Remove Chapter Breaks and Search an Entire Document

[Marcy]

I just upgraded Sigil from 1.9 to 2.0 and am now kind of confused. 2.0 automatically splits the different pieces of the epub up and displays them separately. However the files I am working on have inappropriate chapter breaks and I now can't figure out how to remove them. Any help would be appreciated.

Additionally I need to search and replace for some incorrect characters/formatting through the entire document. It appears this new format will make me search and replace each individual piece separately. Is this true? If so, this seems like a huge downgrade in functionality from the prior version.

I feel like an idiot, because I can almost always figure out the answers to questions like these via google, but there seems to be very little info out there about this. Or I'm using some really dumb search terms.



-Marcy

[Montyp535]

It's not nice, to have all the splitted files - especially for your mentioned points (for this I need also an entire text) - but it's faster than ever - and the work with embedded fonts is easier.

It would be nice to have a switch to change the "views" - on one hand the entire epub fpr search/replace and set the wished breaks /delete the others - and on the other hand the view of the single files and the pictures and so on...
probably in the next version??

[Marcy]

I gave up on 2.0. It's impossible to easily edit something if you can only search and replace in one chapter at a time. So much work!

1.9 is slow and painful, so I'm editing as much as I can, especially search and replaces, in UltraEdit while still in html format, and then converting to epub and fixing all the chapter breaks and creating the TOC.

I can't see how having your document split into a ton of pieces that can't be worked on as a whole is better in any way...except perhaps if something is super-long and takes up a lot of memory to open. I was considering just removing the chapter breaks in 1.9 and then using 2.0 for the rest, but I scroll through the document when I'm done doing a visual check for an formatting oddities, and do catch a lot that way. Scrolling down a single document using Page Down is simple. Having to open up 10, 20 or even 30 separate documents to do that is too much work.

Any chance of getting a version that still lets you work on the document in its entirety? Not that I'm complaining -- I'm certainly getting more out of the program than I paid for it. I'd be willing to pay for a program that is faster than 1.9 but still allows me to edit my document in one piece.

-Marcy

[Guns4Hire]

Thats what I do. I use 1.9 for any bad chapter breaks or editing. And then I use 2.0 for all the rest. Its to be expected since this software isn't even in beta yet.

[Marshal Kilgore]

Originally Posted by Marcy

... However the files I am working on have inappropriate chapter breaks and I now can't figure out how to remove them. ...

As a workaround in 2.0, open both sections that should become one chapter, mark All and Cut in one, then Paste it into the other section. You can Remove (delete) the empty section by its context menu in the "Book Browser" pane.

Albeit a menu option to merge two sections would be appreciated.

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by Marcy

However the files I am working on have inappropriate chapter breaks and I now can't figure out how to remove them. Any help would be appreciated.

The ability to merge two or more chapters into one will be added to the 0.2.0 builds fairly soon.

Originally Posted by Marcy

Additionally I need to search and replace for some incorrect characters/formatting through the entire document. It appears this new format will make me search and replace each individual piece separately. Is this true? If so, this seems like a huge downgrade in functionality from the prior version.

I've said this many, many times: the only major feature that needs to be implemented in the 0.2.0 builds is the book-wide search option. It's the reason 0.2.0 is at beta3, and not a full release.

Yes, that functionality is critically important. No one's denying that.

Originally Posted by Marcy

Any chance of getting a version that still lets you work on the document in its entirety? Not that I'm complaining -- I'm certainly getting more out of the program than I paid for it. I'd be willing to pay for a program that is faster than 1.9 but still allows me to edit my document in one piece.

No.

There is no such thing as an epub document in "one piece". Every epub document is actually a collection of XHTML documents, zipped up into an archive with the "epub" extension.

Sigil 0.1.x would take all those documents and concatenate them together, then present them to you. This would break a great number of things, notably flow-specific CSS. It would also make editing dog slow. It was one of those ideas that sound great on paper, but that suck when you actually implement them.

Originally Posted by Marshal Kilgore

Albeit a menu option to merge two sections would be appreciated.

Forthcoming.

[theducks]

Might I toss into the Idea pot:
a TOC (if exists) Navigation pane (The Display read only) that opens the current section for that index. currently, the Text files list does not offer a clue (for most) where the TOC item exists.
The TOC editor would still be the tool for changing the TOC to maintain integrity .