4.4.0

This is a minor upgrade with important new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes.

New Features

• Full regex search has been added for the KWIC, Plot, and File View tools (for compatible corpora).
• AI-assisted search has been extended to the remaining tools.
• Non-token search support has been implemented in the query processor.
• A global metadata filter has been added, with updated metadata handling and query planning support.
• Stoplist/allowlist filtering has been revised, including auto-loading and multi-select support, and a punctuation filter has been added.
• The Wordcloud tool has been upgraded to the new truewordcloud-based pipeline, with improved layout handling and support for copy/save workflows.
• A version update checker has been added.
• A GUI smoke test has been added to improve release stability checks.
• The Help and documentation pages have been substantially revised and expanded.
• App windows are now better sized and arranged on the display.
• A bug causing the Concordancer tool to not run properly is now fixed.
• The AI system prompt setting in the global setting has been removed to avoid confusion with the system prompt settings for the individual tools.
• The corpus manager has now been redesigned to be easier and more intuitive to use.
• A new AI model manager has been added to allow local AI models to be used with AntConc.
• The KWIC and Plot tools have been updated to allow for AI-assisted searches.

Bug Fixes

• Multiple corpus manager bugs have been fixed, including role assignment/opening behavior and related workflow issues.
• Corpus and AI model manager workflows have been improved with clearer deletion warnings, completion/readiness messages, and better handling of active downloads, indexing, and in-use resources.
• A series of database-locking bugs affecting corpus deletion after using tools such as File View, KWIC, Plot, N-Gram, Word List, Keyword List, and Collocate have been fixed.
• Resource persistence/path handling issues (including macOS-specific cases) have been fixed.
• KWIC processing has been refactored to use inner joins (removing the previous buffer dependency), improving robustness and performance.
• N-Gram settings bugs were fixed.
• The update checker was improved so Windows portable builds now download portable updates instead of defaulting to the installer package.
• Wordcloud tool bugs were fixed across rendering and interaction workflows.
• Markdown/help rendering issues were fixed (including font/image sizing and equation rendering).
• The bundled license agreement and installer license text were revised and synchronized, with clearer terms for non-commercial use, one-user licensing, commercial evaluation, seat reassignment, termination, and related agreement clauses.
• One-time license acceptance prompting was added for Windows portable and Linux builds, while preserving the existing installer-based acceptance flows.
• Linux writable-path handling was revised to use per-user application data locations in packaged builds, improving Flatpak compatibility and preventing writable data from being stored in bundled app resources.
• A settings export bug causing errors such as `cannot pickle 'classmethod' object` was fixed.
• Windows build and release packaging were improved with standardized public artifact naming and more automated build/manifest generation.
• Numerous smaller query-processing, path-handling, and lint-related bugs were fixed across the codebase.