What Features or Tools does Sigil Still Need Yet?

[KevinH]

With the release of Sigil-1.4.3, DiapDealer and I have achieved all of my personal goals for Sigil including:

- entity preservation
- plugin interface and embedded python3 engine
- community of plugin developers and plugins
- html5/gumbo parser integration to better handle broken code
- epub3 support while keeping full epub2 support
- support custom epub layout- no more forcing epubs into a "standard" layout
- mathml support via MathJax
- QtWebEngine port
- stripping out BookView into a separate app called PageEdit
- dark and light mode support
- multiple language spellchecking
- checkpointing (via an interface to git) to make saving any restoring very easy
- overall stability and crash prevention improvements
- more timely bug/issue resolution
- continuous improvement systems for build testing for Windows and Mac
- improved relationship with Linux distributions
- better build documentation for all platforms
- maintain a vibrant User Community and Forums on Mobileread
- help make consistent and timely releases
- allow users to specify their own icon sets
- rework the user interface to be more configurable

So my to-do list is now pretty much empty after about 5 years of effort. So we (or I as I can not speak for DiapDealer here as he may have his own list) are open to new feature or tool suggestions ...

But please **before** making a suggestion:
- make sure it would be useful to a wide variety of users
- it could not be done better in a plugin
- it can not be done better with the current "open-with"
- it can be done on all 3 main platforms: Linux, MacOS, Windows

So if you think you have a killer feature or tool that would benefit many users of Sigil, please use this thread to to suggest and explain it, justifying why it would help.

If there turns out to be a user consensus on a few of these, we can add them to our to-do list for the next 5 years - but no promises!

Thanks!

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by KevinH

With the release of Sigil-1.4.3, DiapDealer and I have achieved all of my personal goals for Sigil ...

So my to-do list is now pretty much empty after about 5 years of effort.

Congratulations! and

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Congratulations! and

Let me add my congratulations to that and thank you more than I can possibly express. (I'm also boggled that it's been five years! Gadzooks, where does the time fly?) My shop uses it every single day and it's been invaluable to me, personally, too.

You and Diap saved Sigil. No two ways about it. Well done, guys.

Hitch

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Congratulations! and

Yes! I agree.

[pete6055]

Great!
But how about:
- an indicator on the status bar when an epub is in Sigil Standard format (though one can usually tell by the cover page file path), or give us a preference setting on open.
- knock out the fix declaration Y/N if mend on open is in preferences.

Of course; Sigil remains one of my favorite tools with or without any additional enhancements. You have all done a great job!

[latepaul]

It needs to be able to read email of course.

[Thasaidon]

My Feeling is there is very little that needs to be added to Sigil.

What I does seem to need work is the manual. It would be a lot of work for one person to redo the whole manual.

My suggestion is that if you could make a list of the manual sections that need most work, also Sigil has a lot of features and people may only be familiar with the subset they use. People may then more willing to take on help if it is about a feature they use and less daunting than taking on the whole manual.

[Ashjuk]

Kevin,

As a relative newcomer to using Sigil I still have to fully explore its capabilities so I don't know if there is anything that needs to be added - it's probably there anyway.

All I would like to say is thank you to both yourself and DiapDealer for this excellent program - I really appreciate your efforts.

[Banjo]

I would also like to add my thanks to Kevin and DiapDealer for Sigil, a marvelous tool.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

What I does seem to need work is the manual. It would be a lot of work for one person to redo the whole manual.

My suggestion is that if you could make a list of the manual sections that need most work, also Sigil has a lot of features and people may only be familiar with the subset they use. People may then more willing to take on help if it is about a feature they use and less daunting than taking on the whole manual.

Excellent suggestion and one I agree with whole heartedly. Given the changes almost all of the screenshots must be redone. But unfortunately given the multiple icon sets that can now be used, that is no longer straight forward. And given how customizable the Tool bar icons are, two screen shots can look very different.

[Doitsu]

While Sigil has a fully functioning metadata editor, I liked the table-based design of earlier versions better.

Here's a mockup of a table-based metadata editor (based on my epub2 metadata plugin) that I'd like to see in a future version:



(The Title File-As box should be hidden for epub2 books.)

I know that it'll be difficult to create a solution that works for epub3 and epub2 books, but especially new Sigil users will probably prefer a table-based GUI over a tree-based GUI.

[KevinH]

And for things that epub3 allows that epub2 does not such as multiple titles, series information, most of the refines, multiple languages where order is important, etc, how would you handle that in this table framework?

Perhaps a "Advanced Button" that shows the current metadata editor?

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by KevinH

But unfortunately given the multiple icon sets that can now be used, that is no longer straight forward. And given how customizable the Tool bar icons are, two screen shots can look very different.

Then what about add a preface highlighting this problem and stating that to simplify things the sceenshots will only use one set of icons. The preface could contain each set of icons with the same function icons grouped together.

Next to each screenshot (et al) a note saying "See Preface" which also has link to the preface.

If the icon concerned is also named in the text i.e. "Create TOC", I think that may cover it

Just off the top of my head if no one has a better idea.

[elibrarian]

My deeply felt congratulations and thanks to KevinH and DiapDealer for their absolutely brilliant work. I remember the feeling of desperation when UserNone gave up on Sigil. I also find it amazing how many professionel epub producers (DAISY among others) are promoting Sigil as THE goto tool. But of course there aren't so many others, Calibre's editor being the only alternative (or at least the only one besides Sigil that aren't ripping the bottom out of your purse).

That said, I have a couple of modest suggestions:

Headers (H1-H6) will always be a full line. So why not make the CTRL + 1 etc. insert <h1>-</h1> tags around the line, in which the cursor is placed, if (and only if) no text is selected?

Almost the same goes for bold, italics etc. - if no text is selected, the ctrl + b (e.g.) could surround the word where the cursor is placed.

(I have made something like it in most of my tekst/html-editors using macros or AutoHotKey, and you'll be amazed how many mouse moves and time it saves!)

Also, how about an autocorrect function with the ability to use personal and exchangeable word lists (like the one in Atlantis, but with regexes)?

And then one small gripe: When I regenerate a TOC, Sigil will preserve the header and the "<nav epub:type='toc' id='toc'>", but removes "role='doc-toc'". It is of course a small thing to re-insert (I always run ACE as one of the last things before publishing my books, and it will tell me if I forget).

Regards,

Kim

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Perhaps a "Advanced Button" that shows the current metadata editor?

IMHO, either an Advanced button and/or an Advanced right-click menu option would work.