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Originally Posted by colink
Yes, and no.
Sigil's problem is that it violates one of the open source paradigms, in that the people who USE it also are able to MODIFY it. In Sigil's case, it seems like the vast majority of users are writers who are great at writing prose, but not so good at writing C++ or python.
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{shrug}. I don't agree that it "violates one of the open source paradigms;" I well remember EZPublish, which was purportedly (and allegedly still is) OS, and the vast, vast majority of EZP users certainly can't modify it. That's just one example. There is always, in OS, a tiny core group of hardcore users who have the capability to modify the source, and a much larger community of users who can't.
The same is true here; the reality of the situation is simply that we have a much smaller user base to begin with than, say, Joomla or Mambo or the like. Sigil occupies a niche spot; it's a halfway house for people who want to build their OWN ePUBs, but want some shortcuts. It's not a word-processor for the nine bajillion people who come here thinking it's really WYSIWYG ePUB-making, and it's not real "coding," either (I mean by that, it's HTML and CSS, not...assembler, or PHP or what-have-you). The number of people who want the finite control really making an ePUB in X/HTML is limited, by the very nature of humans, who obey the laws of physics and take the easiest path.
I suspect Jutoh already has more users than Sigil, even though it costs $40, just because it's far easier to learn. And let's not forget AWP, which runs about the same, and can output an ePUB that's not bad, for the average DIY'er.
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Kovidgoyal already said that if Sigil had been written in python that he'd consider adopting it and adding it to Calibre.
So my thought, which wasn't very detailed, is that while no one aside from Mark Shuttleworth could afford to hire a full-time programmer to rebuild Sigil in python, that perhaps some of the 41 contributors to Calibre could be incentivized to take on that work.
Maybe we could raise enough money to get a Google Summer of Code project, or maybe a python user group or a community member would be willing to take it on. All those, however, require some kind of promotion or flag waving.
It would probably also require user_none's buyin, and Kovidgoyal really didn't talk about it beyond the bare idea of adoption.
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Personally, I don't think it would take Shuttleworth, but it wouldn't be merely $500, either. I'm sure converting Sigil to something else--Python, or whatever is needed--could be done; it's essentially a rewrite of the entire program. The question is, does anyone really
want to do it? Sure, there are 41 Calibre contributors, but quite a few of those folks have already contributed here already.
Let's face it, most regular users of Calibre aren't interested in something like Sigil--that's why they are using Calibre. So they don't have to learn something like Sigil. The intersection of the sets is likely small, or those people who are primarily Calibre users first, and Sigil users second, are using Sigil for the minor tweaking that they can't already do with ePUBTweak. The base Sigil users likely don't have a large or heavy use of Calibre, either--for making ePUBs, anyway. If they are like me, they use it for what it's intended for--cataloging purposes.
So it's not clear to me that there's funding that could be had by the "simple" expedient of saying, let's roll it into Calibre, and I would be the first to say I have very dismal hopes that some volunteer Python user group would be willing to take it on. There's a bajillion crowd-sourcing hopefuls out there, and this particular project, for such a small base...dunno. Most self-publishers aren't even interested in ePUB, because they don't know what it is, or understand it, so the demand from the general public is extremely small (I cannot tell you how many of our clients don't even
download their final ePUB copies, FWIW).
Don't know. It's very disheartening.
Hitch