What's New in ePublisher 2026.1

The 2026.1 release centers on AI-enabled documentation: a built-in Reverb 2.0 AI Assistant backed by the WebWorks Platform, plus faster large-output performance and stronger accessibility and search. The tools take a major step forward as well: AutoMap and its Administrator receive significant feature improvements, ePublisher Designer now works fully with Express projects, and deployment gains direct Amazon S3 support. The highlights below are the changes you are most likely to notice. For the complete list of fixes, see the Release Notes; to turn on the Assistant, see Getting Started with the WebWorks Platform.

Formats

If your projects use Advanced Customizations such as format file overrides, see the ePublisher Version Reference for a list of format changes that may affect your customizations when upgrading.

WebWorks Reverb 2.0

New Features

• AI Assistant in the Reverb 2.0 Menu (highlight) — Embed a chat-style AI Assistant directly in your output, integrated into the Reverb Menu alongside the Table of Contents and Index. Turn on the new Generate Assistant setting to add the Assistant button, then connect it to the WebWorks Platform — see Getting Started with the WebWorks Platform.

• Progressive Hydration with IndexedDB Caching (highlight) — Reverb 2.0 now caches landmark, search, and book-index data across browser sessions, so revisits to large, multi-parcel output load and resolve #/landmark URLs noticeably faster.

• Source ID Landmarks — The Landmark ID Format option can expose a paragraph's authored source ID (FrameMaker ID, DITA element ID, or Markdown++ alias) as its Reverb URL, giving important sections stable, content-meaningful links without authoring a TopicAlias marker on every heading.

• Chat Layout Built for Online Docs — The Assistant chat is rebuilt for narrow, responsive doc sidebars: a role label above every turn, the assistant's avatar beside its replies, full-width assistant prose, compact user bubbles, and scrollable code and table blocks that stay legible from desktop sidebar down to mobile.

• Draggable Menu Width — Readers can drag to resize the Menu sidebar (TOC, Index, AI Assistant); the chosen width persists per browser.

• Per-Parcel AI Knowledge Base — The new Generate Knowledge Base Per Parcel setting emits one knowledge base archive per top-level parcel, so incremental publishing can re-upload only the parcel that changed.

• Hide AI Assistant When Local — The new Hide AI Tab when file local setting hides the Assistant tab when output is opened over file: (where its online service is unreachable) while keeping it visible when served over http:/https:, so one build works both ways.

• AI Assistant Thinking Indicator — When the Assistant is configured with a reasoning model, the chat shows a thinking indicator and any streamed reasoning summary while the model reasons, so readers get immediate feedback.

• Optimized Reader Mode — A new Accessibility → Optimized reader mode setting suppresses tab stops on decorative chrome controls, so screen-reader users tab only through the controls they need.

• Improved Japanese and Chinese Search — Full-text search now matches and highlights complete CJK terms: per-character matching for adjacent CJK (including interior katakana), no dropped single-kana pieces, and script-aware highlighting. Equivalent characters (such as curly vs. straight apostrophes) also fold to the same search term.

• Authored Last Modified Date — When the Document last modified date page setting is enabled, Reverb 2.0 prefers an authored date value (such as a Markdown++ front matter date key) over the file-system date, which is more accurate for assembled Markdown++ sources.

• Parcel-Declared Placement in Composed Sites — A group can declare in its own job which containers it belongs to in a federated site, and a composition honors that declaration for groups it does not place itself. Parcel owners arrange their own content, the composition owner arranges the sections, and a newly published parcel lands in the right place without an edit to the composition. A group the composition places explicitly still wins, and the composition log records the override. See Federated Parcel Composition.

• Splash Page Groups Grid — The splash page now opens on a responsive grid of entry-point cards built from the help set's groups and Merge Settings containers, replacing the static splash image. Each card carries a group or container title with its first-level entries as links, so readers get a one-page map of the whole help set, and output that trades the Contents tab for the AI Assistant keeps full browse navigation. The grid renders from the same data as the Menu, so a federated composition's parcels appear automatically. Projects that overrode splash.png should override Splash.asp instead; the grid's appearance is styled through the new splash groups skin variables and the custom.scss layer.

• A Customization Layer of Your Own — A new custom.scss compiles to css/custom.css, which every page template links last — content pages, popups, search, the splash page, and the top-level frame — so your rules win the cascade everywhere without editing a stock stylesheet. Copy custom.scss into Targets/<target>/Pages/sass/ or Formats/<format>/Pages/sass/ to add selectors, or override the color, border, size, and font variable partials to restyle the standard structures.

• Assistant Avatar — The AI Assistant now shows the avatar image configured for the assistant on the WebWorks Platform wherever the assistant is represented: the welcome screen, each reply, the thinking indicator, the streaming reply, and the conversation-list header. An assistant with no avatar set, and an avatar whose image cannot be loaded, keep the generic icon, so existing output is unchanged until an avatar is configured.

• Federated Sites from Independently Published Parcels — A Reverb 2.0 site no longer has to come from a single project. Each project publishes its own portion of the site — a parcel — and records where that portion belongs, while a project with no groups publishes the site chrome alone, ready to receive them. A composition job then assembles the deployed parcels into one site with shared navigation, search, and index, in seconds and without rebuilding any content. Teams working on different schedules can publish into one destination independently, and a parcel that has not been deployed yet is simply absent from the contents instead of leaving the page loading. See Federated Parcel Composition.

• Smarter Cache Invalidation — Republishing one parcel of a multi-parcel site now refreshes only that parcel's cached search data, so a returning reader is no longer made to reload the whole site's search index and a high-velocity parcel such as release notes can be updated on its own. Reverb also keeps its browser storage in check when several help sets share one domain, retiring the caches of sets the reader has stopped visiting so that caching never quietly stops working for all of them.

Compatibility Notes

The ww prefix has been removed from Reverb 2.0 HTML id attributes and anchors. If your project uses custom CSS or JavaScript that targets these (for example, selectors like #wwbody or [id^="ww"]), update those selectors after upgrading.

DITA Adapter

New Features

• Source ID Paragraph IDs — A new DITA Adapter option uses DITA source IDs as paragraph IDs in generated output, preserving authored identifiers for stable cross-references and feeding the Source ID landmark format above.

• DITA Open Toolkit 4.4 — The bundled DITA Open Toolkit is updated to release 4.4, now the default DITA-OT version.

Markdown

New Features

• Front Matter as Publishing Metadata — ePublisher now recognizes YAML front matter at the top of a Markdown file and merges the key-value pairs into the document as Markdown++ markers, so values such as title, author, date, and status become publishing data instead of stray text. The keywords and description keys resolve regardless of case.

• Semantic HTML by Default — Markdown-sourced content now publishes real HTML elements: a ## heading becomes an <h2> rather than a styled <div>, and paragraphs, block quotes, code fences, horizontal rules, and lists publish as p, blockquote, pre, hr, and ol / ul / li. Screen-reader users can navigate a page by heading, and output satisfies heading-structure accessibility checks without setting an HTML tag on every style by hand. Rendered appearance is unchanged, generated stylesheets keep matching the previous selectors, and an HTML tag set explicitly on a style still takes precedence.

Adobe FrameMaker

New Features

• FrameMaker 2026 Support — ePublisher now supports Adobe FrameMaker 2026 (version 18, 64-bit), detected and selectable in Designer, Express, and AutoMap.

Adobe PDF

New Features

• Apache FOP 2.11 for PDF (XSL-FO) — The Apache FOP engine (with its Batik and PDFBox libraries) is upgraded to 2.11. Generated PDF is unchanged for existing projects; the upgrade brings upstream layout and rendering fixes and current security updates, and the DITA Adapter's PDF (XSL-FO) output uses the same engine.

• Sharp Image Sizing — Graphic style dimension properties now resize raster images in PDF - XSL-FO output. Set Content Width or Content Height in the Advanced group, or Width and Height in the Layout group, and Apache FOP scales the full-resolution original as it renders the page, so a logo placed at 20% stays crisp in print and at high zoom. Previously only the Scale % option could resize an image, and it did so by resampling the bitmap at generation time, permanently discarding the detail. A Content Width or Content Height percentage is relative to the image's own size.

• A Failed PDF Now Fails the Build — When Apache FOP cannot render a PDF, the build now reports the error and names the missing file instead of completing successfully with the PDF quietly absent from the output, and an AutoMap run exits with a failure status. A build that previously appeared to succeed while dropping a PDF will now report that failure.

Tools & Interface

AutoMap

New Features

• Designer Project as Stationery — AutoMap job files can use a Designer or Express project (.wep/.wrp) directly as their stationery by adding useAsStationery="True" to the job's <Project> element. AutoMap synchronizes from the live project on every build, so continuous-integration workflows no longer need a manual Save As Stationery step after each design change. Unlike a Stationery, a project does not bundle its format files, so ePublisher Designer must be installed on the computer running AutoMap when a job uses a project rather than a Stationery.

• Composition Jobs in the Administrator (highlight) — File > New Job offers a third choice, Compose published parcels into a website, and a composition editor to go with it: a member list with roles, an output target selection, the deploy destination, and Merge Settings for arranging the composed table of contents. A composition assembles WebWorks Reverb 2.0 output that other jobs already published, so a site refresh takes seconds instead of a full rebuild. See Creating a Composition Job.

• Built Members Deploy to the Composition — Selecting Build on a member makes the composition build that member and publish it to the composition's own destination, whatever destination the member's job names. Leave it cleared and the member is published independently by its own job and the composition simply reads what is already there. One composition can mix both, member by member.

• Determinant Output Target Selection — A composition selects each member's output target from the target list that member declares, preferring the targets the job is set to build. It never falls back to a silent first match: exactly one composable candidate selects, and anything ambiguous is reported with the candidates listed. Every member must produce the same output format, though target names may differ from team to team.

• Pick Composition Members from the Jobs Folder — The composition editor's Add button now drops down the publishing jobs already in the Administrator's Jobs folder, since a composition's members are usually siblings of that folder. Jobs already added appear checked and disabled so they cannot be added twice, and Browse remains for jobs and projects stored anywhere on disk.

• Preview Output in Browser — A new Preview Output in Browser command on the Job menu opens a job's deployed site in your browser, alongside the existing Explore Output command that opens the deployed files. Folder destinations open the entry document directly; Amazon S3 destinations derive a usable address at click time from the CloudFront domain, the bucket's website endpoint, or the object address, checking each before opening.

• Deploy Destinations from the Edit Menu — Folder and Amazon S3 destinations can be defined and edited from Edit > Deploy Destinations without opening a job or selecting a target. Designer and Express gained the same top-level access this release, and all three consoles share one per-user list of destinations.

• Destinations That Travel with the Job — A job file can now carry the definition of a named Folder or Amazon S3 destination itself, so a job checked into version control, moved to another machine, or scheduled under a different account deploys without first seeding that machine's list of destinations. Definitions hold no secrets: S3 credentials still resolve through the standard AWS profile or instance-role chain, and WebDAV, which stores credentials, cannot be defined this way. A destination is still referenced by name; a definition in the job wins over a same-named local destination and the log notes when the two differ; a composition passes its definitions to the member jobs it builds. Define them on the job editor's Deploy Destinations page, or supply the same definitions from a shared file with the new --deploysettings command-line option.

• Rehearse a Deployment with --dryrun — A new --dryrun command-line switch forces every deployment in that run dry, so a live configuration can be rehearsed with one flag. Amazon S3 destinations print the uploads, deletes, and invalidations they would perform without contacting AWS; transports with no dry-run support skip their deployment with a log line; and a composition passes 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.

• Job-Level Build Options — The job editor's Job Info tab has a Build options area whose settings are stored in the job file, so they apply on a schedule, from Run, and from the command line alike. Skip reports shortens large conversions, and Verbose logging (on by default) can be cleared to reduce a scheduled job's log to milestones, warnings, and errors. A matching -q/--quiet command-line switch was added; the stored option and the switch combine.

• Log Markers and Honest Tallies — Job and composition logs now mark warning and error lines with [WARN] and [ERROR], matching the per-target generate.log convention, and the closing count matches the marked lines exactly. Blank warning entries no longer pad the log or the tally.

• Reliable Scheduled Jobs — A scheduled job now reports its result to the Windows Task Scheduler, so Last Run Result shows 0x0 on a clean run and 0x1 when the job reported errors. Selecting text in a running job's console window no longer blocks the run, and the launcher process appears in Task Manager under a clear name.

• Deploy Scope — Each target's deployment gained a scope: Everything (the complete site, and the default), Groups (content only), or Shell (site files only). A scoped deployment publishes only its own portion of the output into a shared destination, so several projects can publish into one site without overwriting one another, and a scoped Clean removes only the files that project deployed. Set it beside the Deploy to selection in Designer, Express, or the Administrator, override it per job target, or pass --deployscope on the command line.

• Amazon S3 Destinations — Folder and WebDAV are joined by Amazon S3. A named S3 destination stores the bucket, the region, an optional AWS credential profile, and an optional CloudFront distribution — never access keys, which resolve through the standard AWS profile or instance-role chain. Uploads carry web-appropriate cache headers, changed pages trigger a CloudFront invalidation so readers see the update without a hard refresh, and --dryrun prints every upload, delete, and invalidation without contacting AWS.

Compatibility Notes

• A job target that its Stationery no longer defines now fails the run with a message naming the target and the Stationery. Earlier releases silently recreated the target using the output format's default settings, so the job kept producing output that was configured with defaults rather than the Stationery author's settings. Resave the Stationery with that target, or remove or rename the target in the job.

• Job logs now mark warnings and errors with [WARN] and [ERROR], and these markers are translated on consoles set to another language. Scripts that parse job logs may need updating — match the configured language, scan the per-target generate.log, or use the process exit code instead.

• Redirected AutoMap console output is now written as UTF-8, so non-ASCII characters survive a shell redirect or a continuous-integration capture. Tools that assumed the previous encoding may need updating.

• The launcher process that scheduled jobs run under appears in Task Manager as WebWorks ePublisher AutoMap Launcher. Process-monitoring configurations that matched the previous, unlabeled process name need updating.

Designer

New Features

• Designer Log Hyperlinks — Clicking a hyperlink in the Designer Log that includes file location information (line and column) now opens the referenced file in your associated editor, or shows a brief tooltip identifying the extension instead of triggering an error.

• Designer Works with Express Projects — Designer now opens, builds, synchronizes, and deploys Express projects (.wrp), so a Designer seat can stand in for an Express seat. An Express project opened in Designer keeps the Express experience — Document Manager, stationery synchronization, no Style Designer — while Designer projects behave exactly as before. The Open dialog offers both project types in a single filter, a new File > New Project from Stationery command creates an Express project from a Stationery or from a Designer project serving as one, and the Recent Projects menu and Start Page show each project's type icon so the two kinds are distinguishable at a glance. Double-clicking a .wrp opens Express when it is installed and Designer otherwise.

• Save as Express Project — A new File > Save as Express Project command hands a Designer project to a colleague as a linked Express project (.wrp) whose origin is the Designer project it came from: one seat authors the formats, output targets, and styles, and colleagues work in linked Express projects that pick up each change through the usual synchronization prompt — the arrangement Stationery provides, without publishing Stationery first. An option, off by default, carries the source documents, groups, and Merge Settings across: document paths are rewritten to resolve from the new project's location, fresh document identities are assigned, and group identities are preserved so each group keeps the place its Merge Settings give it. Because the linked project takes its formatting from a project rather than a Stationery, ePublisher Designer must be installed on each computer where the linked Express project is used.

• Edit Several Styles at Once — The Style Designer's style list now takes a multiple selection: Ctrl-click and Shift-click several styles within the category you are viewing — paragraph, character, table, page, graphic, or marker — and a value set on the Properties, Options, Target Properties, or Target Options tab 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, it shows blank rather than presenting one style's setting as if it were shared; typing there sets it for the whole selection. [Prototype] is never part of a multiple selection, since editing it already reaches every style in its category.

Express

New Features

• Open a Stationery to Start a Project — Opening a Stationery (.wxsp) now starts the New Project from Stationery flow with that Stationery already selected, leaving only the project name and location to fill in — the same way opening a document template starts a new document. Double-click a Stationery in Windows Explorer, pass one on the command line, or choose one in an Open dialog; Designer behaves the same way. Earlier releases tried to load the Stationery as a project and reported an error.

Installer

New Features

• Silent Update Switch — A new /UPDATE command-line switch lets IT run the installer unattended and perform the equivalent of an interactive Repair: installer.exe /S /UPDATE silently uninstalls the current version and installs fresh in one invocation. See the silent installation guide for enterprise deployment.