2009 (Winter) Release
Fixes:
- Optimizations for large batch projects.
- Improved Microsoft Word (*.doc) importer.
2009 (September) Release
New Features and Fixes:
- Trailing citations can be excluded from the analysis.
- Reading ages can now be shown as a range (corresponding to the grade-level score) or be rounded to the nearest semester.
- Added Flesch Reading Ease chart.
- Added Crawford graph (Spanish projects only) .
- Improved handling of Unicode apostrophes and ellipses.
- Optimizations for large *.odt and *.docs files.
- Optimizations for large batch projects.
- Optimizations for sorting word lists.
- Fix for custom formulas to work with non-English regional settings.
- Added more British spelling variations to the Dale-Chall, Spache, and Harris-Jacobson lists.
2009 Release
New Analysis Features:
- Added Spanish document analysis features. This includes specialized Spanish syllabizer and tests. Note that this is only available in the Professional edition or if Spanish tests are purchased with the Standard edition.
- Added “ignore left alignment/tabbing” option to document analysis.
- Added new text exclusion method for including headers and sub-headers (as full sentences), but excluding all other incomplete sentences.
- Independent clause count statistic now included in the statistics report. An independent clause is a section of text which ends with a period, exclamation mark, question mark, interrobang, colon, semicolon, or dash.
- Mode now included in Standard projects' test score statistics.
- Batch project now includes Valid N, Range, Standard Error, Skewness, and Kurtosis in the aggregated statistics.
- Variance calculations can now use either the population or sampling method.
- Text exclusion can now be adjusted to include incomplete sentences containing a specified number of words.
- “All Words” list now includes syllable and character count columns.
- Added “unique words count” to the statistics window.
- Summary statistics now available in tabular format.
New Test Features:
- Added ability to display readability scores in different grade scales. Currently, U.S., Canadian, and U.K. grade scales are available.
- Reading age can now be displayed as either a range (e.g., "10-11") or be rounded (based on the semester of the grade score).
- Added Harris-Jacobson test.
- Added Dale-Chall (PSK) test.
- Added Bormuth Cloze Mean test.
- Added Bormuth Grade Placement test.
- Added Gunning Fog (PSK) test.
- Added Farr, Jenkins, Paterson test.
- Added Farr, Jenkins, Paterson (PSK) test.
- Added Wheeler-Smith test.
- Added Gilliam, Peña, Mountain Fry Graph.
- Added Crawford test (Professional edition only, or if Spanish tests are purchased).
- Added FRASE graph (Professional edition only, or if Spanish tests are purchased).
- Added SOL test (Professional edition only, or if Spanish tests are purchased).
- Added Degrees of Reading Power test.
- Added Degrees of Reading Power test (grade level).
- Added high-precision option to SMOG test.
- Added “count independent clauses as separate sentences” option to Gunning Fog.
- Added ability to customize numeral syllable counting for the Flesch-related tests. Flesch tests now explicitly treat numerals as monosyllabic by default.
- Added custom formula functionality to custom tests.
- Added ability to specify the result type of custom tests (e.g., index level or grade level).
- Added ability for custom tests to control how proper nouns are handled (including the ability to count only the first occurrence of a proper noun as unfamiliar).
- Custom tests no longer require custom word lists (just the standard lists can be selected).
- Added predicted Cloze score to Coleman-Liau test.
- New Dale-Chall now has custom text exclusion options to use either the recommended instructions or the system defaults.
- New Dale-Chall has the ability to control how proper nouns are handled (including the ability to count only the first occurrence of a proper noun as unfamiliar).
- Fry graph now uses updated instructions for numerals and proper nouns based on the article “Fry's Readability Graph: Clarifications, Validity, and Extension to Level 17”.
- Raygor graph now shows “College” and “Professor” as the labels for the last two slices.
Enhanced Interface:
- Shortened names on some of the tabs to make them easier to navigate.
New List Exporting Features:
- When printing lists, the table is now split into smaller tables with page breaks between them. In addition, the header row appears on each page.
- When exporting lists as HTML, the aforementioned page break feature can optionally be included.
New Graph Features:
- Added image stippling option (i.e., custom brush) for bar charts, histograms, and box plots.
New Graph Exporting Features:
- Added TIFF compression options.
- Added quantization (256 color reduction) option.
- Added TGA exporting.
- Added JPEG2000 exporting and importing.
- Added support for large JPEG importing.
- Added GIF exporting.
- Image size can now be customized.
New General Features:
- Added ability to import macro enabled Word 2007 (*.docm) files.
- Added stand-alone Web Harvester to Tools menu (Professional edition only).
- Web harvester can now harvest more than one root website (Professional edition only).
- Some warnings can now be suppressed.
Bug Fixes:
- Euro symbol (€) is now syllabized (as two syllables).
- Removed restrictions where tests would fail to be calculated if the number of difficult words were zero.
- Word count bars are now only included on the word breakdown bar chart if the respective test is included in the project.
2008 (December) Release
New Feature:
- Summary Statistics are now available in tabular format, as well as report format.
Bug Fixes:
-
Unicode apostrophe (’) and ellipsis (…) are now supported.
- Fix for columns being truncated when printing large lists from batch projects.
2008 Release
New Product:
- Release of Readability Studio Professional Edition, which adds:
- The ability to analyze an entire batch of documents at once.
- Aggregated statistics (e.g., means and standard deviation) of the batch's test scores.
- Histograms and box plots of the batch's test scores.
- A web harvesting tool for finding, downloading, and analyzing a website.
If you are a current Standard edition user and wish to upgrade to Professional, please contact us here.
New Features:
- A new section for Dolch Sight Words added.
- A new section for grammar added, which includes the following:
- Long sentences
- Repeated words
- Redundant phrases
- Wordy phrases
- Clichés
- Lowercase sentences
- Sentences that begin with conjunctions
- Microsoft® Word 2007 files can now be imported.
- OpenDocument files can now be imported.
- All the results (graphs, lists, statistics) in a project can now be exported at once.
- Copying list windows now includes formatting.
- A "Copy All" option has been added to the list and text windows.
- Double-clicking on a word in a list and it will jump to the first instance of that word in the respective text window.
- The statistics summary window now includes links to the difficult word lists.
- User settings can be exported and imported.
- A legend can now be included in the highlighted text windows.
- Trailing copyright/trademark notices can be excluded from the analysis.
- Drop shadows can be toggled for your graphs.
- Graphs can now be saved in black & white images.
- A new page has been added to the New Project wizard for defining the structure of your document.
- Documentation is more integrated with the program. Hitting the F1 button on your keyboard will take you to the help pertinent to the results you are currently viewing.
- Save, print, copy, and search options have been added to the New Dale-Chall and Spache (Revised) word list sidebars.
- Improved proper noun detection and syllable counter.
2007 Release
New Features:
- All new Project Assistant sidebar.
- New Dale-Chall and Spache (Revised) word lists can now be displayed in a sidebar. This can be a useful reference when reviewing the unfamiliar words in your document.
- Custom familiar-word tests. You can create new tests using your own word lists, as well as create tests based on New Dale-Chall or Spache and append your own words to them.
- The statistics section now includes warnings for any issues encountered in your document. For example, if your document has a large average sentence length, then this statistic is highlighted and a note indicating the problem is included.
- The overly-long sentence window now displays the word count after every sentence.
- Numerous new graph options, including:
- Ability to apply a color fade to your backgrounds.
- Ability to control the opacity of your backgrounds.
- Ability to add a logo or watermark to your graphs.
- Ability to customize the bar chart appearance.
- Ability to save graphs in grayscale mode.
- More control over how difficult words and sentences are highlighted. You can toggle between highlighting the background of the word or set the word’s font to the highlight color.
- Standard deviation and median are now included in the readability score section (statistics display must be set to verbose).
- More control over how sentences are deduced.
1.1.2 Release
New Feature:
- Added list of all words (and their respective frequency counts) to the difficult words section.
1.1.1 Release
New Features:
- Number of proper nouns added to the statistics.
- Improved support for proper noun detection. Some tests may produce slightly lower results than previous versions.
- Updated documentation.
1.1 Release
New Features:
- Webpages can now be analyzed.
- Added RIX readability test.
- Added option to exclude incomplete sentences from the analysis.
- Added option to toggle the detail of statistics.
- Added options to change the graph title and axis fonts.
- Added options to change the graphs' background colors.
- Added options to set an image as the graphs' background.
- Added support for printer headers and footers.
- Improved inclusion of punctuation in the highlighted text windows.
- Averages of the readability scores and age levels are now included in the results window.
- Added "technical document" as a document type
in the New Project wizard.
- Added new option "New project from clipboard" as a
shortcut to create a new project using the text on the clipboard.
- UTF-8 encoded files now supported.
- Added option to word list exporter to save only the
selected rows.
- Improved HTML importer.
- Improved syllable counter, including better support for acronyms and hyphenated words.
- New examples and technical notes added to the documentation.
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