Changelog

Documentation | Example Gallery | Web App

[2.5.0] - 2026-11-04

Added

• leaf_align (--leaf-align): the leaves on one row, by lowering words or subtrees (#16, thanks @jasperandrew)

Fixed

• An arrowhead at the lower end of a movement path no longer sits against the corner
• A movement path no longer runs through a label that stands farther out than its two ends
• A movement path in a bottom-to-top tree runs above the words instead of through the tree
• Polyline rails no longer step where a child is a <> joint, or between labels drawn bottom to top
• A connector to a single child no longer leans by half a pixel

[2.4.1] - 2026-09-02

Fixed

• Connectors from a short node start at its own bottom, not below a taller label in the same row

[2.4.0] - 2026-09-02

Added

• RSyntaxTree.escape(text, as:, hyphen:, apostrophe:): notation that draws as the given text
• \' for a straight apostrophe and \@ for an at sign

Fixed

• \+ before digits is a plus sign (labels such as “C++11” no longer start a movement path)
• Labels containing a backslash could lose characters in the drawing
• Unknown escapes (\', \@) lost their backslash before markup was read

[2.3.0] - 2026-09-01

Added

• RSTError::CODES: the complete list of error codes (codes are only ever added)

Fixed

• Whitespace-only input reported as empty input instead of internal_error
• A single character without brackets draws as one leaf

[2.2.0] - 2026-09-01

Changed

• Validation reports every error in a stage, not only the first (up to 20; schema unchanged)

Added

• RSGenerator.diagnose(text, options) returns the full diagnosis as a hash

[2.1.0] - 2026-08-29

Changed

• JSON output renamed from lsif to json (-f json, syntree.json); lsif remains an alias until 3.0
• JSON documents carry a top-level format object (rsyntaxtree-json, schema 0.4.0) in place of lsif

Added

• Feature matrices in the JSON output carry their rows and cells

[2.0.0] - 2026-08-28

Removed

• JPG and GIF output, and with them the RMagick and ImageMagick dependency
• Deprecated aliases symmetrize (-y), tidy_spacing, tidy_nest and leafstyle: none
• symmetrize from the LSIF meta.source.params block

Added

• shear and shear_plane: tilt the figure and draw the plane it lies on
• vmargin: clearance between a label and its connectors (0.1–1.0)
• Gallery examples: Indo-European family tree, type-driven semantic composition, typed feature structures

Changed

• A removed option is refused with its replacement named
• Every option listed in the README and the notation reference
• Manuals describe what TikZ output drops

Fixed

• Triangles pointed the wrong way in bottom-to-top trees
• Labels keep the same space above as below
• Movement rails cut off at the right edge of left-to-right figures
• --- and === rules refused inside #( … #) matrices
• Matrix bracket drawn over the content before it in the same cell
• hspacing and vheight both changed the width of left-to-right trees
• Misspelled storoke-width in SVG text styles

Migration

• format: "jpg" / "gif" → "png"
• symmetrize: "on" → tidy: "symmetric"
• tidy_spacing: n → hspacing: n
• leafstyle: "none" → "nothing"

[1.14.0] - 2026-08-27

Added

• One-page notation reference (--notation), with the same feature list at the top of both manuals
• Changelog page on the documentation site (/changelog)

Changed

• Changelog dates taken from the git tags
• Pitfalls section limited to inputs that draw differently from what was meant
• Arrow-marker dimensions rounded in SVG output

Fixed

• derivation dropped the second column of a childless node’s label
• Errors in a label split by a raw space now name the actual cause
• Hex colours accept three or six digits only

[1.13.2] - 2026-08-27

Fixed

• Movement paths drawn as one stroke with rounded corners
• Digits drawn in a colour emoji font on systems that have one

[1.13.1] - 2026-08-27

Fixed

• ^ on a leaf’s own text ([NP ^cats]) draws a triangle, as [^NP cats] does
• Options given as empty strings treated as not given (fixes the web UI’s Download buttons)

[1.13.0] - 2026-08-24

Added

• derivation: one rule across each node’s daughters, with rule names (CCG style with direction: btt)
• direction: btt: bottom-to-top layout

Fixed

• Connectors in bottom-to-top layout

[1.12.0] - 2026-08-22

Added

• --examples prints every gallery example with its options
• llms.txt and llms-full.txt on the documentation site
• Error messages point to the notation reference

Changed

• Recommended angle brackets are U+27E8/U+27E9 (U+3008/U+3009 still parse)
• Two feature-structure figures redrawn with the narrower bracket

Fixed

• --notation and --examples no longer wait on stdin

[1.11.0] - 2026-08-21

Added

• --validate: check input without drawing (JSON diagnosis on stdout, verdict in the exit code)
• --notation: short notation reference, shipped with the gem
• Errors carry a code, location, one-line fix and retryable flag
• A label may be a matrix alone ([#(HEAD\tnoun#)])
• -f tikz in the CLI; TikZ output carries the line width
• Gallery figure for levelling terminals with <> joints

Changed

• Line width relative to font size (0.5–3.0, 1 = 5% of the font size); figures about a fifth lighter
• On/off options accept every spelling of off (no, 0, …)
• Option values validated in the library, not only in the CLI
• Colour names checked against the CSS colour names
• Penn Treebank conversion in the library
• Minimum font size 6

Fixed

• Validation passed input that drawing then refused
• Malformed colour reported as an unclosed enclosure
• Matrix brackets over attribute names in left-to-right trees
• Crash on text before a tree; empty argument read as a path
• Documentation said overline was missing from PNG output

[1.10.0] - 2026-08-19

Deprecated

• JPG and GIF output (removed in 2.0)

Changed

• RMagick loaded only when JPG or GIF is requested

Fixed

• FrozenError when raising RSTError with a string literal

[1.9.0] - 2026-08-19

Added

• hyphen: literal: a bare hyphen is a hyphen and \-…\- underlines
• Nested matrices with #( … #)
• \t splits a label into aligned columns, for attribute-value matrices
• color: gray (or grey): black labels with grey connectors and paths
• Gallery examples for LFG and DRT
• Gallery figures scaled by their own width and loaded lazily, each with an anchor

Changed

• Boxes and circles drawn at one size on one centre line
• SVG width and height match the viewBox

Fixed

• TikZ export dropped the contents of nested matrices
• LSIF records the hyphen mode
• A one-ended line connection raised NoMethodError
• Line connections anchored to the facing box edges, with arrowheads sized to the link
• Nodes joined by a line connection spaced for a full-size arrowhead

[1.8.2] - 2026-08-17

Changed

• tidy: high compresses further than medium
• Mathematical alphanumerics (U+1D400–) named in the font chains; serif trees use a serif source

Fixed

• CLI errors go to stderr with exit status 1
• Noto Sans Mono SemiCondensed removed from the mono chain

[1.8.1] - 2026-08-15

Fixed

• Arabic drawn as unjoined letterforms on some systems
• Emoji measured and drawn with different fonts where a colour emoji font was installed

Changed

• Font chains name Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Thai and Khmer families
• Docker images install Noto fonts for those scripts, with a fontconfig rule for Noto Sans Math
• Documentation on overriding font families with fontconfig

[1.8.0] - 2026-08-15

Added

• tidy layout scale: symmetric

  off

  low

  medium

  high

• mirror option for right-to-left trees
• hspacing option for horizontal gaps
• Pass-through <> nodes for levelling leaves
• CJK coverage in every font style
• Gallery: Multilingual and Morphology categories
• CI on GitHub Actions (Ruby 3.2/3.4)

Changed

• LSIF records geometry.mirror and the layout settings in meta.source.params
• symmetrize (-y) and tidy_spacing deprecated
• -d is --direction (it had been taken by --hide-default-connectors)
• Font files no longer bundled; fonts resolve through fontconfig; --font removed

Fixed

• Boolean options left at their defaults misread as on with a partial parameter set

[1.7.0] - 2026-08-13

Changed

• Text measured with Pango instead of RMagick (fixes off-centre Khmer labels, #14)
• Line height fixed at 1.4 × font size for every script
• Font family lists defined in one place

Added

• Runtime dependency on the pango gem

[1.6.3] - 2026-07-19

Fixed

• Packaged files no longer carry owner-only permissions

[1.6.2] - 2026-06-26

Fixed

• Region shade no longer touches the image edge

[1.6.1] - 2026-06-26

Improved

• Cleaner padding and connector clearance around region shades

Added

• Example 065: nested region shades

[1.6.0] - 2026-06-25

Added

• Region shade (% prefix), coloured with %@color:
• Region shade in TikZ export and in LSIF (style.region)
• \% for a literal leading percent sign
• Straight apostrophes drawn as curly apostrophes (’)
• Example 064: region shade for a c-command domain

Changed

• LSIF version 0.3.0

Fixed

• Region shade on the root clipped by the canvas

[1.5.0] - 2026-04-06

Added

• Left-to-right tree layout (-d ltr / --direction ltr)
• LSIF geometry.direction field for layout direction
• LTR-aware path drawing (movement arrows route rightward in ⊃ shape)
• LTR-aware line-type connections (direct lines between nodes)
• Examples 058-063: LTR versions of classification trees and vP-shell with paths

Fixed

• Node label overlap when adjacent subtrees have long labels

Improved

• TTB path bulge proportional to endpoint distance (reduced excess)

[1.4.0] - 2026-01-06

Added

• LSIF (Linguistic Structure Interchange Format) JSON output (-f lsif)
• Per-node coloring with @color: syntax (named colors and hex colors)
• Penn Treebank format support with escaped parentheses (\(, \))
• Standard input support for piping tree data
• Configuration file support (.rsyntaxtreerc)
• Config file validation with helpful error messages

Documentation

• Added TikZ output limitations section
• Improved README with Features section
• Added examples for per-node coloring (054, 055, 056)
• Added example 057: Subscript and superscript demo

[1.3.2] - 2025-03-03

• Garbage collection friendly implementation

[1.3.1] - 2024-10-24

• Square brackets can be escaped with \[ and \]
• Bug fixes and improvements

[1.3.0] - 2024-08-27

• TikZ/forest LaTeX output support

Earlier releases (2018–2023)

Before this file was kept, the web interface carried the release notes. Moved here so the history has one home.

• 2023-09 — Cross-hatch rendering issue fixed
• 2023-02 — PDF download; improved line edges; Line width option; Traditional colour option; Hide connectors option; extra connectors between nodes
• 2023-01 — Noto Sans Mono font option
• 2022-11 — ¥ accepted in place of the backslash for escapes; documentation in Japanese
• 2022-06 — RSyntaxTree on the Web: the UI as a source package, runnable locally with Docker
• 2022-02 — Polyline connector option
• 2022-01 — comprehensive rewrite; path drawing (non-directional, directional, bidirectional); more flexible text markup; new markup patterns (newlines, brackets, horizontal lines, boxed text); triangles in every connector mode; improved error display and image zoom in the UI
• 2021-12 — subscript _text_ and superscript __text__; \n inside terminal nodes
• 2021-11 — label-less terminal nodes ([A [B] [C]]); auto bracket close; math symbol rendering; better image quality; some decoration symbols altered
• 2019-11 — SVG download error fixed
• 2019-04 — SVG colour on/off fixed
• 2018-06 — whitespace in labels with <> (Modal<>AUX)
• 2018-03 — V spacing option (then called Connector height); syntax highlighting of the input; text styles (italic, bold) and decoration (underline, overline, line-through); refined site design
• 2018-02 — margins around the image; better editor (Ace)