Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
The rest is great, but I think that most of the people who use Sigil do what we do-edit in another HTML editor, like NoteTabPro (although I personally have some weirdo problem with NTP 7.0), and then use Sigil for polishing the ePUB, make the NCX, make the OPF, add the meta, and bob's-yer-uncle, as they say here.
Hitch
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That's why I was wondering if an extension to an existing HTML text editor might just as well serve your needs.
For example, I was looking at PSPad (free but Windows only unfortunately), and it has extensive customisation options using any WSH languages including Javascript, Python etc.. The actual structure of the editor itself is similar to Sigil with a project style explorer for content and the editor pane. It has it's own internal browser view (not sure if that feature is key for you). It already has advanced text search/replace etc...
So it seems that the key aspect would be putting those ePUB bells and whistles into an extension script, one that could open an ePUB and create the appropriate project directory and then package it all back up again, along with a couple of extra items. I don't know much about the specific value items you've mentioned so I'm only assuming that those problems can be solved in a scripting extension.
The reason I thought it might be an interesting idea is that you seem to be using a text editor for most of the creation work anyway, so rather than swapping to another tool, perhaps enhance the tool you have?
Of course, this still opens up all the problems of who is going to develop and maintain it, but it might be easier to develop and support what you need this way rather that the other idea you had of overtaking a whole development piece with a big history and the complications of being a statically compiled code base.
Anyway, it's only really meant to provide food for thought.