Vorteks 4

New Features

Geographic Network

• New geographic view with support for network visualizations overlaid on maps.
• Support for loading map files (including GeoTIFF .tif layers) with proper projection handling (e.g. 3857).
• Added default BlueMarble.tif map to Documents/Vorteks4/Maps.
• Online and file-based map error handling, map file path configuration, and layer management.
• Shortest path, hops, and other SNA capabilities hooked into Geo views.
• Improved map layer ordering (nodes drawn on top of edges) and view restoration.

Python Processor Module and Script Module SDK

• New Python Processor module for running custom Python scripts in the processor.

Presentation Mode

• New presentation mode that hides view tabs, panels for clean viewing.

Node Context Menus and Interactions

• New node context menus with actions such as Lock Position, Add Data for visual, and more.
• Improvements to node selection, focus, and data addition workflows.
• LockButton control and consistent locking UI across sidebars.
• Multi-row selection support in sidebars and improved locked visual management.

Minimap

• Complete redesign and rework of the Minimap.
• Drag-to-resize from the corner.
• Accurate visible area calculations using normalizers and internal zoomed-out area logic.
• Toggle visibility via the Panels menu in non-Geo views.
• Better integration with camera movement and layout rebuilding.

Node Merging (Merge Nodes)

• New "Merge Nodes" feature using term lists.
• MergedNodeValues for project-wide persistence of merged data.
• NodeMerger and MergedNetworkNode implementation with tests.
• UI updates across views, data change detection, combo box handling, and serialization fixes.
• Dedicated help content and localization.

Network Layout Algorithms

• Added Kamada-Kawai and Yifan-Hu layouts.
• Significant improvements to Force-Directed Layout for large networks (Barnes-Hut repulsion, stack overflow prevention, longer run tuning).
• RectanglePacker for better aspect ratio handling in visualizations.

Locked Visuals System

• Built-in support for maintaining locked visuals across visualizations.
• Thread-safe implementation with HashSet.
• Consistent support in Network, Distribution, Stream Graph, and other views.
• Sidebar enhancements for managing locked items (sorting, symbols, multi-row selection).

View Navigation and Breadcrumbs

• New navigation overlay with arrow buttons and keyboard shortcuts.
• Navigation implemented across Network, Hierarchy, Stream Graph, Correlation, and Distribution views.
• Breadcrumbs panel shows navigation history and current position; click to jump back to parent levels.
• Command bar navigation commands and hotkeys hooked up for Distribution and Network views.
• Global visualization settings for navigation behavior.
• Dedicated navigation help content and localization.

App Search

• Global search box in the main window title bar for commands, project items, help topics, and document text.
• Simple Search and Advanced Search integration from the title bar.
• App Search documentation added to help system.

Help System Overhaul

• Refactored help TOC with TreeView, async loading, and page-first search.
• Improved help index UI with async loading, slimmer keywords, and better scrolling.
• In-page help search with accent highlighting.
• Improved help search indexing; WhatsNew topics linked to help pages.
• Help files aligned with LocalizationDictionary; geographic network documentation completed.

Get Started Screen

• Refactored Get Started UI and MainPage layout.
• Improved recent-projects list, layout, and drag-and-drop UX.
• Recent projects sync when the app regains focus.
• Wizard and advanced processor icons added.

Visual Labels

• Added detailed visual labels for richer label content.
• Fixed field values for many container types (Distribution categories, Network nodes, Stream Graph categories, etc.).
• Added missing slider tooltips for label font size and count.

Document View

• Improved DocumentView layout and interactive behavior.

Screenshot Export

• Fixed screenshot export for different DPI and display scale settings.
• Improved viewport screen capture with display scale (labels still have known limitations).

User Settings Persistence

• User settings persisted in Documents/Vorteks4/Settings.
• User settings manager moved to Shared project.

Improvements and Optimizations

• Updated many dependencies to latest stable versions (WindowsAppSDK, Syncfusion, AWS SDKs, Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk, etc.).
• Performance improvements for large networks in layouts and rendering.
• Minimap accuracy and performance improvements (normalizers, reduced unnecessary updates).
• Rectangle packer for better layout performance in wide aspect ratio views.
• Improved error handling and lifecycle management in Python processing.
• Various refactors for sidebars, visual objects, command infrastructure, and panel management.
• Better handling of locked visuals and reduced unnecessary updates in visualizations.
• General stability and responsiveness improvements across the application.
• Custom TitleBar control and improvements to window dragging behavior.
• Flexible panel management and better tray behavior.
• Numerous small refactors, test improvements, and localization updates.
• Replaced vendored WordCloudGenerator DLL with NuGet package.
• Localized dataset dashboard widget names and descriptions.
• Simplified timeline play/stop commands; transparent background on timeline chart.
• Tab tear-out feature disabled due to WinUI bugs (infrastructure retained).
• OnDeactivateAsync called before disposing tabs on close.
• Type resolution improvements for assembly version mismatches when loading saved projects.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed application freezing when closing with pending changes from the Windows taskbar.
• Fixed minimap covering too much of the view.
• Hierarchy sorting crash and edges skipping tiers.
• Multicolored nodes.
• Panel tray and minimized panel issues when opening the app.
• Numerous fixes for labels disappearing, edges becoming invisible, fading issues, and color problems in Network, Stream Graph, Geo, and Hierarchy views.
• Fixed issues with loading and navigating locked visuals in Stream Graph and other visualizations.
• Tooltip localization keys no longer displayed in the UI.
• Various crashes and inconsistencies when working with hierarchies, sorting, collapsed networks, and data loading.
• Font scale and projection fixes for older setups.
• Many other stability and correctness fixes across views, sidebars, and data handling.
• Locked visuals: fixed select all / invert behavior, navigation between locked visuals, and sidebar selection (Distribution, Hierarchy, Network).
• Hierarchy: fixed sidebar order, faded edges, tier outline when adjusting scale, and nodes that could be dragged unintentionally.
• Correlation: fixed camera reset on clear, crash when sorting sidebar, and camera focus on nodes still laying out children.
• Stream Graph: fixed locked-visual selection selecting all, node scaling, edges in chart mode, duplicate color-legend values, and category label field values.
• Network Analysis: fixed IN/OUT degree to include undirected/bidirectional edges; close analysis window when building or changing tabs.
• Geographic: fixed double-click dataset creation.
• Project Explorer: fixed ancestors being deleted.
• Dataset: fixed column header artifacts on filler cell and teardown; catch cancellation exceptions on unload.
• Minimap: fixed resize cursor appearing after resize.
• Viewport: fixed events disabled after closing a tab that returns to the visualization.
• Camera: fixed focus/position when building for visuals still laying out children; skip locked-visual updates when none are locked.
• Value Filter: fixed playback when range is fully expanded.
• CSV conversion: fixed errors breaking the document processing chain.
• Term Lists: fixed row reordering after clicking a term with no changes.
• Regex Extractor: fixed clearing terms during Init() (incorrect @DocumentCount incrementing).
• Document Type Manager: fixed compound-field tree reloading, partial collapse, and available-fields updates when compounds change.
• Available Fields: fixed loading compound fields with all aliases; fixed DocumentFieldTree xpaths for compound fields.
• Processing: fixed processor load when reactivating a data source tab.
• Project loading: fixed assembly/DLL version mismatches in DbSerializer, DbProjectData, ProcessorPackager, Color Legends Db, and ProjectDataInfo.
• Network Analysis window: fixed stats grid not rendering until scrolled.
• Windows: fixed COM exceptions when closing windows (Title property wrapped in try/catch).
• Presentation mode: fixed Presentation button and CommandBarToggleButton behavior.
• Color Legend: fixed duplicate color values for special objects and node label color + details display.

New Features & Major Improvements

• Geographic View
• Correlation View
• Extractor Module (Non-Lexical, Regex, List Extractors)
• Universal Converter
  • Text Splitter is now built-in to Universal Converter (Access via Converter Settings)
  • Add 'Text' settings to Universal Converter Settings.

Enhancements & UX Improvements

• Visualizations
  • Add Font Picker - Works for node labels. Will expand to other labels.
  • Add Color Picker - Set background color for views
  • Nodes selected via 'hops' will show hop color in the outline.
  • Add dark/light support for Shortcut Info
  • Detect when parent dataset is updated and prompt to rebuild the view (reprocessing, etc)
• Processing
  • Detect doc types that can be overwritten when reprocessing. (Fixes persisting document type changes that would remove fields from the previous document type)
• Fix problems with OS scaling

Important Bug Fixes

• Views
  • Fix persisting overlay font when using 'Create View From Selected'
  • Fix multi-colored search
  • Fix multi-doc type search
  • Co-occurrence search shows message when not available
  • Improve default label size when not using weights
  • Fix possible crash when clicking on mini-map
  • Fix 'Search' label when dropping a term list on a view
• Selected Fields
  • Fix updating compound groups when drag/dropping a field
  • Fix updating compound groups when double clicking
• Available Fields
  • Fix showing Alias fields
  • Fix dragging disabled fields
• Geocoder - Fix possible port exhaustion
• Stream Graph
  • Fix camera distance when navigating categories
  • Fix node outline size
  • Use 'Rows' layout by default
  • Fix category label weight
  • Fix 'Combined Rows' typo
• Term Lists
  • Fix crash sorting 'Regex' or 'Format' columns
  • Fix crash when deleting a term
• Processing
  • Fix detecting changes to Doc Type Registration. Run available fields as needed.
  • Fix a bug when detecting available fields
• Relationship Finder - Fix splitting sentences on question marks and exclamations.

Breaking Changes

• Saved projects will need to recreate datasets to take advantage of larger dataset support

New Features & Major Improvements

• New API Processor implementation with support for multiple authentication types:
  None, Bearer Token, Client Certificate (PEM/PFX), plus improved validation and UX
• Added UI and logic for toggling supported file types (MIME types) in data sources and processing
• Introduced SupportsFileTypes to data sources + refactored MIME type collection
• Added Shortest Path algorithm and visualization to Network view.
• Implemented Request Throttling in API Processor / ApiRequestSetting
• Added "Skip Last Rows" option to Universal Converter (Excel + Delimited)
• Added "Split Rows" toggle to Excel & CSV converters
• Introduced AlphaNumericWithDatesComparer for improved mixed-type sorting (numbers, letters, dates)
• DbImportQueue now limits number of documents in queues, significantly reducing out-of-memory errors
• Datasets can now handle many more documents, significantly reducing out-of-memory errors

Enhancements & UX Improvements

• Improved optional argument handling in ConverterUserSettings
• Major refactor of UiGenerator system covering nearly all UI field types
• Better validation UX (InfoBar, nested messages, member names, improved red border display)
• Improved help system: better indexing, search, table of contents, localization, and file links
• Numerous localization improvements throughout the application
• Enhanced consistency and display of available fields templates
• Improved error message handling (nested exceptions, cleaner logs without large stack traces)
• Added word wrap support for error messages and many text fields
• Better handling of large cell values in Dataset view
• Improved widget titlebar tooltips and fixed recurse button cutoff
• Fixed progress and state issues in DatasetWriter (no longer stuck when no documents created)
• Sort datasets by flags and notes
• Enabled propagating of selected columns when creating datasets from existing datasets

Important Bug Fixes

• Fixed multiple causes of empty or failing dataset creation during import/processing
• Fixed "Cancel All" not properly finishing document writing in processing preview
• Resolved several Advanced Processing node/edge connection and deletion issues
• Fixed Document Splitter error generating available fields
• Fixed various request building, body handling, and parsing issues in API Reader/Processor
• Fixed COM exceptions when loading saved scene views
• Fixed map widget after Mapsui breaking changes
• Fixed Value Filter crash after SkiaSharpView breaking changes
• Fixed homogeneous message blinking when settings dialog is open
• Fixed search results sorting with mixed alphanumeric and date values
• Reduced Document View lag by switching to WinUiEditor
• Fixed numerous drag & drop, validation, serialization, and certificate handling issues
• Fixed row selection being cleared after sorting or searching in Dataset view
• Fixed view info not updating after row selection in Dataset view

Technical / Infrastructure Changes

• Major refactoring of ProcessorNode, NetworkNode, and SceneVisualizationControl
• Multiple HttpClient improvements (no-retry client, SocketsHttpHandler, connection cleanup)
• Introduced ApiRequestBuilder infrastructure and dynamic UiGenDialog
• Removed outdated/hacky code (old ApiRequestDialog, search hack for notes, etc.)
• Expanded benchmarking infrastructure (DatasetQueryBenchmarks, LargeImportBenchmarks)
• Updated all 3rd party libraries and licenses
• Many unit and integration test additions/fixes (especially API and URI handling)
• Switched to x64 platform in several areas (build pipeline, UI project)
• Upgraded to .NET 10 including most system and Microsoft NuGet packages