allow these field updates; ePublisher does not change Word's security settings itself (EPUB3039).
• Improved diagnosis of Microsoft Word documents that Word cannot open. When Word could not open a document, for example a damaged .docx file, the generation log reported only that the document could not be duplicated and converted. It now says that Word could not open or prepare the document, names it, and suggests opening it in Word to see whether Word reports a problem or offers to repair it. The warning that security policy may be blocking ePublisher's macro template (wwdoc.dotm) now appears only when the conversion macros did not run at all, not for a document Word cannot open (EPUB3042).
• Fixed the WebWorks Transit menu for Microsoft Word doing nothing in Microsoft 365 Word when it opens the help or starts ePublisher. The Help button on the Transit toolbar, the Help command and the Help buttons of the Transit dialogs opened no help topic, and the menu commands that start ePublisher from Word did not start it, without any message. Transit opened them through a Windows shell function that does not start programs inside Microsoft 365 Word, and the help also depended on which program Windows uses to open .htm files. Transit now starts programs directly and opens the help in the default web browser, and if the browser cannot be started it says so and shows the help address (EPUB3047).
• Microsoft Word documents (.docx) with pictures linked to image files now keep their pictures when the documents are moved together with the images. Word stores the full path of each linked picture, so after the documents and their images were moved, for example to another folder, drive or computer, the links pointed to the old location and the pictures were missing from generated output, or the copy saved in the document was used instead. When a linked picture is not at its stored location, ePublisher now looks for it by its folders and file name relative to the document's new location, uses the file it finds, and notes each substitution in the generation log; when different files match equally well, it leaves the link unchanged and logs a warning. The source documents are not changed, and links to network locations (\\server\share) are not looked up (EPUB3044).
• When a Microsoft Word dialog stops a conversion, the generation log now quotes what the dialog says, not only its title, so the warning shows what Word was asking (EPUB3052).
• Microsoft Word fields and pictures that refer to other files or websites are now converted from what the document stores: included text as last updated in the document, and the copy and size of a linked picture. Microsoft 365 Word therefore no longer stops unattended conversions with its field security notice. The new Microsoft Word adapter setting Update external references refreshes them from their sources, as earlier releases did (EPUB3053).
• Converting a Word .docx no longer opens a mail-merge data source or, unless Update external references is on, a template attached from a website, SharePoint, or a network share, so neither can stall or stop the conversion. The output uses the styles stored in the document, and the generation log names the template. Source documents are not changed (EPUB3054).
• A Word picture that is stored in the document and also linked to a website, a network share, or a missing file is now converted from its stored copy instead of Word's "cannot be displayed" placeholder, and the generation log names each linked picture that is not stored and cannot be included (EPUB3056).
• Fixed long Microsoft Word documents with many fields (index entries, hyperlinks, cross-references) waiting minutes before generation starts. The check for master documents that runs before each build is now much faster: a document with 6,213 fields went from more than 12 minutes to 9 seconds (EPUB3057).
• Unbalanced condition markers in a Word document are now reported once per condition, saying what is wrong and where in readable text, instead of once per marker without the reason. The paragraph that holds an unbalanced marker is no longer split or padded in the output (EPUB3058).
• Fixed the first paragraph of a FrameMaker document's first table publishing in Microsoft Sans Serif instead of the font set for its style in Style Designer, while identical paragraphs in later tables published correctly. FrameMaker restates the paragraph's font at that paragraph, and ePublisher treated the restated font as a local font change (EPUB3067).
• Fixed the start of a FrameMaker paragraph that has its own font override publishing in Microsoft Sans Serif while the rest of the paragraph used the paragraph's font. ePublisher repeated the paragraph's font on the paragraph's first text run as a local font change (EPUB3068).
• FrameMaker paragraph styles and inline font changes now publish with the font family named in the document. Before, a font not installed on the machine running the build, such as Courier or Palatino, published as Microsoft Sans Serif, so the output depended on that machine's fonts (EPUB3069).
• Standardized the Markdown adapter's Python test suite on the standard library's unittest framework: the test files now live in one tests package with shared fixtures and test discovery, and run-tests wrappers run the whole suite with the bundled Python in one command (EPUB2763).
• Removed two Word adapter steps that changed Word's configuration but had done nothing since Word 2010: clearing Word's disabled-items list around each conversion, and adding Word's STARTUP folder to the Trust Center's trusted locations. Both read the Office version from a registry value that reports Word 2007 on every later Word, so they wrote to a location no supported Word reads; removing them keeps ePublisher from starting to change Word's security settings in locked-down environments (EPUB3055).

Markdown

• Fixed angle-bracket placeholders that resemble a URI, such as the IPv6 syntax placeholder <X:X:X::X/0-128>, publishing as broken links. The Markdown adapter treated any <text:text> token as an autolink, even with a one-letter scheme such as X:, and then converted the link target to a Windows path, so generation logged Invalid URI 'X:X:X::X\0-128' specified and A Dos path must be rooted warnings and the published page showed a link without the angle brackets. Autolinks now follow the CommonMark rules, which require a URI scheme of at least two characters, so these placeholders publish as literal text with no warnings. Rooted Windows paths such as <C:\docs\file.pdf> still publish as links. The same change fixes <mailto:...> autolinks publishing with a doubled mailto:mailto: prefix, and link targets with a URI scheme other than http, https, or file no longer have their forward slashes rewritten to backslashes. A token with a scheme of two or more letters, such as <hh:mm:ss>, is a valid CommonMark autolink and still publishes as a link, as it does in other Markdown renderers; to publish it as literal text, escape the opening bracket (\<hh:mm:ss>) or use inline code. Email autolinks containing non-ASCII characters no longer publish as links; write them as [name](mailto:address) instead (EPUB2977).
• Fixed an autolink ending in a slash, such as <https://support.example.com/>, disappearing from the output when it was the first thing in a paragraph, list item, or blockquote. The Markdown adapter mistook the autolink for an HTML element, so it published as an empty HTML block with no link, and the rest of the line became a separate paragraph. The autolink now publishes as a link in any position. HTML written directly in Markdown, including namespaced elements such as <o:p>, is recognized as before (EPUB2978).
• Fixed tables inside list items and blockquotes breaking the structure of Markdown++ output and of the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base. The table rows started at the left margin, which ended the list or the quote, and the list indentation or the quote marker appeared inside every table cell instead, as &gt; in a quote. Each table line now carries the indentation of its list item or the quote marker, and the cells contain only their own text, so the table stays inside the list item or quote, and Markdown++ output read back as a source document keeps its structure (EPUB2983).
• Fixed links to the first paragraph of a page losing their anchor in Markdown++ output and in the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base. A link to the heading that opens a page was written as # or page.html#, which points to the top of the page, and a same-page link of that kind disappeared when the Markdown++ output was read back as a source document. Such links now carry the heading's ID like links to any other paragraph, and a link to a whole document no longer ends in a stray # (EPUB2984).
• Fixed continuation lines of ordered list items numbered 10 and higher in Markdown++ output and in the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base. A second paragraph, or the next line of a multi-line paragraph, in item 10 or later was indented three spaces, too few after 10. for Markdown to keep it in the item. It is now indented to match the width of the item number (EPUB2985).
• Fixed Markdown fenced code blocks indented deeper than their list item, quote, or margin keeping that extra indentation on every code line. For example, a fenced code block indented four spaces under a numbered item such as 1., whose text starts after three characters, published every code line with one extra leading space in all output formats; under a bullet (-) each line gained two. The Markdown adapter now removes the opening fence's own indentation from each code line, as CommonMark specifies, so the code publishes as written. Indentation within the code is preserved, and code blocks aligned with their list item publish as before (EPUB2989).
• Fixed the custom alias and custom style of a Markdown blockquote being dropped from Markdown++ output. A blockquote written as <!-- style:Note ; #install-note --> above a > block published to Markdown++ with neither the alias nor the style, so links to the alias from other documents had no target, and the blockquote lost its style when the output was read back as a source document. Markdown++ output now writes the style and alias directive above the blockquote. Blockquotes without a custom style or alias publish as before (EPUB2990).
• Fixed blockquotes breaking apart in Markdown++ output and in the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base when they contain a nested blockquote, a list, or a table followed by more content. The blank line after the nested quote, after each list item, or after the table was written without the > quote marker, which ended the quote, so the rest of it became a separate blockquote and a list in a quote split into separate lists. The blank line now carries the quote marker of the enclosing blockquote, so the quote and its lists stay whole (EPUB2991).
• Fixed list items that open with a nested list or a blockquote in Markdown++ output and in the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base. Every line of the nested list or quote repeated the item's number or bullet, such as 2., so one list item became several. Only the item's first line now carries its marker, and the following lines use the item's indentation. A blockquote that opens a list item also keeps its custom style and alias in Markdown++ output, written on the item's first line (EPUB2992).
• Fixed links to a Markdown blockquote nested inside another blockquote publishing as plain text in every output format. A link to the inner blockquote's alias, such as [details](#inner-note), had no target because the inner blockquote was not registered as a link target, even though its anchor was in the page. Links to a nested blockquote, by its alias or its ID, now resolve like links to any other blockquote (EPUB2993).
• Fixed markers in a Markdown blockquote's directive being dropped. In a directive such as <!-- style:Note ; marker:Keywords="setup" ; #install-note --> above a > block, the style and alias took effect but the markers did not reach any output, so index entries and other markers set on a blockquote were lost. The Markdown adapter now attaches a blockquote's markers to its first paragraph, where they take effect exactly like the markers of a paragraph's own directive (EPUB2994).
• Fixed links to a Markdown table, or to a list inside a blockquote, publishing as plain text in every output format. A link to the table's or list's alias, such as [limits](#limits-table), had no target because the table or list was not registered as a link target, even though its anchor was in the page. These links now resolve like links to a paragraph. Markdown++ output also keeps list and table aliases, so its links have a target: a list's custom style and alias are written on a directive line above the list, and a table's alias joins its directive, such as <!-- multiline; #limits-table --> (EPUB2995).
• Fixed a Markdown marker with an empty value, such as marker:DropDownEnd="", being rejected. Instead of the marker, the paragraph got a PassThrough marker holding the raw directive text, so the marker had no effect: a drop-down did not end where the DropDownEnd marker was placed, WebWorks Reverb pages carried the directive as an HTML comment, and Markdown++ output wrote it into the paragraph's directive, where it broke the directive. An empty value is now accepted and works like a marker written without a value, such as marker:DropDownEnd (EPUB2996).
• Fixed markers in a Markdown list's directive being dropped. In a directive such as <!-- style:Steps ; marker:Keywords="setup" ; #install-steps --> above a list, the style and alias took effect but the markers did not reach any output. The Markdown adapter now attaches a list's markers to the first paragraph of its first item, as it does for a blockquote's markers (EPUB2997).
• Fixed a Markdown marker whose value contains an equals sign, such as marker:Hyperlink="https://example.com/page?id=42", being rejected. Instead of the marker, the paragraph got a PassThrough marker holding the raw directive text. Only the first equals sign now separates the marker's name from its value, so the value can contain any number of equals signs (EPUB2998).
• Fixed the Table Rendering option (Table style > Options) being only half applied in Markdown++ output. With Table Rendering set to Pipes, cells were written on one line but the table still got the <!-- multiline --> marker and multiline rows, including an empty separator row after each row. The row form, the marker and the cells now all follow the table style's option. The WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base, which has no Table Rendering option, now writes standard pipe tables: one line per row, with <br/> between the lines of a cell and no empty rows. Before, it wrote multiline rows without the marker, which a Markdown reader takes as extra rows. A list in a one-line cell keeps its list markers; a code block in a one-line cell is written as its lines of text (EPUB2986).
• Fixed link titles in Markdown++ output. Every link to a document was given the target's title, such as [link](#setup "Installation Guide"), even when the source link had none, and a title the source link did have was written as a Link Title marker on the paragraph instead. When that output was used as a source again, each pass added more markers. A link now keeps exactly the title its source link had, so Markdown++ output reads back unchanged (EPUB2987).
• Fixed Markdown++ output writing marker values without escaping them. A value that contained -->, such as the PassThrough marker made from an HTML comment above a paragraph, ended the paragraph's directive early, so the rest of the directive showed up as paragraph text and the paragraph's alias was lost. A value with a quote broke the markers:{...} form, and a marker name with a space could not be read back. A marker is now written as marker:Name="value" only when that form reads back as written; any other marker is written in the markers:{...} form with its name and value escaped, so every marker reads back unchanged (EPUB2999).
• Fixed a Markdown marker whose value contains a semicolon, such as marker:Keywords="setup; install" or a URL with a ;, being rejected. Instead of the marker, the paragraph got a PassThrough marker holding the raw directive text; this also happened in the markers:{...} form. A semicolon inside a quoted marker value or a markers:{...} value is now part of the value; only a semicolon outside them separates the commands of a directive (EPUB3000).
• Fixed Markdown front matter being merged wrongly into the directive above a document's first block. With an apostrophe in the directive's style name, such as style:Author's Note, the directive's own markers were not recognized, so a front-matter value overrode the author's marker of the same name instead of the other way around. With an escaped quote followed by a semicolon in a markers:{...} value, the directive could not be merged, and its alias and markers were lost. The merge now reads the directive the same way the directive itself is read (EPUB3001).
• Fixed three Markdown marker behaviors that did not follow the Markdown++ specification. A marker set in the marker:Name="value" form in the directive above a document's first block now keeps its value when the document's front matter sets the same marker; the front-matter value used to override it. A marker name with an embedded space or a leading underscore, such as marker:Index Entry="setup" or marker:_Private="value", is now accepted; such a marker used to be rejected and published as a PassThrough marker holding the raw directive text. Markdown++ output now writes an inline marker, such as <!--marker:Keywords="inline"-->**marker**, in front of the text it was placed on instead of moving it into the paragraph's directive, so it reads back where it was placed, and a paragraph marker and an inline marker of the same name no longer replace one another when read back. Markdown++ output also escapes a | in a marker name or value, so a marker in a table cell no longer splits the table row (EPUB3008).

Core

• The AutoMap Administrator now manages workspaces. A workspace is a jobs folder, a staging folder, and a set of destinations, so jobs that belong together, such as one project or one release line, live together; switch between them on the File > Workspace menu, and the title bar names the workspace shown. A workspace's destinations are added and edited in the Workspace dialog and are saved in the workspace settings file (automap-workspace.xml) in its jobs folder, so they travel with the jobs; a team can also reference a shared deploy settings file from it. The jobs list, the composition job editor's member list, the Preferences folders, and the destination lists follow the switch. Switching changes only what the Administrator shows: scheduled tasks keep running, each job stages into its own workspace's staging folder, and every run of a job, whether scheduled, started with Run Now, or run from the command line, resolves the workspace's destinations after the job's own definitions and any --deploysettings file and before deploy.prefs. Scheduled task names are shared across workspaces, so Run Now on a job whose task runs a same-named job in another workspace re-points the task: silently when the task has no schedule, and only after a warning naming both job files when it does. The jobs list notes a job whose task runs another job file (EPUB2919).
• Fixed landmark IDs from AutoMap jobs based on a stationery depending on the staging folder. Landmark IDs are the addresses of WebWorks Reverb 2.0 topics that the Share button's links, the landmark table, and the AI Assistant's citations use. A job based on a Stationery file (.wxsp), or on a Designer or Express project with useAsStationery="True", builds a copy of the project in the staging folder, and its landmark IDs were computed from each document's path relative to that folder. Changing the staging folder, moving the job to another workspace, or building on another computer or under another Windows account therefore changed every landmark ID: shared links opened the not-found page, and the AI Assistant dropped its citations when the knowledge base and the site came from different builds. Landmark IDs are now computed from each document's path relative to the job file, for a Stationery file and a project used as one alike, so they no longer depend on where the job is staged, and they change only when the documents move relative to the job file. The landmark IDs of such jobs change once, on their first build with this release; republish every group of the site and upload its AI Assistant knowledge base together. Designer, Express, and AutoMap jobs that build a project in place are unchanged. Generating WebWorks Reverb 2.0 output from such a job warns when its documents share no folder with the job file other than the drive root, since their landmark IDs change if the documents move, and a composition job warns when two of its groups use the same landmark ID. Output of other formats, and WebWorks Reverb 2.0 output at a format version before 2026.1, does not use these landmark IDs, so it does not warn (EPUB2988, EPUB3061).
• Improved the License Information dialog in Designer, Express, and the AutoMap Administrator so it explains whether the running version is licensed. When a contract did not include the running version, refreshing the license keys looked like success: the license server's message reported keys granted, the product list stayed empty, and the product reported only Product is unlicensed. The dialog now shows the product, version, and build, the Contract ID in use in full, and a status line for the running version: Licensed, Licensed (evaluation), Not licensed for this version, or Not licensed. When the contract does not include the running version, the status says so and gives the next step, Your contract doesn't include WebWorks ePublisher Designer 2026.1. Contact WebWorks to renew or request an evaluation., and the same message replaces Product is unlicensed. after a key refresh and in the AutoMap command line's startup output. The status also reports when this version's license keys have expired, and for a licensed product it shows when the keys next renew; license keys renew automatically. The product list shows a placeholder instead of staying blank when no license keys apply, and the license server's text, which still explains refusals such as an unknown Contract ID, is now labeled Message from the license server (EPUB3006).
• Removed the WebDAV deploy destination type, which no longer worked. A WebDAV destination carried over in deploy settings from an earlier release still appeared in the Deploy Destinations editor, but deploying to it did nothing: no files were uploaded, and no error or log entry reported it. ePublisher now drops such a destination when it loads the deploy settings and logs a warning naming it, and a job file that defines one inline is rejected the same way as any other unsupported destination type. Use a Folder or Amazon S3 destination instead (EPUB2964).
• Fixed the AutoMap Administrator's New Job dialog cutting off its third choice. The caption Compose published parcels into a website (Composition Job) was clipped at the right edge of the option list, and the German and French captions were clipped as well; the dialog is now wider, so every job type's caption fits in full (EPUB2974).
• Fixed the AutoMap Administrator slowing down running jobs. To keep the jobs list current, the Administrator checked each job's scheduled task every 5 seconds while a job ran, and every 30 seconds otherwise. Each check searched every folder of the Windows Task Scheduler library, so with many jobs, or many tasks on the computer, the checks kept the Task Scheduler service busy enough to compete with the running job for processor time, and the Administrator responded slowly. The Administrator now looks each job's task up directly, and the 5-second checks cover only the jobs that are running (EPUB3010).
• Fixed the AutoMap Administrator mishandling a job whose scheduled task is in a folder of the Windows Task Scheduler library rather than at its top level. The Administrator found such a task and showed its status, but changed tasks only at the top level: deleting the job reported an error and left the task scheduled to run a job file that no longer existed; renaming the job stopped part-way; and saving the job's schedule, running the job when its task ran a same-named job in another workspace, or updating the task after AutoMap was installed in a new folder added a second task at the top level and left the original in place with its schedule; after a schedule change, for example, the job ran on both its old and its new schedule. The Administrator now deletes and updates a job's task in the folder that holds it, and the task of a renamed or duplicated job goes in the same folder as the original task (EPUB3011).
• Fixed deleting an AutoMap job leaving the job's folder behind, empty, when the folder is read-only. OneDrive can mark the folders it syncs read-only, so with the jobs folder in a OneDrive-synced Documents folder, each deleted job whose folder was read-only left an empty folder in the jobs folder: Windows does not remove a read-only folder, and the error was ignored. Folders that ePublisher deletes together with their read-only files, such as a deleted job's folder and the staging, Data, and temporary folders it cleans up, are now removed even when they are read-only. Empty job folders left behind by earlier releases stay in the jobs folder; delete them by hand (EPUB3012).
• Fixed deleting a folder that contains a junction, or a symbolic link to a folder, also deleting the files and subfolders of the folder the link points to, which can be anywhere on the computer. Designer, Express, and AutoMap delete folders this way when you delete an AutoMap job, when they clean up staging, Data, and temporary folders or clean a folder deploy destination, and when creating a project from a stationery fails; formats and the DITA adapter do so when they clear temporary and search index folders during generation. A junction or symbolic link inside such a folder is now treated as a link: the folder it points to keeps its content. Likewise, removing empty folders from a project's override and plugin folders no longer removes empty folders inside a folder that a junction there points to (EPUB3013).
• Fixed saving a project as a stationery in Designer changing the read-only attribute of files outside the new stationery. Before copying the project's Files, Formats, Targets, and Plugins folders into the stationery, Designer removed the read-only attribute from every file and folder in them: in the project itself, and in any folder that a junction or symbolic link in them points to, which can be anywhere on the computer. Designer now removes the attribute from the copies in the stationery only, so the project, and the folders its links point to, keep their attributes (EPUB3014).
• The AutoMap Administrator now keeps the comments in the files it saves. Saving a job file (.waj) or a composition job file (.wacj), for example after you edited, renamed, or duplicated a job, removed every comment added to it by hand; saving a workspace settings file (automap-workspace.xml) after a change to the workspace's destinations removed the comments inside a destination and could move the comment above a destination to above a different one. A comment now stays with the element that follows it, or at the end of the element that contains it, even when the Administrator reorders elements or moves one within a list, for example a document dragged to another group or a group moved into a site TOC container; a moved entry whose name or path appears twice in that list loses its comments. A comment above or inside something that is no longer in the file is removed with it: something you delete in the Administrator, such as a destination, a condition, or a composition member; a destination you rename; or a setting the Administrator does not write, such as job options set back to their defaults. Where one group, container, or list holds two entries with the same name or path, deleting the first gives its comments to the second. Removing a workspace's last destination now deletes its workspace settings file even when the file has comments, unless it references a deploy settings file; before, a comment among the destinations kept the emptied file, which still hid any workspace settings file in a folder above. The Administrator still writes its own indentation, so blank lines are not kept (EPUB3016).
• The AutoMap Administrator now adds deploy destinations to the workspace, where every job in the workspace can deploy to them, and keeps this computer's local destinations as the second choice. Edit > Deploy Destinations, a matching toolbar button (as in Designer and Express), the Deploy Destinations button beside an output target's Deploy to list, and the one in the composition job editor open one dialog with two tabs: Workspace, which it opens on, and Local, for this computer's destinations. The Deploy to list shows workspace destinations without a label and marks the others (this job) or (local). Destinations are no longer added to job files from the Administrator: a job or composition file that defines its own keeps them, and its editor can edit them or move them to the workspace. The Local tab can copy a Folder or Amazon S3 destination to the Workspace tab, leaving deploy.prefs as it is; local destinations belong to one Windows user, so scheduled jobs that run under another account do not see them. Renaming a workspace destination updates the jobs that deploy to it, once every one of them can be written, and removing one lists the jobs that deploy to it and says what each will use instead. Adding the first destination to a jobs folder whose jobs use a workspace settings file in a folder above asks first, because the new file hides that one (EPUB3024).
• Fixed AutoMap deploying incomplete output after a document could not be converted. When a source document could not be duplicated and prepared, for example because Microsoft Word could not open it or security policy blocked ePublisher's Word macros, generation logged only warnings and carried on, so AutoMap still deployed, and a deploy destination that is cleaned before deployment lost its previous content first. A stationery-based AutoMap job, which starts from a fresh project on every run, then replaced the published output with output that lacked those documents. Each such document is now an error that names it and states that its output is missing, or its PDF output when only the PDF conversion failed. With that error, AutoMap skips deployment, leaves the deploy destination unchanged, and ends with a non-zero exit code; Designer and Express report the same error in the generation log. A failed attempt also no longer leaves a partially prepared copy of the document behind, from which later stages could build output without the project's settings (EPUB3031).
• Fixed AutoMap treating a job file it could not open as an empty job. When another program held a job file (.waj) or composition job file (.wacj) open, for example a sync client or antivirus scanner, AutoMap went on with an empty job: a run never reported that the file could not be opened, the Administrator's job editor opened empty, and saving it, renaming the job, or duplicating it wrote the empty job over the file or into the copy. AutoMap now reports that the job file could not be opened, and saves nothing over a file it did not read; a run ends with an error, and the Administrator shows the error and leaves the file as it is (EPUB3026).
• Fixed the AutoMap Administrator saving only one of two workspace destinations whose names differ only by case, such as Docs and docs. Destination names are case-sensitive, so both are now saved (EPUB3017).
• The composition job editor in the AutoMap Administrator now lists the shared destinations in name order: the workspace's destinations first, then the other destinations defined on this computer (EPUB3018).
• The composition job editor now shows a shared destination that is not defined on this computer as <name> (not defined on this computer), as the job editor's Deploy to list does, instead of a bare name that looks like any defined destination (EPUB3019).
• Fixed a full clean of a folder destination that failed partway leaving the destination half-deleted and the output undeployed. The clean now checks that everything can be deleted before deleting anything and names the file or folder that blocks it, and a clean that cannot finish no longer skips the deployment: the output is deployed over what is there, and the error still fails the run (EPUB3050).
• Cleaning a folder destination now empties the folder and keeps it, instead of deleting and re-creating it, so the publishing account needs permission to delete only the folder's contents. A destination that is a junction or symbolic link is emptied through the link instead of being replaced by a new folder (EPUB3051).
• A composition job now passes the command-line options that control how a build runs (--stagingdir, --skip-reports, -q, -c, -u, and --nonotify) to each member job it builds, as it already did --dryrun, and lists them in its log, so a script can choose the staging folder of a composition's member builds (EPUB3059).
• Workspaces can now be added, removed, and listed from the AutoMap command line (--addworkspace with --workspacejobs and --workspacestaging, --removeworkspace, and --listworkspaces), with the same checks as the Workspace window, so a script can set up a computer without opening the Administrator. A change made from the command line while the Administrator is open is kept when the Administrator saves (EPUB3060).
• The landmark ID absolute-path warning now appears only when a target builds output that computes landmark IDs from document paths, such as WebWorks Reverb 2.0, instead of for every Stationery-based job whose documents are on another drive (EPUB3061).
• Fixed the AutoMap Administrator adding output targets, conditions, and variables to a job that was only opened and saved. Clicking OK in the job editor, even without a change, wrote every output target of the job's Stationery or project into the job file, each set to build, and copied the Stationery's conditions and variables into every output target. The next run built all of those output targets, and later changes to those conditions and variables in the Stationery no longer reached the job. The job editor now saves the job's own output targets: the Stationery's other output targets are listed unchecked on the Target Selection tab and are saved only if you check them. A condition or variable is saved only if you set it in the job; otherwise the Stationery's value applies. A new job still offers every output target, all checked, and no longer saves copies of the Stationery's conditions and variables. A job already saved this way keeps what was added to it until you remove it from the job file (EPUB3062).
• Fixed Scan Documents in the AutoMap job editor adding the conditions it finds only in the documents with Use Document Value unchecked. Such a condition now has Use Document Value checked, so the documents' value applies unless you change it in the job. Before, the job saved the condition with the visibility it had when the documents were scanned, so later changes in the documents did not apply (EPUB3063).
• Fixed AutoMap jobs replacing the Stationery's Boolean expression settings (Use Classic Conditions, Use Document Value, and the expression) with the defaults when the job did not set them. A job now keeps the Stationery's settings unless its output target sets them, and the job editor's Conditions tab shows the Stationery's settings until you change them. A job file whose output target sets the Expression, UseClassicConditions, or UseDocumentExpression attribute on its Conditions element keeps using its own settings, as before. Earlier versions of the AutoMap Administrator wrote these attributes on every output target, so remove them from a job file to have it use the Stationery's settings (EPUB3064).
• Fixed scans finding no conditions or variables in Markdown documents: Scan Documents in the AutoMap job editor, and Sync With Documents on the Conditions tab in Designer and Express. The Markdown adapter failed when a scan did not ask for the documents' styles, and the AutoMap job editor also could not find the adapter's helper; either way the scan ended without a message (EPUB3065).
• Fixed Sync With Documents on the Conditions tab in Designer and Express keeping only the conditions of the last document it scanned. It removed every other condition, including the settings of conditions the output target had set. The list now keeps every condition the documents use and removes only those that no document uses (EPUB3066).
• Improved the error when the Python helper that ePublisher installs is missing. Generation stopped in its first pipeline with a NullReferenceException and a stack trace. The generation log now names the missing helper and every folder searched, and says to reinstall ePublisher to restore it (EPUB3070).
• Added an in-process documentation-capture mode to the ePublisher user interface that walks the product's UI surfaces - menus, the Target Settings tree, Style Designer, the Document Manager, and dialogs - and emits a screenshot and an anchor record (access path, label, control type, and format context) for each, plus a coverage report against the format's defined settings. The captured anchors keep the online help's UI reference current on every build (EPUB2807).
• The WebWorks Platform's AI Assistant service now sends CORS headers on its error responses as well, so a reader's browser can show the service's real refusal - a message-size limit, an origin or assistant that is not allowed, or a rate limit - instead of the generic "Failed to send message: Failed to fetch" (EPUB2956).
• The WebWorks Platform's AI Assistant service now refuses an oversized chat message with a structured response that names the size limit, instead of a bare failure, so the Reverb 2.0 Assistant can tell the reader the message was too large and return the typed text to the message box (EPUB2957).
• Fixed AI Assistant avatar images uploaded to the WebWorks Platform never displaying in generated output: the platform's storage policy did not allow public reads of avatar uploads, so every configured avatar failed to load in every browser. Avatars now serve correctly, and the policy is owned by the platform's provisioning so a redeploy cannot silently undo it (EPUB2958).

Installer

• Fixed the WebWorks Rasterizer printer failing to install without any indication. The installer's printer setup step primed the Windows print spooler by installing a throwaway Microsoft PostScript class driver through printui.dll; on current Windows releases that step no longer stages the driver files it was meant to and, when the Print Spooler service is stopped or disabled - a common security-baseline setting on servers - it shows an interactive "Printers - The arguments are invalid" dialog that blocks an unattended install until someone clicks OK. The printer was then never created, nothing reported it, and Microsoft Word and Adobe FrameMaker image conversion later failed with only a per-image "Unable to create PostScript file" warning. The setup step now stages the PostScript driver files directly from the Windows driver store with no interactive step, checks that it runs elevated and that the Print Spooler service is running (starting a spooler that is merely stopped and reporting a disabled one explicitly), writes each step and its outcome to the installer's details log and to Rasterizer_Helper.log in the Rasterizer folder of the installation, and returns a nonzero exit code when the printer cannot be created, which the installer now surfaces as a warning instead of ignoring. Rasterizer_Helper.exe can also be run from an elevated command prompt to install or repair the printer once the reported problem is resolved, and the Word and FrameMaker adapters now log a warning naming the missing printer at the start of image conversion (EPUB2963).
• Fixed a silent (/S) install of the Express, Designer, and AutoMap installers never completing on a machine without Ghostscript. When Ghostscript is missing, the installer downloaded the GPL Ghostscript setup program and ran it with its silent switch, but current Ghostscript setup programs ignore that switch and show their setup wizard instead, so an unattended install waited on a wizard nobody could see. A silent install now skips the Ghostscript download and completes. Microsoft Word and Adobe FrameMaker image and PDF conversion need Ghostscript, so unattended deployments should install it through their own software-distribution channel beforehand. An interactive install still downloads Ghostscript when it is missing and runs its setup wizard, which must be completed for the ePublisher install to continue (EPUB2967).
• Fixed a silent (/S) install of the Express, Designer, and AutoMap installers never completing on a machine without HTML Help Workshop. When the workshop is missing, the installer's helper ran the HTML Help Workshop setup package quietly, but that only silences the package's extraction: the setup program it contains waits for its wizard, which a silent install cannot answer, so the install stayed blocked until someone found and closed the invisible wizard. A silent install now skips the HTML Help Workshop setup and notes the skip in the details log; interactive installs still offer it. HTML Help Workshop is needed only for Microsoft HTML Help (.chm) output and can be installed separately on machines that generate it (EPUB2972).
• The Express, Designer, and AutoMap installers now register Microsoft Defender Antivirus process exclusions for every product executable that writes the conversion workspace and the generated output, each by its full installed path: the product executable (WebWorks.Automap.exe, WebWorks.ePublisherDesigner.exe, or WebWorks.ePublisherExpress.exe), Transformer.exe, and Installer_Helper.exe. Previously the Designer and Express installers excluded only their product executable and the installer helper, by file name rather than by path, and the AutoMap installer excluded nothing, so unattended AutoMap jobs ran fully scanned while the interactive applications were exempt; a real-time scan holding a freshly written file could then fail a job on a random document (see EPUB2970). The step also ran blind. It now detects whether Microsoft Defender Antivirus is installed and active, reads each exclusion back after adding it, and records one outcome line per executable, both in the details of the installer and in %ProgramData%\WebWorks\ePublisher\Logs\install-<product>-<version>.log: added, already present, blocked when Defender is managed centrally with local changes disabled or exclusions tamper protected, skipped when Defender is absent or in passive mode behind another antivirus product, or failed with the error text. It never stops the install and never shows a window. Uninstalling now removes the exclusions the installer registered; earlier uninstallers left theirs in place. A new /NOAVEXCLUSIONS installer switch skips the step for organizations that do not allow installers to change antivirus settings. The silent installation guide for IT lists the exact exclusions per product for pre-approval or central deployment through Intune, Configuration Manager, or Group Policy (EPUB2973).
• Fixed the Express, Designer, and AutoMap installers and uninstallers not closing running ePublisher applications on Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025. Repair, a silent update (/S /UPDATE), and uninstall warn the user and then close any running ePublisher application, and the installers end a stale helper process before running it again, but every one of those steps went through WMIC, which those Windows releases no longer preinstall. The step failed silently, the applications kept running, and the uninstall or reinstall that followed failed with Error opening file for writing on a DLL in the shared Adapters folder. Running processes are now found and closed with tasklist and taskkill, which every supported Windows version includes (EPUB2968).
• Fixed a first-time install of any product failing with Error opening file for writing: ...\Adapters\WebWorks.Imaging.dll while another ePublisher application of the same version was running, most often when the products are installed back to back: the finish page's option to launch the product was selected by default, so the product just installed was still open when the next installer started. Designer, Express, AutoMap Administrator, and AutoMap load every DLL in the shared Adapters folder at startup and keep them open while idle, and the installer began writing files, with its registry keys already in place, without checking for them; abandoning the failed install left a partial installation that offered Repair on the next run. Each installer, including Legacy Formats, now checks for running ePublisher applications before it registers or writes anything. An interactive install names the running applications and waits for the user to close them (Retry) or to leave without changes (Cancel); it never closes them itself, so unsaved work is safe. A silent install closes them, as a silent update already does, and stops with a non-zero exit code, before changing anything, if one of them cannot be closed. The option to launch the product on the finish page is now cleared by default (EPUB2969).
• The AutoMap installer now sets up a Quantum Sync Trial workspace in Public Documents with evaluation Stationery, source documents, and three ready-to-run jobs, and its Finish page links to the online AutoMap trial guide. Reset Evaluation Materials in Preferences restores the trial materials (EPUB2975).
• Updated the Python runtime that ships with ePublisher from Python 3.6.2 to Python 3.14.7. Python 3.6 reached end of life in December 2021, and endpoint vulnerability scanners report the bundled Helpers\python\python.exe as outdated software with known vulnerabilities. The runtime converts Markdown++ source documents and compiles the Sass stylesheets of WebWorks Reverb 2.0 and other output formats, and it now contains only the packages those tasks use (libsass 0.23.0, Pillow 12.3.0, and py-romanify 1.0.0); developer tools, the Python test suite, pip, and Tcl/Tk are no longer installed. The runtime also now ignores the settings of any other Python installed on the same computer, such as the PYTHONHOME environment variable and per-user Python packages, which could stop Markdown++ conversion or stylesheet compilation from working. Stylesheets compiled by the newer Sass library are equivalent but not byte-identical to earlier output: transparent may be written as rgba(0, 0, 0, 0), and line endings inside comments are no longer doubled. Earlier ePublisher versions installed side by side keep their own copy of Python 3.6 until they are uninstalled (EPUB3002).
• The bundled Python runtime now ships its standard library precompiled, so the Markdown++ adapter no longer recompiles the library modules it imports on every start - users cannot write to the installed Helpers\python folder, so the compiled files could never be cached there. The adapter's per-call import time drops from about 1.7 seconds to about 0.6, which substantially shortens builds with many Markdown++ documents (EPUB3073).

Fixed Issues

Issue ID	Summary
EPUB2919	AutoMap - Administrator workspaces: named, switchable jobs and staging folders with per-workspace destinations
EPUB2963	Installer - WebWorks Rasterizer printer setup fails silently and can block on a printui error dialog
EPUB2964	Core - Remove the non-functional WebDAV deploy destination; a WebDAV destination left in deploy settings is dropped with a warning
EPUB2965	Reverb 2.0 - Landing page hidden from the table of contents no longer stalls the first page load
EPUB2966	Reverb 2.0 - AI Assistant shows the placeholder assistant instead of the reason when WebWorks Platform refuses the request
EPUB2967	Installer - Silent install never completes while the chained Ghostscript setup program waits for input
EPUB2968	Installer - Process cleanup uses wmic, which Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025 no longer preinstall; Repair, /UPDATE, and uninstall did not close running ePublisher applications
EPUB2969	Installer - Fresh install does not detect or close running ePublisher applications and fails with 'Error opening file for writing' on shared Adapters DLLs
EPUB2970	Adapters - Word document conversion no longer fails when a scanner holds the extracted relationships file open
EPUB2972	Installer - Silent install hangs on the chained HTML Help Workshop setup
EPUB2973	Installer - Microsoft Defender process exclusions cover AutoMap by full path, are verified and logged, and can be skipped with /NOAVEXCLUSIONS
EPUB2974	AutoMap - New Job dialog shows the full Composition Job caption in every language
EPUB2975	AutoMap - Seed a shared evaluation workspace at install time and link the trial guide from the installer
EPUB2976	Word Adapter - Conversions blocked by security policy name the likely cause, and the IT guide documents the wwdoc.dotm attack surface reduction exclusion
EPUB2977	Adapters - Markdown adapter autolinks angle-bracket placeholders with a one-letter scheme and logs Invalid URI warnings
EPUB2978	Adapters - Markdown adapter publishes an autolink ending in a slash as raw HTML when it opens a paragraph, list item, or blockquote
EPUB2980	Reverb 2.0 - AI Assistant knowledge base takes hours on large documents because it rereads the intermediate file for every paragraph
EPUB2981	Reverb 2.0 - AI Assistant knowledge base is incomplete when two generations run at the same time
EPUB2983	Markdown Output - Tables inside list items and blockquotes start at column 0 and repeat the list or quote prefix inside each cell
EPUB2984	Markdown Output - Links to the first paragraph of a page lose their anchor
EPUB2985	Markdown Output - Continuation lines of ordered list items numbered 10 and higher are indented 3 spaces instead of 4
EPUB2988	AutoMap - Landmark IDs from stationery-based jobs depend on the staging folder
EPUB2989	Markdown adapter - A code fence indented beyond its container keeps the extra indentation on every code line
EPUB2990	Markdown Output - Custom alias on a blockquote is not written; Markdown++ links to it have no target
EPUB2991	Markdown Output - Nested blockquote: content after the inner quote leaves the outer quote
EPUB2992	Markdown Output - A list or blockquote that opens a list item repeats the item's marker on every line
EPUB2993	Formats - Links to a blockquote nested inside another blockquote publish as plain text in all outputs
EPUB2994	Markdown adapter - Markers in a blockquote's directive are dropped
EPUB2995	Formats - Links to a table, or to a list inside a blockquote, publish as plain text; Markdown++ output drops list and table aliases
EPUB2996	Markdown adapter - A marker with an empty value (marker:DropDownEnd="") is rejected and published as a PassThrough marker
EPUB2997	Markdown adapter - Markers in a list's directive are dropped
EPUB2998	Markdown adapter - A marker value that contains = (marker:Name="a=b") is rejected and published as a PassThrough marker
EPUB2986	Markdown Output - Table Rendering option is only half applied; knowledge base tables use the multiline form without the multiline marker
EPUB2987	Markdown Output - Link titles become duplicate Link Title paragraph markers when Markdown++ output is read back as a source
EPUB2999	Formats - Markdown++ output does not escape marker values; a --> or " in a value breaks the directive
EPUB3000	Markdown adapter - A marker value that contains ; (marker:Name="a; b") is rejected and published as a PassThrough marker
EPUB3001	Markdown adapter - Front matter merge splits the first directive on quotes it shouldn't: an apostrophe in a style name reverses marker precedence
EPUB3002	Helpers - Upgrade bundled Python from 3.6 (end-of-life) to a supported release
EPUB3006	Licensing - License Information dialog: show version, build, Contract ID, and license status for this version
EPUB3007	Reverb 2.0 - Composed site sitemap on Amazon S3 lists every parcel's pages as absolute URLs
EPUB3008	Markdown adapter / Markdown++ output - remaining Markdown++ conformance gaps: front matter precedence, marker names, inline markers
EPUB3009	Reverb 2.0 - Default robots.txt writes a relative Sitemap URL
EPUB3010	AutoMap Administrator - Job status poll searches the entire Task Scheduler library for every job every 5 seconds while a job runs
EPUB3011	AutoMap Administrator - Delete, rename, schedule edit and Run Now act on the root folder for a job task that lives in a Task Scheduler subfolder
EPUB3012	AutoMap Administrator - Delete Job leaves the empty job folder when the folder is read-only (for example under OneDrive)
EPUB3013	Core - FileUtil.DeleteDirectory follows junctions and deletes the contents of the folder they point to
EPUB3014	Designer - Save as Stationery clears read-only attributes through junctions, in folders outside the project
EPUB3016	AutoMap Administrator - Preserve XML comments in .waj, .wacj, and automap-workspace.xml when saving
EPUB3017	AutoMap Administrator - Saving workspace destinations keeps both of two destinations whose names differ only by case
EPUB3018	AutoMap Administrator - The composition job editor lists shared destinations in name order
EPUB3019	AutoMap Administrator - The composition job editor labels a shared destination that is not defined on this computer
EPUB3020	Word Adapter - Reuse Microsoft Word for several documents when applying settings (new setting Documents per Word session)
EPUB3024	AutoMap Administrator - Workspace deploy destinations by default; local destinations secondary
EPUB3026	AutoMap - A job file that cannot be opened is an error, and is no longer replaced by an empty job
EPUB3031	Core - A document that cannot be converted is an error, so AutoMap no longer cleans the deploy destination and deploys incomplete output
EPUB3032	Word Adapter - Built-in styles are aliased once per run instead of renamed in Word for each document
EPUB3033	Word Adapter - Applying settings saves the copy of the document only where a later step reads the saved file
EPUB3034	Word Adapter - Applying settings copies .docx documents instead of saving them again in Word
EPUB3035	Word Adapter - Applying settings skips hyperlink, field-update and repagination work that cannot change the document
EPUB3036	Word Adapter - The generation log says when Microsoft Word stops unexpectedly while applying settings to a document
EPUB3038	Word Adapter - Applying settings no longer saves an unused copy of each document
EPUB3039	Word Adapter - A Word dialog during a conversion no longer stops the conversion indefinitely
EPUB3042	Word Adapter - A document Word cannot open is reported as such, not as macros blocked by security policy
EPUB3043	Word Adapter - Floating linked pictures in Word 2003 compatibility-mode documents no longer crash Microsoft 365 Word
EPUB3044	Word Adapter - Linked pictures in .docx documents are found after the documents and images are moved together
EPUB3047	Transit - Help and the commands that start ePublisher now work in Microsoft 365 Word
EPUB3048	PDF - XSL-FO - Images in table cells without alt text no longer publish as empty cells
EPUB3049	Reverb 2.0 - Topics open at the top instead of scrolled past the breadcrumbs and page toolbar
EPUB3050	AutoMap - A deploy destination that cannot be cleaned is no longer left half-deleted; the error names what blocked the clean, and the output is deployed anyway
EPUB3051	AutoMap - Cleaning a folder destination empties the folder instead of deleting it, so only permission to delete its content is needed; a destination that is a junction or symbolic link is emptied through the link instead of being replaced by a new folder
EPUB3052	Word Adapter - When a Word dialog stops a conversion, the generation log quotes what the dialog says, not only its title
EPUB3053	Word Adapter - Fields and linked pictures that refer to other files or websites are converted from what the document stores (included text as last updated, the copy and size of a linked picture), so Word no longer stops conversions with its field security notice; the new setting Update external references refreshes them from their sources as earlier releases did
EPUB3054	Word Adapter - Converting a .docx no longer opens a mail-merge data source or, unless the setting Update external references is on, a template attached from a website, SharePoint or a network share, so they cannot stop or stall the conversion; the styles stored in the document are used
EPUB3056	Word Adapter - A picture that is stored in a document and also linked to a website, a network share or a missing file is converted from its stored copy instead of a "cannot be displayed" placeholder, and the generation log names each linked picture that is not stored and cannot be included
EPUB3057	Word Adapter - Checking whether a long Word document with many fields (index entries, hyperlinks, cross-references) is a master document no longer delays generation by minutes
EPUB3058	Word Adapter - Unbalanced condition markers in a Word document are reported once per condition, saying what is wrong and where in readable text, instead of once per marker without the reason; the paragraph that holds one is no longer split or padded in the output
EPUB3059	AutoMap - A composition job passes the command-line options that control how a build runs (--stagingdir, --skip-reports, -q, -c, -u, --nonotify) to each member job it builds, and lists them in its log
EPUB3060	AutoMap - Workspaces can be added, removed, and listed from the command line (--addworkspace, --removeworkspace, --listworkspaces) with the same checks as the Workspace window; a change made from the command line while the Administrator is open is kept when the Administrator saves
EPUB3061	AutoMap - The landmark ID absolute-path warning appears for jobs whose output does not use landmark IDs
EPUB3062	AutoMap Administrator - Saving a job from the job editor adds every output target of its Stationery with build="True" and copies the Stationery's conditions and variables into the job
EPUB3063	AutoMap Administrator - Scan Documents adds the conditions found only in the documents with Use Document Value unchecked
EPUB3064	AutoMap - A job replaces its Stationery's conditional expression settings (Use Classic Conditions, Use Document Expression, expression) with defaults when it does not set them
EPUB3065	AutoMap Administrator - Scan Documents finds no conditions or variables in Markdown documents
EPUB3066	Designer/Express - Sync With Documents on the Conditions tab keeps only the last document's conditions and removes the rest
EPUB3067	FrameMaker Adapter - The first paragraph of a document's first table publishes in Microsoft Sans Serif instead of its style's font
EPUB3068	FrameMaker Adapter - A paragraph's own font override is repeated on its first text run, with Microsoft Sans Serif for fonts Windows does not have
EPUB3069	FrameMaker Adapter - Paragraph styles and inline font changes publish in Microsoft Sans Serif when their font is not installed on the build machine
EPUB3070	Core - A missing python helper fails every generation with a NullReferenceException in ExecPython
EPUB3071	Reverb 2.0 - AI Assistant sends page context as structured fields, not an HTML comment
EPUB3072	Reverb 2.0 - Source ID landmark IDs differ from Markdown++ anchors for FrameMaker paragraphs that contain markers
EPUB2746	Formats - The 2025.1 format version archives include the fixes backported to the 2025.1 post-releases
EPUB2763	Adapters - Markdown adapter Python tests standardized on the unittest framework with shared fixtures and one-command runners
EPUB2807	User Interface - In-process doc-capture mode generates the UI reference screenshots and anchors for the online help
EPUB2956	Platform - API error responses carry CORS headers so browsers show the Assistant's real error instead of "Failed to fetch"
EPUB2957	Platform - An oversized chat message returns a structured refusal naming the size limit instead of a bare 422
EPUB2958	Platform - Assistant avatar uploads are publicly readable, so configured avatars display in the output
EPUB3055	Word Adapter - Removed the resiliency cleanup and STARTUP trusted-location steps, no-ops since Word 2010 that would otherwise change Word's security settings
EPUB3073	Installer - Bundled Python ships precompiled, so Markdown++ adapter calls no longer recompile the standard library on every start
EPUB3074	Formats - Images without alt text no longer show their output file name as a tooltip
EPUB3075	Reverb 2.0 - Merge Settings hierarchy is honored when every group is inside a container

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Build 2026.1.4754 (GA, 2026-08-20)

The improvements and fixed issues below shipped in the ePublisher 2026.1 GA release (build 4754, 2026-08-20).

Improvements

Reverb 2.0

• Added draggable menu width with mouse, touch, and keyboard support; the chosen width persists per browser via localStorage and is clamped between 200px and 600px (EPUB2714).
• Redesigned Assistant chat message styling for narrow vertical layouts with role labels above each turn, full-width assistant prose, and compact right-aligned user bubbles (EPUB2715).
• Replaced O(N²) breadcrumb hydration in the search panel with a coalesced FIFO queue and a single drain that flushes synchronously when the panel opens, eliminating the per-parcel main-thread stalls that scaled with output size (EPUB2716).
• Progressive hydration for large-output projects: landmarks persist to localStorage and rehydrate at parse time so #/landmark URLs resolve immediately on revisits, search and book-index data persist to IndexedDB for warm-cache reads, and remaining-parcel hydration defers to browser idle so the initial content paint is no longer blocked by background data loading. URLs that need parcel or landmark resolution still wait for the full gate (EPUB2717).
• Fixed Reverb 2.0 output where the page would not finish loading for projects with minimal configuration. The output now generates a parcel for each top-level project group automatically when no explicit merge configuration is present (EPUB2747).
• Landmark ID option now supports Source ID passthrough on a per-paragraph-style basis, allowing writers to architect which important heading IDs (custom aliases) get exposed in Reverb URLs (EPUB2718).
• Reverb 2.0 HTML id attributes and anchors no longer use the ww prefix; custom CSS or JavaScript that targeted these may need updated selectors (EPUB2722).
• Added support for the AI Assistant button in the Reverb 2.0 menu navigation. The button is enabled by the new Generate AI Assistant Format setting and appears alongside the Contents and Index buttons, with the navigation row automatically adjusting when buttons are toggled (EPUB2657).
• Added a Hide AI Tab when file local setting in the AI Features group of WebWorks Reverb 2.0. When enabled, the AI Assistant tab is hidden at runtime if the generated output is opened over the file: protocol, but remains visible and functional when the same output is served over http: or https:. This allows a single generated artifact to be bundled locally with a desktop product and mirrored to a public web server (EPUB2760).
• Removed the unused data-highlight-require-whitespace HTML attribute from Reverb and Reverb 2.0 page output; the attribute was last consumed by search JavaScript before the 2024.1 release and is no longer read (EPUB2755).
• Fixed FrameMaker-rasterized images being upscaled to the rule's max-width and max-height when the natural frame fits inside those bounds. Generated JPEG and PNG output now matches the anchored frame's natural pixel dimensions, restoring the 2024.1 behavior where max-width and max-height act as upper bounds rather than scale targets. This regression was introduced in 2025.1 (EPUB2767).
• Added a Generate Knowledge Base Per Parcel setting in the AI Features group of WebWorks Reverb 2.0. When enabled, the AI Assistant knowledge base is emitted as one zip archive per top-level project group (knowledge-parcel-<parcel-name>-<generation-hash>.zip) instead of a single project-wide knowledge-<project-name>-<generation-hash>.zip, so incremental publishing workflows can re-upload only the changed parcel's content to the assistant vector store (EPUB2762).
• Added search character folding so equivalent characters are treated as the same search term. By default the curly apostrophe (’) and modifier-letter apostrophe (ʼ) fold to the straight apostrophe (') in both the search index and the search query, so a search for either spelling of a word such as d’activité returns the same results; displayed text keeps its original typography. The equivalent-character set is locale-driven and can be customized per language (EPUB2776).
• Changed the naming of the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base archives so each name includes the project or parcel name and an 8-character per-build generation hash. The single project-wide archive is now named knowledge-<project-name>-<generation-hash>.zip (previously Knowledge Base.zip), and each per-parcel archive is named knowledge-parcel-<parcel-name>-<generation-hash>.zip; names are lowercase with spaces replaced by hyphens. Because the generation hash changes with every build, automation that uploads or deploys these archives should match them by pattern (for example, files beginning with knowledge-) rather than by an exact filename (EPUB2782).
• Improved WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant streaming performance in long conversations. While a response streams in, the output now updates only the in-progress message and re-renders its Markdown on a short throttle, instead of rebuilding the entire conversation and re-parsing every prior message on each token. This removes the progressive slowdown that previously scaled with conversation length (EPUB2764).
• The WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant now bundles its DOMPurify (HTML sanitizer) and markdown-it (Markdown renderer) libraries directly into the generated output instead of loading them from a third-party CDN (cdn.jsdelivr.net) at runtime. Generated documentation no longer makes an external request for these libraries, so the Assistant works in offline and air-gapped deployments and avoids the first-use network round trip. The HTML sanitizer is now always applied to Assistant responses; previously, if the CDN was slow or unreachable, sanitization could be skipped. The bundled library versions (DOMPurify 3.4.8 and markdown-it 13.0.1) are pinned with the product so upgrades are explicit (EPUB2765).
• Added a Generate Groups setting to WebWorks Reverb 2.0 (enabled by default). When disabled, the target generates a content-free shell: the full Reverb chrome (header, footer, splash page, search, and an empty navigation manifest) with no topic pages and no companion PDF. This lets a site's navigation and content be composed from independently generated sources rather than from the project's own documents (EPUB2793).
• WebWorks Reverb 2.0 now reports unexpected runtime errors to the browser console instead of silently swallowing them, so a broken output (for example, a navigation parcel that never binds and leaves the page spinner running) now emits a clear console message identifying the affected subsystem and data, making such issues diagnosable without a debugger. Errors that Reverb expects as normal control flow (timing and existence probes, and cross-origin or private-mode access that is designed to fail on the file: protocol) remain silent, so a healthy load produces no new console output (EPUB2791).
• Reduced the time before the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant begins responding. Sending a question and receiving the streamed answer are now handled in a single request to the assistant service instead of two back-to-back requests, so the first words of a response appear sooner — most noticeably on slower or higher-latency connections. Responses still stream in word by word, and message persistence, citations, and error handling are unchanged (EPUB2766).
• Added a thinking and reasoning indicator to the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant. When an assistant is configured to reason before answering, the chat now shows a "Thinking…" status — upgrading to "Reasoning…" once the model reports it is reasoning — in the standard assistant message presentation, and streams the model's reasoning summary in a lighter shade above the answer. The indicator and summary clear as soon as the answer begins to arrive. Assistants without reasoning enabled are unaffected. The conversation list was also corrected so a saved chat's title no longer includes the hidden page-context text that is sent with each question (EPUB2803).
• Fixed a WebWorks Reverb 2.0 keyboard accessibility issue where pressing the Tab key could move focus into the search results or popup frame and then out of the document into the host browser's chrome (address bar, menus, and toolbar buttons), leaving keyboard users lost. These frames are now excluded from the Tab order; search results remain reachable through the existing focus management that moves focus to the first result after a search (EPUB2724).
• Added an Optimized reader mode setting to the Accessibility group of WebWorks Reverb 2.0. When enabled on a target, the output is streamlined for screen-reader and keyboard-only users: tab focus and screen-reader landmarks are removed from decorative chrome controls (the side-menu toggle, Index tab, search submit and scope controls, previous, next, home, translate, back-to-top, breadcrumbs, and the page toolbar's print, email, PDF, social share, and feedback buttons), leaving the skip-to-content link, search box, table of contents, and page content reachable. A streamlined keyboard contract adds Alt+S, Alt+M, and Alt+C jumps to the search box, menu, and content (with F6 cycling as a fallback), routes Tab through search, table of contents, then content, advances to the next topic when Tab reaches the end of a page, auto-focuses the first search result, and clears the search box on Escape. The setting is off by default, so existing output is unchanged unless a publisher enables it (EPUB2723).
• Added federated parcel composition support to WebWorks Reverb 2.0, allowing independently built and published outputs ("parcels") to be assembled into one unified site without rebuilding them. Each build now emits a durable composition descriptor alongside its content recording the group's navigation entry and page map; a project with no groups now builds the complete site chrome with an empty navigation manifest, for use as the composed site's shell; and the runtime now tolerates a missing parcel — the table of contents, search, index, and landmarks each skip an absent parcel's data with a console warning instead of leaving the page loading indefinitely (EPUB2830).
• Improved how the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant presents the usage limits an assistant's owner configures. Publicly deployed assistants spend the owner's prepaid balance on every question, so the assistant service limits how many messages an individual reader may send and can pause an assistant that reaches its daily budget. Readers are now identified by an anonymous token the assistant service issues and the output stores in the browser, so these limits apply per reader rather than to everyone sharing a network address; the token identifies no one and readers may clear it at any time. When a limit is reached, the chat explains why in plain language instead of showing a generic error — a reader who has used their message allowance sees a countdown to when they can continue and the message box is disabled until then, an assistant paused by its daily budget reports that it is temporarily unavailable, and a conversation that has grown too long to continue points the reader to the Delete Chat button to start a new one. In each case the unanswered question is returned to the message box rather than left in the conversation. Outputs generated before this release continue to work unchanged (EPUB2829).
• Improved WebWorks Reverb 2.0 search caching for multi-parcel sites so that updating one parcel no longer discards every parcel's cached search data. Each parcel's search data now carries its own content-derived cache key, so a returning visitor re-downloads search data only for the parcels that actually changed; unchanged parcels continue to serve search results from the browser's local cache. This most benefits federated and incrementally deployed sites, where a single high-velocity parcel (for example, release notes) can be republished without forcing a full search-data reload of the entire site. No hard refresh is required for updates to appear, and outputs generated before this release continue to work unchanged (EPUB2789).
• Improved how WebWorks Reverb 2.0 manages its browser-side cache when several help sets are hosted on one web domain. Each help set keeps its own cache, but nothing previously reclaimed the caches of help sets a reader stopped visiting, so on a shared domain the browser's storage allowance could silently fill up, at which point caching stopped working for every help set on that domain. Reverb now records when each help set's cache was last used, keeps the total within a defined budget by discarding the least recently used caches first, reclaims space automatically so the help set currently being read can always store its cache, and removes cached search data for help sets not visited within thirty days (where the browser supports enumerating its databases). The help set currently being read is never evicted, single-site behavior is unchanged, and stored AI Assistant conversations are never touched (EPUB2790).
• Menu navigation button dividers are now position-aware. The dividers between the Assistant, Contents, and Index buttons previously assumed the Index button always rendered rightmost, so disabling Index while showing the other two left the trailing button painting a divider against nothing whenever a skin customizes the divider width (dividers are invisible at their default zero width). All three buttons now share the same divider defaults, and whichever button renders last in the row suppresses its trailing divider. The Classic, Corporate, and Social skins, which carry their own copies of the affected style rules, received the same correction; the Metro skin's full-frame button design is intentionally unaffected, and the Neo skin inherits the fix (EPUB2754).
• Added a dedicated CSS customization layer: a new custom.scss compiles to custom.css and is linked as the last stylesheet on every page, so custom rules win the cascade everywhere - content pages, popups, search, the splash page, and the top-level frame - without overriding any stock stylesheet. Copy custom.scss into a project override folder to add selectors, or override the color, border, size, and font variable partials to restyle standard structures (EPUB2908).
• The splash page now displays a Groups Grid - a responsive set of entry-point cards generated from the help set's groups and Merge Settings containers - replacing the static splash image. Each card shows a group or container title with its first-level entries as links, giving readers a one-page map of the entire help set; help sets that disable the Contents tab in favor of the AI Assistant keep full browse navigation through the grid. The grid renders from the same data as the Menu, so federated compositions are included automatically. Projects that overrode the splash.png image should override Splash.asp instead; the grid's appearance is styled through the new splash groups variables and the custom.scss layer (EPUB2907).
• The AI Assistant now displays the assistant's configured avatar image. Reverb reads the avatar set for the assistant in WebWorks Platform and renders it everywhere the assistant is represented — the welcome screen, each assistant reply, the thinking and reasoning indicator, the streaming reply, and the conversation list header — in place of the generic icon. Assistants with no avatar configured, and avatars whose image cannot be loaded, continue to show the generic icon, so existing help sets are unchanged until an avatar is set. The image is cropped to each skin's existing avatar shape and size, so both square and wide source images display correctly and the message list does not shift as avatars load. Skins that need to style a photo differently from the icon can target the new ww_skin_assistant_avatar_has_image class (EPUB2911).
• WebWorks Reverb 2.0 output now reports when its index.html or a parcel page has been reformatted by an XML or HTML pretty-printer. Such tools rewrite an empty element such as a script or iframe tag into self-closing form, which is invalid in HTML and stops the page from loading: the output sat on its loading indicator with nothing in the browser console to explain why, because the scripts that would have reported the problem never ran. A guard built into the page itself — written so that the same reformatting cannot disable it — now reports a specific console error naming the cause and the correction, and the generated files carry a comment warning against reformatting them. A healthy page reports nothing (EPUB2792).
• Fixed a WebWorks Reverb 2.0 build failing when a Merge Settings container holds exactly one group. The container and its single group resolved to the same navigation identifier, so the group's composition manifest received two root elements and the build stopped with an invalid-XML error naming the manifest file. A container holding one group now builds normally (EPUB2912).
• Added an Alt+A keyboard shortcut to the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 Optimized reader mode. On an output target that also enables the AI Assistant, Alt+A opens the Assistant panel and places focus directly in the chat message box, joining the existing Alt+S, Alt+M, and Alt+C jumps to the search box, menu, and content; while the chat interface is still loading, focus lands on the Assistant tab and moves into the message box as soon as it is ready. On output targets without the AI Assistant, Alt+A does nothing (EPUB2927).
• Fixed WebWorks Reverb 2.0 links no longer responding after the browser Back button when the output is viewed over HTTP. A page restored by Back was missing the routing that carries link clicks through the Reverb frame, so ordinary links fell back to bare in-frame navigation and runtime links - such as #/<source-id> links authored in Markdown++ - did nothing when clicked; viewing the same output from file: hid the problem. Links on a page restored by Back now behave exactly as on first load (EPUB2947).
• Fixed the links report flagging runtime hash links as unresolved. A link such as [What's New](#/whats-new) in Markdown++ - or any #/, #context/, #page/, or #search/ link - resolves in the reader's browser rather than at generation time, but the links report classified every one as an unresolved link warning even though the published link works. WebWorks Reverb 2.0 targets now classify these links under a new Runtime hash link report setting (default: Ignore), so the links report only warns about anchors that are genuinely missing. Set Runtime hash link to Warning to restore the previous auditing behavior. Other output formats, where such links genuinely cannot resolve, keep the unresolved link warning (EPUB2948).
• Improved WebWorks Reverb 2.0 landmark caching for multi-parcel sites so that updating one parcel no longer leaves runtime hash links stale for returning readers. Landmark data previously shared one site-wide cache key, so a parcel redeployed without the site shell could serve old landmark data from the browser's caches indefinitely - links to new or renamed topics landed on the not-found page and no ordinary reload recovered. Each parcel's landmark data now carries its own content-derived cache key, stamped on the site's navigation manifest exactly like the per-parcel search key, so a returning reader re-downloads landmark data only for parcels that actually changed; unchanged parcels continue to resolve #/<source-id> and #context/ links from the browser's local cache, and a redeployed parcel's new links resolve immediately without a hard refresh. This most benefits federated and incrementally deployed sites, and outputs generated before this release continue to work unchanged (EPUB2949).
• The AI Assistant now renders a WebWorks attribution line beneath the message box when the assistant's WebWorks Platform plan calls for one. The line reads "AI Assistant · Powered by WebWorks" in muted footer-scale text, links to webworks.com in a new tab, and stays in view on the welcome screen and throughout a conversation. WebWorks Platform decides per assistant whether it appears — assistants on a plan that includes white labeling emit no attribution markup at all — and a plan change takes effect the next time a reader loads the help set, with nothing to re-publish (EPUB2946).
• Fixed WebWorks Reverb 2.0 composed sites replaying stale navigation and search state for returning readers after a site shell update. The composed cache key was derived from parcel content alone, so redeploying only the shell and recomposing left the key unchanged, and returning browsers kept trusting locally stored state that referenced the previous shell - surfacing as console errors about unknown groups and unreliable navigation until some parcel happened to be republished. The composed cache key now also incorporates the shell build's own generation hash, so a shell redeploy followed by a recompose refreshes every returning reader's cached state automatically. Site shells deployed by earlier releases carry no generation hash in their deployed record; composing against one logs a warning that a shell-only redeploy cannot refresh reader caches until the shell is rebuilt and redeployed with the current version (EPUB2952).
• Fixed the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 search page stopping with a console error when its markup and the enclosing site's search scope state come from different builds - for example, mixed chrome generations on a federated deploy destination around a site shell update. A search page built without the group filter markup that received scope titles from a scope-enabled site aborted before running the search, which could leave a search entry loading indefinitely. Such a mismatch now degrades gracefully: the filter display is omitted and the search runs normally. Console diagnostics for a failed message dispatch also now name the failing action instead of "undefined" (EPUB2954).
• Fixed federated WebWorks Reverb 2.0 sites serving outdated shared scripts and styles after a site shell update. Shared chrome files such as scripts/common.js live at stable paths owned by the site shell, but content pages reference them with a cache stamp from their own parcel's build - which a shell-only redeploy never changes - so CDN edges and reader browsers could keep serving the previous shell's files for up to a year, mixing old scripts with new pages. Two changes close this: an S3 deploy now compares each re-uploaded cached file against the object it replaces and includes the changed paths in its CloudFront invalidation, so edges refresh immediately; and shared chrome files are uploaded with a five-minute freshness window instead of a one-year immutable policy, so reader browsers pick up a shell update within minutes. Assets addressed by their own build's content - per-parcel search and navigation data, images - keep the long-lived immutable policy, and the first deploy after this release refreshes existing deploy destinations automatically (EPUB2953).
• Fixed federated WebWorks Reverb 2.0 deployments omitting shared files that only content pages use. Chrome that a page or popup template references - scripts/popup.js in the standard format, plus any files a project's template overrides add, such as a syntax highlighter - was emitted only when a matching page was generated, so a zero-document site shell never produced it and no federated deploy delivered it; composed sites served those files only if an earlier deployment happened to leave copies behind. The site shell build now inventories the page and popup templates alongside the other chrome templates and emits every file they reference, so the shell's deploy owns the complete set and a fresh federation onto a clean deploy destination serves everything its pages use (EPUB2959).
• Fixed the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant failing with a misleading network error when used on very large pages. Every message sent to the Assistant includes the text of the currently open page as context; on a very large page - a complete release notes page, for example - the resulting request exceeded the WebWorks Platform's message size limit, the send was rejected, and the reader saw only "Failed to send message: Failed to fetch", which suggests a network problem and gives no hint that page size was the cause. The page context is now capped to a sentence-aligned budget before sending, and earlier turns no longer re-send their page snapshots - the Platform reads page context only from the newest message - so the Assistant works from any page and long conversations stay fast to send. Error reporting also improved: a message the service refuses as too long now shows the service's guidance and returns the typed text to the input, and a send the service rejected or never received says so instead of echoing the browser's opaque network message (EPUB2955).
• Added a Default Tab setting to the Menu group of WebWorks Reverb 2.0 that controls which menu navigation tab — AI Assistant, Table of Contents, or Index — is selected when a reader first opens the help set. The default, Automatic, selects the AI Assistant tab when the output target generates it, then Table of Contents, then Index. An explicit choice applies when that tab is present in the output and otherwise falls back to the automatic order. Output targets with Optimized reader mode enabled now also open the resolved default tab at startup instead of always opening the Table of Contents (EPUB2961).

Formats

• Upgraded the Apache FOP engine used to generate PDF (XSL-FO) output from version 2.8 to 2.11, including the underlying Apache Batik (1.19) and Apache PDFBox (3.0) libraries. Generated PDF output is unchanged for existing projects; the upgrade incorporates upstream layout and rendering fixes along with current dependency security updates. The DITA Adapter's PDF (XSL-FO) generation uses the same upgraded engine (EPUB2786).
• Added support for using a Markdown++ date value as the document last modified date in WebWorks Reverb 2.0 output. When the Document Last Modified Date page setting is enabled, a date front matter key or an authored date marker (case insensitive) on a topic is used as that topic's last modified date; topics without one continue to show the file system last modified date. This is useful for assembled Markdown++ sources, where the file system date often reflects the assembly document rather than the individual topic (EPUB2805).
• Fixed Symbol-font characters (such as the Greek lowercase mu, capital Delta, and the square-root sign) being dropped from PDF (XSL-FO) output, where they appeared as a missing-glyph box. These characters are emitted at their standard Unicode positions tagged with the Symbol font; Apache FOP auto-detected the Windows SymbolMT font for that family, but SymbolMT does not map the characters at those positions, so the glyphs could not be found. The bundled Apache FOP configuration now maps the Symbol font family to a font that contains the characters at their standard Unicode positions, so they render correctly; other fonts are unaffected (EPUB2811).
• Build log messages produced by the Apache FOP engine (PDF - XSL-FO output) and by the DITA Open Toolkit (DITA source documents) are now recorded line by line at their actual severity instead of as one block: lines carrying a warning or error marker are logged as warnings or errors, and the remainder of the tool's progress transcript is logged as informational. On a successful build, a spurious note from the tool no longer flags its entire transcript as a warning, and an AutoMap job with Verbose logging disabled (or a --quiet run, EPUB2856) records only the lines that need attention. Failed runs still record the complete transcripts, and the per-target generate.log always keeps full detail (EPUB2858).
• Fixed PDF - XSL-FO builds reporting success when the Apache FOP engine fails to render a PDF. A rendering failure — for example, a validation error over the generated FO file — left the affected PDF silently missing from the output while the build completed without any error. The failure is now recorded as a build error that names the missing PDF file, and an AutoMap build exits with a failure status, so a missing PDF can no longer go unnoticed (EPUB2926).
• Fixed table of contents entries for paragraphs with the Generate output style option disabled producing dead, link-less entries — most visibly breadcrumbs rendered as plain text in WebWorks Reverb output. Such an entry now falls back to the destination of the nearest entry beneath it that generates output, so its table of contents and breadcrumb links navigate to the first generated page under that heading. In addition, WebWorks Reverb 1.0 and 2.0 breadcrumbs no longer render a hyperlink for an entry that resolves to the page currently being viewed; it is shown as plain text instead of a link that navigates back to the same place (EPUB2615).
• Fixed Graphic style dimension properties having no effect on raster images in PDF - XSL-FO output. Width, Height, Content Width, and Content Height set on a Graphic style were silently discarded, leaving the style's Scale option — which resamples the image's pixels at generation time and visibly degrades quality — as the only way to publish an image at a reduced size. Explicit dimension properties now size the image in the published PDF: the Apache FOP engine scales the full-resolution original at render time, so the image stays sharp in print and at high zoom. A Content Width or Content Height percentage is relative to the image's own size (20% renders the image at 20% of its natural dimensions), and a Width or Height length (for example 1.25in) scales the image proportionally into that box. Images without explicit dimension properties publish exactly as before, and styles that rely on the Scale option are unchanged (EPUB2923).
• Fixed preformatted paragraphs — most commonly Markdown fenced code blocks — taller than one page overflowing the bottom margin in PDF - XSL-FO output. Every line of such a paragraph was chained to its neighbors as a single unbreakable unit, so a code block longer than the page ran off the bottom edge and the remaining lines were clipped from the PDF instead of continuing on the next page, and no style setting could recover the missing content. A paragraph whose White space property resolves to a pre value now fills the page to the bottom margin and continues on the following page. Hard line breaks in ordinary paragraphs still keep their lines together across a page break exactly as before, and setting White space to normal on a style restores that keep-together behavior for it (EPUB2937).
• Fixed inline code spans in Markdown++ output publishing angle brackets and ampersands as HTML character entities. Markdown renderers do not decode entities inside a code span, so a span written in the source as <, >, or & displayed as literal entity text such as &lt; on the published page. Inline code spans now publish the raw characters, exactly as code fences always have. In addition, a code span whose content itself contains a backtick now publishes in the standard Markdown form for that case: the span's delimiter grows to a backtick run longer than any run inside the content, with one space of padding on each side when the content begins or ends with a backtick (EPUB2939).
• Markdown++ output no longer escapes underscores inside words. Snake-case identifiers common in API and scripting documentation, such as get_my_file, previously published with a backslash before every underscore. An underscore with a letter or digit on both sides cannot begin or end emphasis, so the escapes were unnecessary; such underscores now publish clean, in headings, paragraph text, lists, and table cells alike. Underscores at word boundaries, as in __init__, remain escaped because unescaped they would render as emphasis. The Markdown++ source adapter applies the same rule when reading documents, so an intra-word underscore in source text is treated as a literal character rather than emphasis — snake-case names in Markdown++ source no longer publish with stray italics — and the adapter now also reads code spans delimited by backtick runs, matching what Markdown++ output emits, so published Markdown republishes without loss (EPUB2940).
• Fixed a footnote inside a nested table publishing its footnote text twice — once after the inner table and again after the enclosing table — in every HTML-based output format and in PDF - XSL-FO output, where the duplication also skewed the enclosing table's own footnote numbering. A table now emits only its own footnotes, and a nested table's footnotes appear once, after the nested table itself (EPUB2942).

Adapters

• Added DITA Adapter option to use DITA source IDs as paragraph IDs in generated output (EPUB2706).
• Hardened how the Markdown helper adapter passes each conversion request to its helper process. The request is now staged in a temporary file that the command interpreter redirects to the helper's standard input, rather than written to the child process's standard-input pipe. This makes source-document conversion reliable when AutoMap is launched by a parent process that redirects its standard input to a non-console pipe, such as continuous-integration runners and automation or agent harnesses; interactive console and Designer/Express builds are unaffected (EPUB2774).
• Added support for Adobe FrameMaker 2026 (version 18, 64-bit): it is detected and selectable in Designer, Express, and AutoMap, the WebWorks client deploys to the FrameMaker 2026 plugins folder, and FrameMaker 2026 documents publish through a target (EPUB2783).
• Fixed unbalanced If/End If blocks in the Word Add-in (Transit) registry-fallback chain that locates the ePublisher Express executable, restoring consistent, parallel structure across the version-fallback levels (EPUB2728).
• Fixed Microsoft Word source document conversions failing on systems with recent Windows updates (June 2026, the KB5094126 family). Those updates changed how Windows passes arguments into Word's automation interface, so ePublisher's macro calls could arrive with empty document paths — conversions failed with Adapter "Word" failed in method "DuplicateDocumentAndApplySettings" at step "3: Word.BeginPreProcessPhase", and generated output was missing images. The Word adapter now passes arguments in a form unaffected by the Windows change, so Word conversions work regardless of Windows patch level (EPUB2933).
• Fixed DITA cross-references to non-DITA files — for example an xref to a PDF stored alongside the source topics — publishing as plain text with the referenced file missing from the generated output. The DITA Open Toolkit's map-first preprocessing renames such link targets to hashed temporary names without recording a way back to the original file, so the generation log warned that a file with a 40-character hexadecimal name does not exist, the link was dropped, and the file was never copied as a baggage file. Sources are now processed with the toolkit's classic preprocessing, which preserves link targets: the cross-reference publishes as a working link and the referenced file is copied into the output's baggage folder. The fix applies when the DITA Open Toolkit version adapter setting is 4.4, its default; projects explicitly set to an older toolkit version are unchanged (EPUB2941).
• Fixed Microsoft Word footnotes and endnotes that use a custom reference mark (for example an asterisk chosen in Word's Insert Footnote dialog) publishing with an auto-generated number injected in front of the mark, so a footnote authored as * rendered as 1* at the reference and 1 * in the footnote text. A custom-marked note now publishes exactly as authored: the mark itself is the footnote reference and links to the footnote text, and custom marks no longer consume a footnote number — matching Word, where automatic numbering skips them. In addition, the footnote reference link in WebWorks Reverb 1.0 and 2.0 output now targets an anchor that exists on the published page, so clicking a footnote reference jumps to its footnote text (EPUB2943).

Markdown

• Fixed Markdown++ table output where a header cell using rowspan that extended into the first body row produced a column count mismatch (EPUB2719).
• Added YAML front matter handling to the Markdown adapter. Flat key-value pairs at the top of an .md file are stripped from the published content and converted into a Markdown++ markers directive attached to the document's first content block, so metadata such as title, author, date, and status flow through to the WIF as markers instead of producing stray paragraph or horizontal-rule output (EPUB2623).
• Markdown++ front matter keywords and description keys now resolve to the Keywords and Description marker types regardless of letter case, so lowercase keys (the common YAML convention) populate the generated keywords and description meta tags the same as the capitalized forms. Previously only the exact capitalized keys matched the marker rules and other casings were silently ignored (EPUB2806).
• Fixed a trailing blank row separator in a Markdown++ multiline table producing a spurious empty table row without cell structure in the generated document data, which also caused the table's recorded column count to be zero. A blank pipe row in a multiline table is the row separator syntax, so a separator that opens the table body, closes it, or immediately follows another separator no longer emits a row; the published table now matches the authored rows exactly. Tables in standard (single-line) Markdown syntax are unaffected, where a row of empty cells remains legitimate content. Previously, PDF (XSL-FO) generation was hardened to tolerate such rows (EPUB2633); with this fix the Markdown adapter no longer produces them (EPUB2635).
• Improved Markdown++ duplicate-alias diagnostics and link-target resolution. A custom alias now always claims its identifier: when a heading's auto-generated slug matches a custom alias defined elsewhere in the document, the custom alias keeps the identifier, the heading remains addressable under a suffixed anchor, links to the identifier reach the aliased element, and no warning is emitted. Only a genuine duplicate—two directives defining the same custom alias—is reported, now with the stable Markdown++ diagnostic code MDPP008 so authors and downstream tooling can filter, suppress, or escalate it. Previously both situations produced the same generic duplicate-alias warning, and a heading appearing earlier in the document would take the identifier, silently redirecting links intended for the alias's element to the heading instead (EPUB2756).
• Fixed standard Markdown image alt text being dropped from generated output. The first parameter of —the canonical Markdown alt-text field—now maps to the HTML alt attribute, and the quoted title maps to the HTML title (tooltip) attribute, across all HTML-based formats. Previously the alt text was ignored and the title text populated both attributes, so images authored with standard Markdown conventions published with an empty alt, inaccessible to screen-reader users. An image without authored alt text emits alt="", marking it decorative; a title is omitted unless authored. Images authored as  that relied on the title also populating alt now publish with an empty alt—move the text to the alt field, or author both fields. Output generated from FrameMaker, Word, and DITA sources is unchanged (EPUB2725).
• Fixed publishing a blockquoted code fence to Markdown++ output producing invalid markdown. The interior lines of the fenced block lost their blockquote prefix, and a raw internal XML element leaked into the generated text in its place. All fence lines—delimiters and interior—now carry the blockquote prefix, and the fence content is preserved verbatim, including directive comments and markdown-significant characters. The same correction applies to the markdown produced for the WebWorks Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant knowledge base, which uses the same serializer (EPUB2553).
• Fixed paragraph styles using the markdown blockquote syntax property splitting into separate quotes in Markdown++ output. The blank separator line between consecutive blockquote-syntax paragraphs was emitted without the quote prefix, which terminates a blockquote in markdown—one continuous quote published as several, and on republishing through the Markdown adapter the original paragraph style was lost on all but the first paragraph. Consecutive blockquote-syntax paragraphs now publish as one continuous quote with the separator line prefixed. Structural blockquotes and all other markdown output are unchanged (EPUB2898).
• Fixed paragraph content beginning with runs of spaces or tabs publishing as accidental indented code blocks in Markdown++ output. Four or more leading spaces open a code block in markdown, and source content routinely carries such runs. A leading whitespace run on a paragraph's raw content—or on its auto-number, which leads the line when present—is now compressed to a single space; inline formatting in the content is preserved. Fenced code content keeps its indentation verbatim, and the same correction applies inside blockquotes, list items, and multiline table cells. Leading whitespace inside generated table cells is likewise compressed, which can visibly change cell padding in regenerated markdown while preserving column alignment (EPUB2548).
• Added backslash escaping for Markdown++ variable references. Writing \$product_name; publishes the literal text $product_name; without substitution—the backslash is consumed and the reference is not resolved—while normal references continue to resolve as before. Any backslash immediately preceding a variable reference suppresses substitution, matching the Markdown++ specification's formal grammar, and code spans and fenced code remain excluded from variable processing. Escaped references also no longer register phantom entries in the project's scanned variable list (EPUB2711).
• Markdown++ duplicate-alias collision suffixes now use the specification's hyphen separator. When two headings produce the same auto-generated slug, or two directives declare the same custom alias, the later occurrence is disambiguated as name-2, name-3, and so on (previously name_2), and a generated suffix that would match an authored alias or heading slug keeps incrementing until unique. Note that regenerating existing output changes previously collision-suffixed anchors (name_2 becomes name-2), so deep links, bookmarks, or context-sensitive help targets pointing at such anchors must be updated once. Authors who link to specific headings are encouraged to declare explicit alias anchors, which are stable across builds (EPUB2893).
• Markdown++ alias and heading-slug identifiers are now Unicode-normalized (NFC) before sanitization. Previously, an accented alias or heading authored in decomposed form (base letter plus combining accent) lost its accent: a decomposed #Café alias produced the anchor Cafe- with a stray hyphen, and a decomposed ## Café heading slugged to cafe—a different anchor than the precomposed spelling of the same text. Both spellings now produce identical, accent-preserving anchors, and duplicate aliases that differ only in Unicode composition are reported and disambiguated like any other duplicate. Anchors generated from decomposed-form content change accordingly on regeneration; this lands alongside the collision-suffix change above (EPUB2893) so anchor identity settles in a single release. Pure-ASCII content is unaffected, and aliases differing only in letter case remain distinct (EPUB2904).
• Markdown-sourced content now publishes semantic HTML elements by default. The Markdown adapter records the HTML element implied by each construct in the generated style catalog, so an ATX heading publishes as <h2 class="Heading_2"> rather than <div class="Heading_2">, and paragraphs, block quotes, fenced code, horizontal rules, and lists publish as p, blockquote, pre, hr, and ol / ul / li. Setext headings underlined with = and - publish as h1 and h2, and bold, italic, inline code, and strikethrough publish as strong, em, code, and del. An HTML tag style property set explicitly in the project still takes precedence, so existing customizations are unaffected; a project that relies on the previous div and span defaults can restore them by setting the HTML tag property explicitly on the affected styles. Generated stylesheets emit the previous div and span selectors alongside the semantic ones so hand-written CSS keeps matching, and the affected styles now declare zero margins so the rendered spacing is unchanged. Level-six Markdown headings (######) also gained a table of contents level, so they appear in generated contents and round-trip through Markdown++ output instead of publishing as plain paragraphs (EPUB2726).
• Fixed multiline Markdown tables ignoring the table's Cell Head and Cell Body paragraph styles. Cell text in a table marked multiline was rendered with the generic Paragraph style nested inside the cell style, so formatting set on the <TableStyle> Cell Head / Cell Body paragraph styles (font size, color, and so on) had no visible effect and cells published with default body formatting. Cell text now carries the cell style directly, exactly as in tables without multiline. Paragraphs in a cell that name an explicit style with a <!--style:...--> directive keep that style, and lists, block quotes, and code fences inside cells keep their usual styles. Projects that restyled the generic Paragraph style to compensate should move that formatting to the cell styles, which multiline cell text now follows (EPUB2921).
• Fixed Table style column-width options having no effect on Markdown-sourced tables. Markdown tables published without column definitions in the document model, so First Table Cell Width, Last Table Cell Width, and Use document cell widths silently produced no column sizing in PDF - XSL-FO output and Apache FOP sized every column to its content. Markdown tables now declare one column definition per column, the same structure FrameMaker, Word, and DITA sources provide, so the column-width options size Markdown table columns exactly as they do for those sources. Markdown itself does not author column widths, so Use document cell widths has no widths to apply for Markdown sources; use First Table Cell Width / Last Table Cell Width, which now take effect (EPUB2924).
• Fixed Markdown link targets with a URI scheme other than http or https - such as mailto: email links - publishing as broken local file paths. Such a target was rebased against the source document's folder as if it were a relative file link, so generation logged a spurious warning naming a file such as ...\mailto:info@webworks.com that does not exist, and the published link pointed at that nonexistent file. A scheme-qualified target now passes through untouched in every output format, so an email link publishes as a working mailto: link, and ftp:, tel:, and other scheme links are likewise preserved. Relative file links, same-document anchor links, and absolute paths publish exactly as before (EPUB2932).
• Fixed Markdown++ condition names containing hyphens never being evaluated. The Conditions reference documents - as a valid condition-name character, but the adapter did not recognize a hyphenated name such as writer-notes or print-only: the condition never appeared in the Conditions Window, an assigned Hidden value had no effect - so content intended to be suppressed always published - and the unrecognized condition comment lines could also prevent a <!-- style:Name --> comment on the line directly below the condition opener from styling the block that follows. Hyphenated condition names now scan and evaluate exactly like underscore and alphanumeric names, and the style comment attaches correctly. Note that a hyphenated condition previously assigned Hidden takes effect on regeneration, so content it wraps disappears from the output as originally intended (EPUB2962).

Core

• Improved reliability of application error reporting. When ePublisher encounters an unexpected error, the error report now correctly captures the original problem instead of being interrupted by a secondary failure inside the reporter itself (EPUB2748).
• Fixed an issue in the Designer Log window where clicking a hyperlink that included file location information (line and column) could trigger an unexpected error. The link now opens the referenced file in the user's associated editor, or shows a brief tooltip identifying the file extension if no editor is associated (EPUB2750).
• Fixed Target Settings so editing a setting that already has a text value is recognized as a change: the new value is applied to the project and the save indicator is enabled, instead of the edit being silently discarded and the previous value retained (EPUB2710).
• Fixed the Legacy Installer format manifests so the 2021.1 formats entry references 2021.1 binaries instead of 2020.1, preventing the wrong format version from being installed (EPUB2729).
• Preference migration now carries customized toolbar layouts and docked-panel arrangements forward when upgrading to a new version, so Designer and Express interface customizations are no longer reset to defaults on every release (EPUB2731).
• Removed a spurious empty "Image file not found" warning that was emitted for text-only frames (such as FrameMaker cover pages) during image generation; the warning was cosmetic and generated output is unchanged (EPUB2733).
• AutoMap jobs can now use a Designer or Express project (.wep / .wrp) directly as their stationery by adding useAsStationery="True" to the job's <Project> element, instead of first generating a separate Stationery (.wxsp). The job stages from the live project's format design on each build and applies its own documents and target settings, so design changes flow into automated builds without regenerating Stationery. A job that references a project without the attribute continues to build it in place, and Stationery-based jobs are unchanged. The same project-as-stationery choice is available in the ePublisher AutoMap Administrator when creating a new job, and ePublisher Express can now synchronize a project directly from a .wep or .wrp in addition to a standalone Stationery. When such a project is built without an ePublisher Designer installation present, the generation log now reports that the ePublisher format library could not be found instead of failing with an unclear error (EPUB2808).
• Fixed online license activation in FIPS-enabled environments. The license server encrypts activation keys with AES, but on a computer with the Windows FIPS security policy enabled the client fell back to an incompatible encryption algorithm and could not decrypt them, leaving the product reporting "Product is unlicensed" even though the license was valid. The client now uses the FIPS-validated AES provider, so license activation succeeds whether or not FIPS mode is enabled (EPUB2820).
• Fixed generated output containing invalid links into a document excluded from a target. When a target was regenerated after unchecking a document's Include in output setting, hyperlinks and cross-references pointing into that document could still be emitted using stale data from the earlier generation: PDF (XSL-FO) output produced a link that jumps to the top of the first page, and HTML-based outputs produced a link to a page that does not exist. Such links are now removed, leaving only their text, the same as a clean regenerate, and the excluded document's previously generated files are cleaned up instead of lingering in the output (EPUB2837).
• Added a Deploy scope to each target's deployment configuration in Designer, Express, and the AutoMap Administrator: Everything (complete site — the default and previous behavior), Groups (content only), or Shell (site files only). A scoped deployment publishes only the declared portion of the output into a shared destination, so independently deployed outputs coexist without overwriting one another, and a scoped Clean removes only the files that project deployed. The scope appears next to the Deploy to selection (enabled for formats that support composition), is stored on the target, and can be overridden per AutoMap job target or with the new --deployscope command line option (EPUB2831).
• Added an Amazon S3 destination type alongside Folder. A named S3 destination stores the bucket address, region, optional named AWS credential profile, and optional CloudFront distribution — never access keys; credentials resolve through the standard AWS profile or instance-role chain. Uploads apply web-appropriate caching (versioned assets cached immutably; pages and maps always revalidated), scoped deployments and Clean affect only the deploying project's own objects, changed pages trigger a CloudFront invalidation, and a dry run option prints every operation without contacting AWS (EPUB2833).
• Added the AutoMap Composition Job (.wacj), a new job type that assembles independently deployed WebWorks Reverb 2.0 outputs into one site. A composition job lists its member jobs, an optional site table of contents, and the shared destination; running it reads each deployed parcel's composition descriptor, renders and splices the combined navigation manifest into the deployed shell, rebuilds the site's url_maps.xml and sitemap.xml, advances the browser cache key, and for S3 destinations uploads the recomposed files and issues a CloudFront invalidation — in seconds, without rebuilding any content. Members may optionally be built and deployed first as part of the run; a declared table of contents composes exactly the listed parcels, while discovery mode automatically includes every parcel found in the destination (EPUB2832).
• Added inline destination definitions to AutoMap job files. A .waj or .wacj can now carry the definition of a named Folder or Amazon S3 destination in a DeploySettings element, so a job checked into version control runs on any machine without first seeding that machine's deploy preferences; a new --deploysettings command-line option accepts the same definitions from a file for build-server use. Destinations are still referenced by name, an inline definition takes precedence over a same-named deploy preference (with a warning when the two differ), and a composition forwards its inline definitions to the member jobs it builds (EPUB2834).
• The AutoMap command line's -t/--target option now applies to job files: the named targets are built, taking precedence over each job target's build attribute, so a multi-target job can rebuild and redeploy a single target without editing the job file. A name that matches no job target is reported, and a job whose selection comes up empty now reports that no targets are selected instead of failing (EPUB2838).
• An AutoMap Composition Job (.wacj) now resolves its shared destination through the --deploysettings overlay file as well: the composition's own inline definition takes precedence, then the overlay, then the machine's deploy preferences — the same order job-file targets use — with a warning whenever a higher source shadows a differing definition of the same name. A version-controlled destination-definitions file can therefore serve as the single source of truth for a federation's destinations, and a composition forwards the merged definitions to the member jobs it builds (EPUB2839).
• Added a --dryrun switch to the AutoMap command line that forces every deployment in that run dry, so a live configuration can be rehearsed with one flag: Amazon S3 destinations print their would-be upload, delete, and invalidation operations without contacting AWS; transports without dry-run support (Folder, custom) skip their deployment with a log line; a composition job against a non-S3 destination skips its in-place compose; and a composition forwards the switch to the member jobs it builds. There is deliberately no opposite switch — a destination configured as dry run cannot be forced live from the command line (EPUB2840).
• Composition Jobs (.wacj) are now first-class citizens of the ePublisher AutoMap Administrator. Composition jobs appear in the jobs list with their own icon and can be scheduled, run, stopped, monitored, renamed, duplicated, and deleted like publishing jobs; a hand-authored .wacj dropped into the Jobs folder is discovered automatically. A third New Job option — Compose published parcels into a website (Composition Job) — creates a composition in the Jobs folder, and a new editor manages the member jobs (with role and optional pre-build per member), the destination (one of the workspace's destinations, a local one, or one the composition file defines itself), and the site table of contents (automatic discovery, or a custom tree with an option to also include newly published parcels). Opening and saving a hand-authored composition preserves its structure, including nested table-of-contents containers and inline destination definitions. Stopping a running composition from the Administrator now works, a composition job refuses to start while another run of the same job is in progress, and email notification preferences apply to composition runs (EPUB2851).
• Publishing jobs (.waj) can carry the same destination definitions: Folder or Amazon S3 destinations stored in the job file itself — no secrets — so a job checked into version control, moved to another machine, or scheduled under a different account deploys without first seeding that machine's deploy preferences. The job editor lists the destinations a job file defines, each target's Deploy to list labels them (this job), and a job file's definition overrides a destination of the same name (with a note when it differs from a local one) (EPUB2851).
• ePublisher Designer and ePublisher Express now manage deploy destinations directly: an Edit > Deploy Destinations menu item and a matching toolbar button open the destinations editor without requiring a project or target to be selected — the same top-level access the AutoMap Administrator's Edit menu gained in this release. Opened this way, the editor offers the Folder and Amazon S3 transports; a format's custom transports continue to appear when the editor is opened from a target's settings, and existing entries of any transport remain editable. The Designer/Express editor now also matches the Administrator's presentation: the Deploy Destinations, Folder Destination, and Amazon S3 Destination dialog titles, the Deployment Type column caption, deployment-type icons in the Add menu and on each entry of the Target Settings Deploy to list, and a note stating that the store is local to the Windows user on the computer and shared by Designer, Express, and AutoMap. The Merge Settings dialog picked up the matching polish: tooltips on the container buttons and always-visible expansion indicators on container nodes (EPUB2854).
• Added a Preview Output in Browser action beside Explore Output on the AutoMap Administrator's Job menu. Where Explore Output opens the deployed files (a folder, or the Amazon S3 console), Preview Output opens the deployed site itself: a Folder destination opens its entry document directly from the deployment folder, and an Amazon S3 destination derives a best-effort address at click time — the CloudFront distribution's domain when a distribution ID is configured (read with the destination's stored credential profile; nothing new is stored), otherwise the bucket's S3 static-website endpoint, otherwise the direct address of the entry document on a public bucket, each verified before opening. Publishing jobs list one entry per deploying target, a composition job its single destination, and job-inline deploy definitions are honored first, matching Explore Output. The result is explicitly a preview — a derived view of the deployed output that may differ from the production serving URL, since custom domains and CDN configuration remain outside ePublisher's knowledge — and when no address can be derived, the message reports which derivations failed and why instead of a bare error (EPUB2853).
• Added a Build options box to the Job Info tab of the AutoMap Administrator's job editor, holding job-level build toggles that are stored in the job file (.waj) itself. Its first option, Skip reports, is the job-level equivalent of the command line's --skip-reports switch: when checked, report generation is skipped for every target the job builds, whether the job runs on its schedule, through Run Now, or from a direct command-line invocation. The stored option and the command-line switch combine so that either one enables the skip, and jobs that leave the option unchecked are written exactly as before (EPUB2855).
• Added a Verbose logging option to the job editor's Build options box, and a matching -q/--quiet switch to the AutoMap command line. Verbose logging is on by default and preserves today's output; unchecking it (or passing --quiet) quiets the run — the generation engine's step-by-step progress messages are omitted from the console and the job's <name>-log.txt, while milestone, warning, and error messages still print, so a scheduled job's log reduces to what needs attention. The per-target generate.log always keeps full detail for troubleshooting. The stored option and the command-line switch combine so that either one quiets the run — whether the job runs on its schedule, through Run Now, or from a direct command-line invocation — and jobs that leave the option checked are written exactly as before (EPUB2856).
• A federated parcel can now declare its own placement in the composed site's table of contents. When a parcel's Merge Settings nest its group under one or more table-of-contents containers, the parcel build records that arrangement in its composition descriptor, and a Composition Job consuming the deployed parcel — in discovery mode, or as a discovered extra alongside a custom tree — creates those containers and nests the parcel accordingly, merging same-named containers declared by multiple parcels into one shared section. Parcel owners thereby control where their content appears without the composition enumerating every parcel, and a newly published parcel slots into the right section of the site automatically. A placement declared in the composition job itself always takes precedence, parcels without the metadata compose exactly as before, and a conflicting declaration is reported and composes flat rather than failing the composition. The Merge Settings may be authored in the parcel's project or on its AutoMap job's target (.waj) — both flow into the descriptor identically (EPUB2857).
• A Composition Job (.wacj) now selects each member's output target explicitly and validates every selection before anything is built. A composition-wide target (<Jobs target="…">) applies to every member, an individual member may override it (<Job … target="…"/>), and when neither is given the member's single composition-capable target is detected automatically — preferring the target the member's job actively builds — while a member with several candidates is reported by name rather than one being picked silently. The selected target must exist and use a format that supports composition, and every member must produce the same format; a member whose target cannot compose (for example PDF - XSL-FO) is now reported with the member, target, and format named, replacing a misleading error that directed users to edit that format's definition. A member the composition builds now builds only the selected target, leaving the member's other targets to its own standalone runs, and composing skips — with a warning — any deployed parcel recorded as built by a different format or release than the shell. The Administrator's composition editor gained a matching optional Output target selection, defaulting to automatic detection; a per-member override declared in the composition job file itself surfaces in a read-only Target column whenever one is present, so an active override is visible rather than silently in effect (EPUB2869).
• Adding a member to a Composition Job no longer requires browsing the file system for the common case: the composition editor's Add button now drops down the publishing jobs (.waj) in the Administrator's Jobs folder for one-click selection, since a composition's members are typically sibling jobs of that folder. Jobs already added as members appear in the list checked and disabled so they cannot be added twice, a Browse choice remains for jobs and projects stored anywhere on disk, and a job picked from the list is stored with the same job-relative reference the editor has always written (EPUB2870).
• A member a Composition Job builds (Build checked) now deploys to the composition's destination instead of the member job's own, so a composition whose members all build is self-contained: point it at an empty destination and one run builds every member, deploys everything to that destination, and composes the site — and one member job can feed any number of compositions, each publishing to its own destination. Members without Build remain federated: their output is read from the destination as already published by their own jobs, which keep deploying to their own destinations in standalone runs. To match, members added in the composition editor now start with Build checked (the editor writes build="true" explicitly; an absent build attribute in a hand-authored composition still means the federated reading). A new --destination AutoMap command-line switch carries the override and is also available directly: it deploys every target built in that run to the named destination in place of each target's own (EPUB2872).
• Composition run logs now speak the vocabulary of the composition job itself — members, destinations, and deployed output — instead of engine internals. Messages name the member whose output they concern, a problem is reported once (a parcel skipped for a format or version mismatch is no longer also miscounted as missing), and the run's final error explains why there was nothing to compose: nothing deployed yet, output found but unusable, or output that matches nothing the composition declares. The run also cross-checks each member it does not build up front, warning when the member's own job deploys the selected target to a different destination than the composition's — or to none — so a destination misalignment is named before the compose reports missing output (EPUB2871).
• Added the ability for ePublisher Designer to work with ePublisher Express projects, so a Designer installation can fully stand in for an Express seat. Designer now opens, builds, synchronizes, and deploys Express projects (.wrp): an Express project opened in Designer keeps the Express experience — Document Manager, stationery synchronization, no Style Designer — and carries the Express window icon, while Designer projects behave exactly as before. A new File > New Project from Stationery menu item creates an Express project from a Stationery or from a Designer project serving as one, using the same dialog Express provides, and the Open dialog now offers both project types in a single filter. The Recent Projects menu and the Start Page show each project's type icon, so the two kinds of project are distinguishable at a glance. Double-clicking a .wrp opens Express when it is installed and Designer otherwise, uninstalling Express hands its file associations to a still-installed Designer instead of leaving them orphaned, and Designer trial installations now include the Express trial project and stationery as well as the Word authoring plugin's help (EPUB2885).
• Opening a standalone Stationery file (.wxsp) now starts the New Project from Stationery flow instead of failing. Double-clicking a Stationery in Windows Explorer, passing one on the command line, or choosing one in an Open dialog brings up the New Project dialog with that Stationery already selected — in both ePublisher Designer and ePublisher Express — leaving only the project name and location to fill in, the same way opening a document template starts a new document. Previously the products attempted to load the Stationery as a project and failed with an error, a common source of confusion for users trying to put a Stationery to use (EPUB2909).
• The Style Designer's style list now supports selecting several styles at once, so one edit applies to all of them. Ctrl-click and Shift-click extend the selection within the style category being viewed — paragraph, character, table, page, graphic, or marker — and a value set on any of the Properties, Options, Target Properties, or Target Options tabs is written to every selected style, in place of repeating the same edit style by style. Where the selected styles do not already agree on a value, that value is shown blank rather than showing one style's setting as if it were shared; typing a value there sets it for the whole selection. The [Prototype] style is never part of a multiple selection — including it drops it from the selection — because editing it already reaches every style of that category. Selecting a single style behaves exactly as before (EPUB2913).
• ePublisher Designer can now hand a project to a colleague as a linked ePublisher Express project. A new File > Save as Express Project menu item creates an Express project (.wrp) whose origin is the Designer project it came from, so one seat authors the formats, output targets, and styles while colleagues work in linked Express projects that pick up each change through the usual synchronization prompt — the arrangement Stationery provides, without publishing a Stationery first. The Designer project is saved before the Express project is created, so the new project opens without an immediate synchronization prompt, and Designer offers to open the result once it is finished. An option, off by default, also carries the Designer project's source documents, groups, and Merge Settings across: group identities are preserved so each group keeps the place its Merge Settings give it, document paths are rewritten to resolve from the new project's location, and fresh document identities are assigned. Document-level style overrides, a deprecated feature, are never carried over; a notice says so when the Designer project has any, since the new project's output would otherwise differ from the original's without explanation (EPUB2905).
• Fixed a failure that made a project unopenable when a source document was recorded with a volume-relative path (one beginning with a backslash, such as \docs\guide.doc): ePublisher reported the project file as invalid rather than loading it, where such a path now resolves against the volume the project itself is stored on and is written back unchanged when the project is saved (EPUB2917).
• Fixed the Style Designer showing its Options tab — and the style name in the style list — in bold for styles that have no option of their own. The emphasis counted every recorded option entry, including entries that merely restate the value the style already inherits, so the Options tab could claim a modification while the options list showed nothing set. The tab and style-name emphasis now use the same test as the options list itself: an option counts only when it changes the value the style would otherwise inherit (EPUB2922).
• Fixed a Groups-scope deployment publishing nothing for a group whose name contains a character that the output path replaces. Generation converts characters such as a comma, colon, ampersand, or number sign in a group name to underscores when it derives the group's output directory, but the deployment looked for the group under its original name, matched no files, and skipped the group without a message — leaving a composed site missing that section. The deployment now derives the directory name exactly as generation does, including the group-name space handling (EPUB2841).
• Fixed per-parcel AI Assistant knowledge base archives never reaching a shared deployment destination. A scoped deployment treats every file it does not recognize as a group's own as part of the site shell, so the knowledge-parcel-<name>-<hash>.zip archives written at the output root were published by neither a Groups-scope nor a Shell-scope deployment. Each parcel now owns its knowledge base archive and publishes it together with its content (EPUB2842).
• Fixed a scoped Amazon S3 deployment stopping partway through while still reporting success. The build records some search-index entries — the external and mail addresses collected from a group's baggage — that are never written to disk; the scoped upload passed every recorded entry to Amazon S3 without checking that its file exists, so the first such entry ended the upload after only the group's images had been sent, and the target still reported zero errors. Entries with no file on disk are now skipped, as the Folder destination already did, and a failure during deployment is now counted as a target error so an incomplete deployment can no longer be reported as a successful build (EPUB2844).
• Fixed a scoped Amazon S3 deployment leaving a CloudFront distribution serving the previous version of the pages it had just re-uploaded. Topic pages, index chunks, and composition descriptors are uploaded under unchanged addresses and are marked as always revalidated, but only the compose step issued a CloudFront invalidation, and only for the site's shared files — so republished content pages stayed stale until the distribution's cache expired. A scoped deployment now invalidates the paths it re-uploaded, and a dry run prints the invalidation it would issue (EPUB2845).
• Fixed saved toolbar and panel layouts accumulating entries that were never meant to persist. Each session's Recent Projects entries and the report tools were written into the saved layout, so the stored layout grew every time ePublisher Designer or Express was used; one layout examined during testing carried 99 such entries and had grown from 171 KB to 304 KB. These entries are rebuilt at run time and are no longer saved, and an existing layout that already carries them is cleaned up the first time it is loaded (EPUB2910).
• Fixed the ePublisher Express stationery synchronization prompt browsing for standalone stationery files only. File > Synchronize with Stationery accepts a Designer or Express project as the origin, but the prompt's Browse button listed only .wxsp files, so an Express project whose origin is a .wep or .wrp project — the arrangement Save as Express Project creates — could not be confirmed or re-pointed from the prompt. Both paths now browse for stationeries and projects alike (EPUB2920).

Installer

• Added an /UPDATE command-line switch to the Express, Designer, AutoMap, and Legacy Formats installers. Combined with /S, the installer silently uninstalls the currently installed version and then installs fresh, providing a one-command unattended upgrade or repair for enterprise deployment. On a machine with nothing installed it behaves as a normal silent install. Automatic removal of the prior version is supported for installations of 2021.1 and later; uninstall older versions manually before installing (EPUB2801).
• Fixed the Express installer's interactive Repair option so it reinstalls into the existing install location instead of relocating the product to the default folder when a custom install location was in use (EPUB2801).
• Fixed an issue where upgrading more than one ePublisher product with the silent /UPDATE switch, or with the interactive Update/Repair option, could leave shared, runtime-extracted content — such as the Markdown adapter, the bundled Python runtime, and the output format files — at the previously installed version, so corrections included in the upgrade did not take effect for those resources. An update or repair now re-extracts these shared resources in place of the stale copies, so an upgraded installation matches a clean install. First-time (clean) installations were not affected (EPUB2809).
• Reduced what the packaged helper adapter archive installs. Developer test suites, their fixtures, and an unused experimental adapter were being packaged alongside the production adapter runtime and extracted into the installed product. Only production adapter files are now packaged; an installation upgraded in place may retain the previously extracted files until it is installed cleanly (EPUB2815).
• The ePublisher AutoMap launcher (WebWorks.AutoMap.exe) is now code-signed, like every other executable in the product. The launcher had shipped unsigned since it was introduced, which could cause it to be flagged by software-restriction or application-allowlisting policies that verify publisher signatures (EPUB2881).
• Re-signed the Microsoft Word automation templates (wwdoc.dotm, transit.dotm) that ship with the product. The previously shipped wwdoc.dotm carried a digital signature that no longer verified, and both templates carried only the oldest of the three VBA signature formats. Both templates are now signed with the complete set (legacy, agile, and V3), so their macros verify and are trusted under current Microsoft 365 macro security policies, including environments that require V3 signatures (EPUB2931).
• The Express, Designer, and AutoMap installers now download and install Oracle JDK 26 when no Java installation is present on the machine, replacing the previously downloaded JDK 21. Machines with an existing Java installation are unaffected (EPUB2951).

Documentation

• Refreshed the ePublisher Trial evaluation projects (Exp_Design, Exp_ePub, Exp_Stationery) for the 2026.1 release (EPUB2759).

Fixed Issues

Issue ID	Summary
EPUB2548	Markdown Output - Normalize leading white space for non- Code Fence paragraphs
EPUB2553	Markdown Output - Blockquote of code fence paragraph produces invalid markdown
EPUB2615	Formats - Breadcrumb links to non-generated paragraphs should resolve to nearest parent paragraph
EPUB2635	Markdown - Empty table row at end of table generates WIF with empty table row
EPUB2711	Implement variable escaping in Markdown++ adapter
EPUB2714	Reverb 2.0 - Draggable menu width with persisted user preference
EPUB2715	Reverb 2.0 - Redesign Assistant chat message styling for narrow vertical layouts
EPUB2716	Reverb 2.0 - Search-result breadcrumb hydration is O(N) with coalesced flush on panel open
EPUB2717	Reverb 2.0 - Progressive hydration with localStorage landmarks tier and IndexedDB search/index tiers
EPUB2719	Formats - Fix Markdown++ table rowspan on header cells extending into body rows
EPUB2623	Adapters - Markdown front matter parsed and converted to a Markdown++ markers directive on the first content block
EPUB2725	Markdown adapter ignores image alt-text field, only forwards title to HTML alt attribute
EPUB2748	Core - Application error reports now capture the original problem instead of being interrupted by a secondary failure
EPUB2750	User Interface - Designer Log hyperlinks with line/column info now open the referenced file or show a tooltip instead of triggering an error
EPUB2754	Reverb 2.0 menu nav button dividers should be position-aware, not type-aware
EPUB2756	Adapters - Markdown++ alias warnings conflate custom-vs-custom and auto-vs-custom collisions
EPUB2747	Reverb 2.0 - Output now loads for minimal projects without explicit merge configuration
EPUB2706	Adapters - DITA Adapter option to use source IDs for paragraph IDs
EPUB2718	Reverb 2.0 - Format paragraph style option for assigning Landmark IDs
EPUB2722	Reverb 2.0 - Remove ww prefix from HTML id attributes and anchors
EPUB2657	Reverb 2.0 - AI Assistant tab support in menu navigation
EPUB2759	Documentation - Refresh ePublisher Trial evaluation projects for 2026.1
EPUB2767	Formats - Fix FrameMaker-rasterized image upscaled to max-width and max-height (2025.1 regression)
EPUB2769	Formats - Fix Reverb Japanese/CJK search returning wrong results and mis-highlighting
EPUB2771	Formats - Fix standard PDF landscape pages rendering in portrait orientation (per-page auto-rotate)
EPUB2762	Reverb 2.0 - Generate one AI Assistant knowledge base zip per parcel
EPUB2774	Adapters - Helper adapter conversion reliable when stdin is redirected (CI/automation)
EPUB2776	Formats - Reverb search character folding (curly and straight apostrophes treated as the same search term)
EPUB2777	Formats - Remove CJK stop words so Japanese/Chinese search matches and highlights full terms
EPUB2779	Formats - Reverb 2.0 keyboard focus now transfers into iframe content after search submit, page navigation, F6 region cycling, and skip-to-content link activation (previously left focus stranded on the toolbar under file:// deployments)
EPUB2780	Formats - Reverb search breaks katakana per character so interior katakana characters are searchable
EPUB2785	DITA - Added support for DITA Open Toolkit 4.4
EPUB2787	DITA - The "PDF" output format (adapter-based PDF generation) failed for DITA input: a single topic with no map aborted the build, large or font-heavy documents could hang, and figure images were dropped; all three issues are resolved
EPUB2710	User Interface - Target Setting text edits now apply and enable the save indicator
EPUB2728	Adapters - Word Add-in (Transit) registry-fallback chain If/End If blocks balanced
EPUB2729	Installer - Legacy Installer 2021.1 formats entry now references 2021.1 binaries
EPUB2731	Core - Preference migration preserves toolbar and dock-state customizations across upgrades
EPUB2733	Formats - Remove spurious empty "Image file not found" warning for text-only frames
EPUB2783	FrameMaker - Support FrameMaker 2026
EPUB2794	AutoMap - A malformed or unnamed job file no longer deletes the entire staging directory; such jobs now fail with a clear error and other staged work is preserved
EPUB2795	AutoMap - The Administrator can now clear a target setting to an explicit empty value (for example "Copy PDFs from target") instead of the cleared value reverting to the format default
EPUB2814	Reverb 2.0 - Disabling Generate Menu now removes the menu region so content fills the full width
EPUB2816	Designer no longer crashes with a NullReferenceException when closing the Style Designer pane
EPUB2822	Licensing now derives the computer's identity from stable hardware characteristics, so a license stays valid consistently across Windows updates and across 32-bit and 64-bit components.
EPUB2825	Reverb - Landmark links of the form #/alias written in source documents now pass through to Reverb output like #context/ links, and Reverb runtime-hash links (#context/, #/) placed in Header.asp or Footer.asp now navigate the help instead of loading the entire help system inside its own content frame.
EPUB2828	Reverb 2.0 - The paragraph Dropdown expand and collapse control works again; it stopped responding after the HTML id ww prefix was removed.
EPUB2846	AutoMap - A leftover job lock file (<job>.pid) no longer blocks the next run of that job with "Another AutoMap process is already processing this job" when its recorded process is gone or its process ID has been reused by another program; the stale lock is replaced with a note in the log, and a job genuinely being processed still refuses a second run.
EPUB2847	AutoMap - License files shared by all accounts on a machine are now read and written safely when AutoMap runs in several Windows sessions at once (for example, two users' scheduled jobs overlapping on a server); startup no longer rewrites the license file, updates can no longer leave a half-written file when a process is stopped, and a stuck process now produces an error naming the lock it holds instead of silently hanging other WebWorks products.
EPUB2849	AutoMap - On computers where several user accounts run AutoMap Administrator, another account's scheduled job activity no longer raises an error in the open Administrator window, and scheduling a job whose name matches another account's scheduled task now warns and asks for confirmation instead of silently replacing that task; Run, Stop, Suspend, Resume, and Delete now verify the task actually belongs to the job before acting on it.
EPUB2850	Core - Product startup no longer clears a machine's license registration while the license server is unreachable, which could orphan the activation on the server and cause a later key refresh to claim a second one; the registration is now only cleared once the server confirms its release. The automatic reset that removes the license payload to force a key refresh now runs under the machine-wide license lock, so it can no longer discard a payload another session just rewrote, and it records in the license client log whether the license file was missing or present but unreadable.
EPUB2852	Core - A license key refresh that reaches the license server but runs out of time waiting for the server to finish preparing the keys no longer reports "License Contract ID not found in license server." That message misdirected troubleshooting toward a contract or activation problem when the server was merely slow (typically a cold start); the timeout now has its own message reporting how long the client waited and advising to simply try again, and the contract message is reserved for definitive failures. The client also waits much longer before giving up: after the first minute of quick checks it continues at a gentler pace for up to five minutes total, configurable via the LicensePayloadTimeoutSeconds application setting, and the wait remains cancelable in Designer and Express -- canceling no longer reports an error. As before, the product keeps using its existing valid license keys when a refresh does not complete.
EPUB2859	Core - Generating a project stored on a network (UNC) path no longer fails with "Could not find a part of the path" errors once a generated file's full path reaches 248 characters, which most often affected Reports output because it uses the deepest folder nesting. Long UNC paths were given a malformed extended-length prefix that Windows could not resolve, even when the operating system's long-path support was enabled; the correct form is now used, matching the existing behavior for local drives.
EPUB2861	AutoMap - The job log copy written beside a job file (<name>-log.txt, including the copy in an Administrator job folder) and the console output no longer print a blank line before every entry; entries now read single-spaced, matching generate.log, for both publishing (.waj) and composition (.wacj) runs.
EPUB2862	AutoMap - Publishing (.waj) and composition (.wacj) job logs now open with a shared start banner (job name, start time, and product version) and close with a finish time, total time, and a summary line reporting warning and error counts (plus parcels composed for a composition). Deployment activity is also fully monitorable from the job log: each deploying target reports its transport, resolved destination, deploy scope, and file count, and transport detail lines that previously appeared only in the Designer and Express log windows -- such as "Cleaning deployment location." and the dry-run operation sets -- now reach the AutoMap console and job log as well. generate.log is unchanged.
EPUB2863	AutoMap - The Administrator's jobs list now updates Last Run, Last Result, and Status while the application is open, for both publishing (.waj) and composition (.wacj) jobs: rows refresh immediately for actions taken in the Administrator (Run, Stop, Suspend, Resume, Schedule), and a background poll picks up scheduled or externally started runs, so restarting the application is no longer required to see current job status. The list previously depended entirely on Windows Task Scheduler history events, which can be unavailable (the history channel may be disabled machine-wide) or silently fail to deliver; problems starting that event subscription are now recorded in a TaskScheduler.log diagnostic file in the application preferences folder instead of being ignored. A job that has been scheduled but has not yet run now shows Never in the Last Run column instead of the Windows Task Scheduler placeholder date 11/30/1999.
EPUB2864	AutoMap - Preview Output in Browser now understands targets that deploy with Groups scope. Such a target publishes only its groups' content, so its destination has no site entry document by design; the preview previously failed with a bare "entry document was not found" message. When the destination also carries a deployed shell or another deployment's chrome, the preview now opens the job's own group entry page there -- landing on the previewed job's actual content rather than silently opening chrome whose navigation does not include it -- and when the destination has no entry document at all, the message now explains the Groups-scope behavior and directs the user to preview the composition job (or a deployed shell) for the composed site. Everything-scope targets and composition jobs preview unchanged.
EPUB2865	AutoMap - A job target's deploy selection can now be cleared: the Deploy to list in the Administrator's job editor offers a "(none)" entry, and a cleared target is written to the job file with no destination attribute. The Designer and Express Target Settings Deploy to list gained the same "(none)" entry, so all three editors behave alike. Targets configured to generate still require a destination, as before. In addition, the Administrator Job menu's Preview Output in Browser and Explore Output lists no longer offer working entries for targets the job is not configured to generate; such a target -- for example a destination set by accident on a target whose generation is disabled -- now appears disabled with a "(not generated)" note instead of leading to output that cannot exist. Composition jobs are unaffected. The Deploy to list (in all three editors) also now shows a destination the job or project declares but this computer does not define -- common when a shared job names a destination from a teammate's deploy preferences -- as a selectable "(not defined on this computer)" entry, instead of displaying it as no deployment at all and losing the declared name on the next selection.
EPUB2867	Reverb 2.0 - Generating a target with the AI Assistant's Generate knowledge base setting enabled no longer reports errors when the build contains no documents, such as a chrome-only shell used for federated parcel composition. The knowledge base stage attempted to package and clean up its staging folder even when no knowledge pages existed, producing two "Could not find a part of the path" errors and an empty knowledge zip in the output -- and because the target had errored, its deployment was skipped. A build with no knowledge pages now contributes nothing (no zip, no errors) and deploys normally; builds with documents are unchanged.
EPUB2873	AutoMap - A Composition Job now selects a member job's output target from the target list the member's job file declares -- the same list the member builds from and the composition editor offers -- instead of from the member's stationery project. Previously a target named in the composition but declared only by the member's job was rejected with an error listing the wrong target set, and automatic detection could select a stationery target the member's job never builds. Each declared name must still exist in the member's stationery (see EPUB2874); a name the stationery does not define is reported before any member builds, with the same guidance as the build's own error.
EPUB2874	AutoMap - A job target whose name is not defined by the job's stationery now fails the build with a clear message naming the target and the stationery, instead of silently rebuilding the target from the format's default settings. The previous behavior, dating to 2006, meant a stationery whose targets were renamed or removed after jobs were authored kept producing output -- configured with format defaults rather than the stationery author's settings -- without any indication. Resave the stationery with the missing target, or remove or rename the job target. Note this is a behavior change: jobs that unknowingly relied on the silent rebuild will now report an error until their stationery is updated.
EPUB2875	AutoMap - Job logs no longer contain stray blank lines, and the run summary's warning count now matches the warnings visible in the log. Blank-message warning entries (from tool-output capture during document conversion) were written as empty lines and counted toward the "N warning(s)" tally, and some messages carried their own trailing line breaks; whitespace-only entries are now dropped (a blank error still counts and prints, so a failure signal is never masked), single-line messages are trimmed of trailing breaks, and deliberate multi-line framing such as the per-target result block keeps its spacing. Member build output piped into a composition log is single-spaced the same way.
EPUB2876	AutoMap - Non-ASCII characters (arrows, dashes, localized text) in member build messages no longer arrive as substitution characters in a Composition Job's log. Redirected AutoMap console output is now written as UTF-8 and the composition runner reads the member pipe as UTF-8; this also means any redirected AutoMap output (for example a shell redirect to a file) is UTF-8 encoded.
EPUB2877	AutoMap - Job and composition logs now mark warning and error lines with the same severity prefixes the per-target generate.log has always used ([WARN] and [ERROR] on an English installation, their localized equivalents elsewhere), so the run summary's "N warning(s)" count can be traced to the N marked lines and one scan convention works across every log the product writes. Errors previously used a different ad-hoc prefix and warnings carried no marker at all; informational lines remain unmarked.
EPUB2878	AutoMap - A job launched through the version-independent launcher (WebWorks.AutoMap.exe in the ePublisher program folder, used by scheduled tasks so their action survives upgrades) no longer keeps running after the job itself has finished. The launcher relays the job's console output, and selecting text in its window puts the console into selection mode, which blocks that relay: the window stayed open indefinitely, the job's exit code was never reported to the Windows Task Scheduler (which could then skip the next scheduled run), and Ctrl+C could not recover. On a longer job the stalled relay could also fill its output pipe and suspend the run itself, leaving the job log stopped mid-line with no error reported. The launcher now turns off QuickEdit text selection while a job runs and restores the console's original settings when it exits, reports the job's exit code before draining output, and never waits indefinitely on the console. Non-ASCII characters in relayed messages are also preserved.
EPUB2883	AutoMap - Composition placement has two kinds of names - deployed groups, and containers that groups declare in their own Merge Settings - and the composition log and editor now tell them apart. When a Composition Job's merge settings name a container as if it were a group, the log now explains what the name actually is, which deployed groups declare it, and how to place those groups directly, instead of incorrectly advising a redeploy; groups placed into a container by their own declared merge settings are now listed by name with their container rather than summarized as a count; and when a composition's own placement of a group overrides that group's declared container, the log says so. In the Composition Job editor, Add Container now offers container names declared by the member jobs, and Add Group shows a notice when the entered name is known only as a container. Composition placement behavior and composed output are unchanged.
EPUB2888	Formats - Improved the reliability and security of the local output preview server used by View Output. Previewed pages now render correctly on the first load instead of sometimes needing a refresh, output files marked read-only can be previewed, and the server is reachable only from the machine running it
EPUB2893	Adapters - Markdown++ collision suffix uses _N where the spec mandates -N
EPUB2898	Formats - Markdown Output: blockquote-syntax prefix reapplication branch is dead (missing $ sigil)
EPUB2904	Adapters - Markdown++ alias sanitization should NFC-normalize (decomposed accents currently mangled)
EPUB2926	PDF - XSL-FO - FOP rendering failure is not surfaced; build reports success while the output PDF is missing
EPUB2726	Markdown - Markdown-sourced content publishes semantic HTML elements by default
EPUB2753	Formats - Progress reporting no longer reports an imbalance for a document containing several popups
EPUB2789	Reverb 2.0 - Per-parcel search cache key so updating one parcel does not discard every parcel's cached search data
EPUB2790	Reverb 2.0 - Browser cache hygiene across help sets sharing one domain, with a size budget and least-recently-used eviction
EPUB2792	Reverb 2.0 - Reformatted output with self-closed elements reports a specific console error instead of a silent unfinished load
EPUB2815	Installer - Developer test assets and an unused experimental adapter are excluded from the packaged helper archive
EPUB2829	Reverb 2.0 - AI Assistant end-user identity token and plain-language usage-limit handling
EPUB2830	Reverb 2.0 - Federated parcel enablers: content-free shell build, composition descriptor, tolerant parcel loading
EPUB2831	Core - Deploy scope (Everything, Groups, Shell) publishes a role-appropriate slice into a shared destination
EPUB2832	AutoMap - Composition Job (.wacj) composes a federated Reverb 2.0 site from deployed parcels
EPUB2833	Core - Amazon S3 destination type with CloudFront invalidation, cache-control policy, and dry run
EPUB2837	Core - Links into a document excluded from a target no longer survive an incremental regenerate
EPUB2838	AutoMap - -t/--target selects job file targets, overriding each target's build attribute
EPUB2839	AutoMap - A composition resolves its destination through the --deploysettings overlay file
EPUB2841	Core - Groups-scope deploy handles group names containing characters the output path replaces
EPUB2842	Core - Per-parcel AI Assistant knowledge base archives deploy with their parcel
EPUB2844	Core - Amazon S3 scoped deploy skips never-written baggage entries instead of aborting silently
EPUB2845	Core - Scoped Amazon S3 deploy invalidates the CloudFront paths it re-uploaded
EPUB2854	User Interface - Deploy Destinations opens from the Edit menu and toolbar in Designer and Express, with Administrator parity
EPUB2855	AutoMap - Job-level Build options box with a Skip reports option stored in the job file
EPUB2856	AutoMap - Verbose logging build option with a matching -q/--quiet command-line switch
EPUB2858	Formats - Apache FOP and DITA Open Toolkit build log lines are recorded at their actual severity
EPUB2866	Core - Log and console banners print the three-part display version
EPUB2871	AutoMap - Composition logs report a skipped member once and explain why a compose found nothing
EPUB2881	Installer - AutoMap launcher shim is code-signed like the rest of the product
EPUB2910	User Interface - Saved toolbar layouts no longer accumulate transient Recent Projects and report entries
EPUB2912	Reverb 2.0 - A Merge Settings container holding a single group no longer fails the build
EPUB2916	User Interface - Style Designer rename resolves the rule collection from the rule being renamed
EPUB2917	Core - A project with a volume-relative document path loads instead of reporting an invalid project
EPUB2920	User Interface - Synchronization prompt browses the same file types as File > Synchronize with Stationery
EPUB2921	Markdown - multiline tables honor the table's Cell Head and Cell Body paragraph formats
EPUB2922	User Interface - Style Designer Options tab and style name bold only for options set on the style
EPUB2923	PDF - XSL-FO - Graphic style dimension properties size raster images at render time
EPUB2924	Markdown - Markdown tables declare column definitions so Table style column-width options apply
EPUB2927	Reverb 2.0 - Optimized reader mode: Alt+A jumps to the AI Assistant chat input
EPUB2931	Installer - Word automation templates re-signed with complete VBA signature set (legacy, agile, V3)
EPUB2932	Adapters - Markdown adapter rewrites mailto: and other URI-scheme link targets as file paths
EPUB2933	Adapters - Word conversions fail on systems with June 2026 Windows updates (macro arguments arrive empty)
EPUB2937	PDF - XSL-FO - Code fence taller than one page overflows the bottom margin instead of page breaking
EPUB2939	Markdown - Inline code spans publish raw angle brackets and ampersands instead of HTML entities
EPUB2940	Markdown - Intra-word underscores publish unescaped and no longer parse as emphasis
EPUB2941	Adapters - DITA links to non-DITA files publish as plain text and baggage files are not copied to output
EPUB2942	Formats - Table footnotes emitted twice when table is nested
EPUB2943	Word - Custom footnote marks rendered with an extra auto-number
EPUB2946	Reverb 2.0 - AI Assistant renders a Powered by WebWorks attribution line when the assistant's Platform plan calls for one
EPUB2947	Reverb 2.0 - Links stop responding after browser Back when output is viewed over HTTP
EPUB2948	Reverb 2.0 - Links report flags runtime hash links (#/, #context/) as unresolved
EPUB2949	Reverb 2.0 - Landmark data cached site-wide goes stale when one parcel is redeployed
EPUB2951	Installer - Java download upgraded from JDK 21 to JDK 26
EPUB2952	Reverb 2.0 - Composed cache key incorporates the shell generation so a shell redeploy refreshes returning readers
EPUB2953	Core - Scoped S3 deploy invalidates changed shared chrome and shortens its freshness window so shell updates reach readers
EPUB2954	Reverb 2.0 - Search page degrades gracefully when its markup and the site's scope state come from different builds
EPUB2955	Reverb 2.0 - AI Assistant caps page context so sends from large pages no longer fail
EPUB2959	Reverb 2.0 - Site shell emits page- and popup-referenced chrome so federated deploys serve the complete file set
EPUB2961	Reverb 2.0 - Default Tab setting selects the menu tab readers see on first load
EPUB2962	Markdown - Markdown++ condition names containing hyphens are evaluated like any other condition name

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