Chapter break in Sigil 0.6.0?

[Shortlass]

I have today downloaded Sigil and am editing my epub book. There are no chapter breaks in the book and I want to create them - but cannot.

The guide says to use Insert->Chapter Break from the menu - but this option is not on the Insert drop down menu. It also suggests using the chapter break icon, but this icon does not exist on my copy of sigil.

The html file I opened in Sigil actually includes "page-break-before: always;" in the h1 tag as css at the beginning of the document, but this does not translate to a chapter break while editing the epub in Sigil.

Any clues? It's very frustrating.

[kiwidude]

The user guide is still being updated for 0.6, I know meme is hoping to push some updates very soon on that.

If you want to insert a special marker in the html to then later do a split all at once, use Insert->Split Marker and then Edit->Split At Markers. There are keyboard shortcuts for both defaulting to Ctrl+Shift+Enter and F6 respectively. It can be useful to do a find/replace to insert these as well, such as to insert before chapter headings.

If you want to split the html immediately, then use Edit->Split At Cursor (Ctrl+Enter) for which there is a toolbar button for it.

CSS page-break-before instructions have no meaning to Sigil - they are only of interest to the ereader device/software.

[Shortlass]

Thank you for your quick reply.

So, for page breaks at the beginning of chapters, I should use the split option? This will split the file into small files. I didn't think this was what I wanted to do, as I wanted a page break, not a separate file.

However, do you think I would be better off splitting the file like this?

Also, should I remove that CSS command? I only mention it because when I googled this issue about page breaks, that was the solution that came up (it was in my original html file anyway).

Thanks again

[DiapDealer]

The guide is slightly out of sync with the latest version of Sigil. The devs have been working hard to give us a better program and have recently succeeded admirably, so it may (understandably) be a bit before the guide catches up.

Anyway... a couple of things:

Sigil doesn't do anything with the page-break-(before|after) attribute. That's for the epub renderer (reader) to deal with.

The terminology dealing with "chapters" has changed a bit (and rightfully so) in the latest version of Sigil. For all intents and purpose, creating "chapters" in Sigil means physically splitting an (x)html file into individual, smaller (x)html files. This can accomplished two ways:

1) putting the cursor just before where you want the new "chapter" to start and using 'Edit->Split at Cursor'. This takes place immediately and you now you have multiple (or more) (x)html files. The renderer (reader) sees the new file as a hard chapter-break.

2) You can go through your document and simply mark where you want to split the file(s) using 'Insert->Split-marker'. Note that all this does is insert a horizontal rule (<hr>) with a special class-name. Marking your file this way, by itself, does nothing with regard to chapter creation. You still, at some point, need to use the 'Edit->Split at Markers' function to actually split the file(s) into "chapter" components.

EDIT: Once again, I took a bit too long to post nearly the same thing someone else did—more concisely.

[Shortlass]

Ahh... so I actually do need to split the file into individual files to get the chapter breaks. Thanks for clearing that up. I have to say, that way of doing things is counter-intuitive.

Perfectly understand that the documentation is lagging behind the software - the new version's been up less than a week.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Shortlass

Ahh... so I actually do need to split the file into individual files to get the chapter breaks. Thanks for clearing that up. I have to say, that way of doing things is counter-intuitive.

Just so we're clear... most ePub rendering engines will honor the page-break-(before|after) CSS attribute in one way or another, but you won't see a "page-break" in Sigil's Book View, nor does it have any automated way of inserting elements with the page-break-before attribute associated with it.

[Shortlass]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Just so we're clear... most ePub rendering engines will honor the page-break-(before|after) CSS attribute in one way or another, but you won't see a "page-break" in Sigil's Book View, not does it have any automated way of inserting elements with the page-break-before attribute associated with it.

Thank you for clarifying (again!).

I had another play around and was wondering this very thing. I think I will leave the CSS this way as it will be honoured by most ereaders and, indeed, seems to work fine in Adobe reader.

[mrmikel]

It is important to have chapters broken into individual files for a couple of reasons. Many readers are slow on one gigantic file and some older ones will simply not work at all, showing only 1 page which they refuse to open.

Breaks don't strictly need to be chapters, but it is convenient to do so and makes it easier to make search/replace changes and confine them to just one area, especially if they go haywire!