Sigil Requested Changes Under Consideration post Sigil-1.9.2

[KevinH]

Here is the latest list (in no particular order, and NO PROMISES!!!!!)

Sigil To-Do List
--------------------

• Some form of supported templating for HTML, TOC and Index generation (under consideration but doable by plugin) (@BeckyEbook)
• Multiple paragraph justification setting via the CV alignment icon (although PageEdit does this now) (@Vanguard3000)
• Add a regex to be used to build TOC when no headings tags exist (considering but this is against accessibility) (@patrik)
• Try to update to lastest BS4 (but be careful of license change) (dev team)
• Add GetInfo dialog to BookBrowser to add/change Semantics and Manifest Properties on a File (dev team)
• Add CSSToolbox and GUI to help users create, manipulate, and merge multiple css stylesheets/selectors (@Tex2002ans)
  • merge selectors across separate css stylesheets
  • delete selectors from a stylesheet
  • strip out a set of properties across all selectors and stylesheets
  • compare two selector property lists to find matching selectors across stylesheets
• Explore developing Spellcheck like advance editing features (@Tex2002ans)
• Update to Mathjax 3.x when possible (dev team)

[phillipgessert]

Is it ok to make additional requests in this thread, or is there a better channel for that?

Edit: actually, I think the post-1.8 equivalent turned into a bunch of requests, so I may as well go for it. I'd find customizable reports handy for getting counts on e.g. tables and lists, though I realize this can already be done via search. Just a convenience thing. I'd also find it useful to use Launch XHTML Editor for CSS files. I'd also like it if Delete Unused Media Files could also pull out unused fonts.

And this is an odd one: I occasionally like to disable line wrapping in text editors that allow it, usually when I'm strictly examining block-level semantics and don't really care about the content within. I found an old thread where someone else mentioned it, and it seemed to be a fairly unpopular idea--just adding my voice to that (very small) chorus.

Totally get that none of the above may be useful to enough people to be worth considering, just putting em out there. And it seems like a lot of the time when I think "this would be a great addition!" someone helpfully points out Sigil can already do it. Apologies wherever that might be the case.

[KevinH]

Here is fine. That is what this thread was meant to do.

But please make sure any additional requests are not better done as plugins, can not already be done in other ways, and are meant to help multiple users (just not one person's specific workflow). The more people it helps the better.

And no promises anything suggested makes it onto our To-Do list.

Other than that fire away ...

[phillipgessert]

Yep, fired away above but wouldn’t be surprised if they’re either too specific to me or are better suited to plugins. Least they’re out of my brain now!

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

I'd find customizable reports handy for getting counts on e.g. tables and lists[...]

If all you need is the total number of <table>, <ol> and <ul> tags per file/book, this could easily be done as a plugin.

[KevinH]

As for deleting unused fonts - exactly how would you define unused fonts?

if a font is referenced in the css but its selector is never applied, and the files are present, is it unused?

That might be something for a plugin

And as for creating "custom reports", I was thinking of adding a Count Report button to Saved Searches that can be applied to any Saved Search group to produce a table of Counts for each search as a way to implement this existing To-Do request:

Find some way to report sub-counts when counting using saved search groups (@Tex2002ans)

You could then create your own saved search group with searches for whatever you wanted to count for the report.

Would that work?

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

If all you need is the total number of <table>, <ol> and <ul> tags per file/book, this could easily be done as a plugin.

Well there we go. Since that one’s better as a plugin AND can already be done via search, probably not a great one. Need to learn me some python one of these days.

Edit: actually, the below does sound just about perfect for what I’d be trying to do.

Originally Posted by KevinH

You could then create your own saved search group with searches for whatever you wanted to count for the report.

Would that work?

[KevinH]

Also if you want to launch an external CSS editor, why can't you just use Open With. For epubs with only few stylesheets that should work just fine.

For editing lots of CSS stylesheets at the same time, you could use the Launch External XHTML and pass the entire opf to your application, but whatever is launched would need to be smart enough to parse the opf and extract and open each css stylesheet.

FWIW, I am still thinking about how to identify and merge common selectors across stylesheets but I am leaning toward doing this in a plugin as most epubs have less than a handfull of stylesheets.

[phillipgessert]

It honestly never occurred to be to use Open With on CSS files. I certainly will now!

[KevinH]

As for toggling line wrap mode in CodeView, I will experiment with adding a context sensitive menu item to do that to see how it reacts. If it doesn't hurt anything and if others would find that useful, then maybe.

It may be quite easy to do but CV would always load as wrapped at first (as it is now) and the user would have to toggle it on and off via the pop-up menu in each CV.

It would not be a Sigil Prefs setting thing.

It would be there just to give people a chance to quickly view structure, as editing while horizontally scrolling is a real pain.

[phillipgessert]

That's pretty much exactly how I'd use it, just as a temporary toggle to whip through a file checking opening tags. I'd just about bet that other folks that'd use it would use it that way too.

[Turtle91]

I’m just curious. What good does an html editor do for CSS files?? They are just text….

I can see something like notepad++ making pretty colors, but it doesn’t fill in details for you

[BeckyEbook]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

That's pretty much exactly how I'd use it, just as a temporary toggle to whip through a file checking opening tags. I'd just about bet that other folks that'd use it would use it that way too.

I admit that I use this feature several times a year (which I mentioned in this thread). I can't do an on/off checkbox on the context menu, but just close the xhtml file and reopen it to get the view back to the standard (ie with wrapping) text.
I usually combine NoWrap with the additional replace of /n/n to single /n to make code checking run faster.

I just decided that I wanted to have such an option, even if it was useful to me relatively rarely. And I couldn't reach NoWrap through the plugin.

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I’m just curious. What good does an html editor do for CSS files?? They are just text….

I can see something like notepad++ making pretty colors, but it doesn’t fill in details for you

It's far less useful than it is for HTML files, for sure; but the most common reasons I launch an external editor is for multi-cursor or little text editor niceties I don't think it'd be reasonable to expect Code View to replicate. And for a long time I didn't write any CSS in Sigil, only VS Code or Sublime, so sometimes it's just a muscle memory/comfort thing when I'm in a hurry. Though I do find that I don't leave Sigil nearly as often as I used to.

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

I admit that I use this feature several times a year (which I mentioned in this thread). I can't do an on/off checkbox on the context menu, but just close the xhtml file and reopen it to get the view back to the standard (ie with wrapping) text.
I usually combine NoWrap with the additional replace of /n/n to single /n to make code checking run faster.

I just decided that I wanted to have such an option, even if it was useful to me relatively rarely. And I couldn't reach NoWrap through the plugin.

Yep, that's the thread I found when I first searched for this, and learned that for some it seems like kind of an odd thing to want. Definitely not something I would use every day, but it'd be a handy feature!

[KevinH]

Seems like there is some interest from others ...

So @BeckyEbook,
If you change the menu item to something like "Toggle Line Wrap Mode", and implement it in the CodeViewEditors (its ContextMenu), I would be happy to merge a PR right after Sigil-1.9.2 is released.

Thanks!

KevinH

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

I admit that I use this feature several times a year (which I mentioned in this thread). I can't do an on/off checkbox on the context menu, but just close the xhtml file and reopen it to get the view back to the standard (ie with wrapping) text.
I usually combine NoWrap with the additional replace of /n/n to single /n to make code checking run faster.

I just decided that I wanted to have such an option, even if it was useful to me relatively rarely. And I couldn't reach NoWrap through the plugin.