Future Release To-Do Items

[retiredbiker]

Ah, that explains why I'm not seeing changes...the highlighting is as it always is on my machine and works in Sigil. After banging around tabbing and hovering for a couple of hours yesterday I couldn't find anything that didn't work. (And yes, I restarted Sigil every time I turned the focus highlighting on or off.)

(No idea why the environment variable didn't work, most likely my fat fingers. I just now found the gtk settings in the dconf-editor, but I really don't want to start messing in there. I have a history of breaking my machine when I get into the weeds and then spending way too long fixing it. Can be fun but not right now.)

[KevinH]

FYI - I think the highlight focus code and the tab to shift focus code has now been fully implemented in master for all 3 platforms.

Please let me know if anyone runs into additional issues with either set of changes.

[KevinH]

Updated the To-Do list in the first post of this thread.

[DNSB]

Is there a possibility of you making built versions of that code available for download?

[KevinH]

Yes, give me a week to finish off a few things, then I will deploy a CI build and let people test with it. Remind me early next week if I haven't posted anything by then.

[KevinH]

Okay for those who are willing to test the new features and report bugs back and work with us to track them down and get them fixed ...

We have created fresh Test-Beta1 releases for Win64, Mac-x86_64, and Mac-arm64 from today's Sigil github repo from the master branch.

I have posted them on my own BuildSigilOnMac repo in releases here:

https://github.com/kevinhendricks/Bu...OnMac/releases

See:

sigil-Test-Beta1-Win64-installer.zip

Sigil.app-Test-Beta1-Mac-arm64.tar.xz

Sigil.app-Test-Beta1-Mac-x86_64.tar.xz


Note these could replace the most current release in your day to day work but you can always reinstall over these when done testing by redownloading the official release binaries.

That said, Qt6.6.2 had a horrible memory leak only on macOS that lost up to a gig of memory each time Preview or PageEdit window was resized. So if you are using macOS, I would stick with this new build (the memory leak in Qt was fixed) until a new official release is made. Windows and Linux do not have that memory leak, it was macOS specific.

Check out the first post in this thread to see the list of new features that could be tested.

And of course, feel free to report any actual bugs no matter if new feature or not so we can track those down and get them fixed in Sigil before the next official release.

Hope this helps.

[DiapDealer]

Windows users might run into some theme issues with this test build when changing the system colors from dark to light while Sigil is running. I'm aware of it and have been working on it for a while now. I've got something working that I hope to push soon, but in the meantime... simply restart Sigil if you run into the issue with this test build. No need to report the problem.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

And of course, feel free to report any actual bugs no matter if new feature or not so we can track those down and get them fixed in Sigil before the next official release.

Hope this helps.

Initial observations

KB shorts for Show/Hide Preview & Clips ✔

Initially I left the qss tweak in place (:focus {border: 1px solid yellow;) and the Accessibility Tweaks unchecked. The only significant change I noticed was when I tabbed out of Book browser, the first button under Preview got focus :



Pretty sure that wasn't happening previously - focus may have been going there but it was never highlighted.

With Shift+Tab I can end up in various places







The other thing I noticed is when CodeView has focus, that Ctrl+Tab goes to next CV Tab, I do not have that shortcut configured:



More to come

BR

[BetterRed]

I removed the .qss tweak, and turned both Accessibility tweaks on.

First thing I noticed was that the CV window had a dark blue border

Everything else observed in my previous post stands.

I find the midnight/electric blue border in Windows Dark mode extremely difficult to see, so unless it's made configurable I'll stick with the yellow .qss tweak and forgo the border around CV.

BR

[KevinH]

Thank you for testing and reporting back.

Using the qss stylesheet Becky gave you along with this will create havoc. I would not recommend that. Always choose one or the other approach to focus highlighting. Preview focus highlights will only work with the official focus highlight setting but not with the qss stylesheet as it uses its own technique for creating a focus highlight.

That border highlight colour is chosen from your Qt application palette Highlight colour which is set to match your system highlight colour by Qt. There is an environment variable you can set to override the colour. For example.

SIGIL_FOCUS_HIGHLIGHT_COLOR="#4AAAFF"

That will override the colour used to highlight focus everywhere including Preview which did not focus highlight previously.

As for the ability to tab shift focus onto the Preview toolbar, that was something you asked for that was not possible before.

[KevinH]

The Ctrl+Tab used when TabManager has focus has always allowed the user to step through tabs. I will check if Next Tab is registered for use by the shortcut menu.

Update: checked the code and Next Tab and Previous Tab are both registered with the Shortcut Manager so you control those shortcuts.

As for Shift Tab or BackTab that should go back to the previous place you tabbed away from. The QTabBars do now allow focus by tab so that tabs inside Sigil Preferences can now be accessed from by Tab shifting focus as previously there was no easy keyboard way to change tabs. Using the arrow keys on a QTabBar should allow you to change to another tab.

[BetterRed]

AFAIK: on Windows 10 there's no easy way to control the system colour palette other than registry hacks, or 3rd party payware.

I disabled the .qss tweak, and set the EnvVar thus:

SIGIL_FOCUS_HIGHLIGHT_COLOR=#FFFF00

That put a yellow box around the CV window ✔



But other places I still see midnight Blue, which is acceptable on text boxes, barely on buttons with text, and practically invisible on buttons with icons such as those under Preview.etc:



So I re-enabled the .qss tweak



Which gives me yellow borders everywhere ✔

BR

[BetterRed]

Sigil User Guide

You can override this setting using an environment variable and then restart Sigil to see the changes.

set SIGIL_USES_DARK_MODE to 1 to force Sigil to use a Dark theme when your system uses a Light theme.

set SIGIL_USES_DARK_MODE to 0 to force Sigil to use a Light theme when your system uses a Dark theme.

Setting SIGIL_USES_DARK_MODE=0 (or 1) does not switch Sigil to Light mode, the only way I can get Sigil into Light mode is to put Windows into Light mode.

I think I've observed this previously but I wasn't bothered as I on those occasions I only wanted switch temporarily. If it worked I could switch Sigil to Light mode where the difficulties raised in regards to borders are reduced. In Light mode I can see the blue borders around buttons including those under Preview etc.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

The Ctrl+Tab used when TabManager has focus has always allowed the user to step through tabs. I will check if Next Tab is registered for use by the shortcut menu.

Update: checked the code and Next Tab and Previous Tab are both registered with the Shortcut Manager so you control those shortcuts.

Ctrl+Tab must be hard wired, these are my shortcut settings:



I prefer to only have one shortcut for per action.

BR

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

AFAIK: on Windows 10 there's no easy way to control the system colour palette other than registry hacks, or 3rd party payware.

I disabled the .qss tweak, and set the EnvVar thus:

SIGIL_FOCUS_HIGHLIGHT_COLOR=#FFFF00

That put a yellow box around the CV window ✔

Attachment 207871

But other places I still see midnight Blue, which is acceptable on text boxes, barely on buttons with text, and practically invisible on buttons with icons such as those under Preview.etc:

Attachment 207872

So I re-enabled the .qss tweak

Attachment 207873

Which gives me yellow borders everywhere ✔

BR

Hmm ... then something is broken.

That environment variable should override all highlight colors on the widgets specified. The only widget intentionally left out is the QComboBox that gets a bit messed up when it is styled with a stylesheet on Windows and macOS - see BeckyEbook's post about the Find Replace qcomboboxes earlier in this thread.

Update:
And your yellow box in Find Replace is a QComboBox! To check out non-QCombobox focus highlighting go to Sigil Preferences and play around with the controls in some of the Preference windows.

Update 2:
As for buttons and other controls on Windows, I can add them so that the override color works on them. I do that now for macOS. I just have no way to test changes on Windows so I did not add them in case they had problems similar to QComboBoxes has on Windows under light mode.

The approach used by BeckyEbook's qss just had some issues in Windows in light mode (and dark) and macOS because of Qt's idiocy. I am attempting to work around them by more selectively applying the highlight to specific widgets and then matching the system highlight color to handle the exceptions. We can certainly expand Windows to match what is done on macOS.