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Old 09-05-2011, 08:43 PM   #25
st_albert
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st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'st_albert gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'
 
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I'm finding this discussion fascinating, and, I think, important. I'm one of those power users who works for a small publisher of both print and ebooks (mostly novels), and my job is to produce the ebooks in whatever format is needed. Mostly, that's epub and mobi.

If the book is under contract for print, I start with the "final, print-ready" InDesign4 file and export to epub. If the contract is ebook-only, I usually start with an rtf file and convert that to epub using either LibreOffice writer2epub, writer2xhtml, or Atlantis. Mostly I work on Linux, using Windows or OS-X only when the tools require it.

The initial export to epub is only to create the epub package with minimal effort. The files are then unpacked, and the xhtml and css are cleaned up, sigil chapter breaks are inserted, and so on. After re-packing, the file is fed to Sigil for the final polish: chapter splits, additional metadata, <guide> semantics, error checking, and so on. A second modified epub is produced for conversion to mobi via kindlegen.

I spend most of my time in Code View, and use Book View as a previewer to see that my changes do what I want, not merely what I told it to do.

Note that just because I don't write the entire book from scratch in Sigil, does not make Sigil "an afterthought." It is essential.

That said, here are my thoughs on the future of Sigil.

For me, the Big Thing of version 0.4 was the ability to edit content.opf. That really saves me lots of time. And, of the features proposed for 0.5, the Big Thing would be PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions). Since the files I start with have seen multiple editors and proofreaders before I get them, a spell-checker would not add much value in my case.

Further out, I really like the idea of plugins. I can think of a few I'd like to see, such as a mobipocket expander and repackager that would allow sigil to tweak mobi files; or something to help clean up the CSS; or how about a little plugin to read toc.ncx and construct an inline TOC.xhtml for those who want one. (I know, not you, JSWolf )

I do find the current Sigil's automatic modification of the epub files and structure to be mildly annoying at times, though I've grown used to it and can work with it. If there could be a preference panel that would allow one to turn that feature on or off (along with Tidy, and the well-formed checker) that would be great, but not essential IMHO. I typically run with Tidy turned off, and find that it helps. Probably making these things plugins that can be run manually when desired would be good, as you suggested.

As for the internals, I am surely not qualified to comment there. But I would agree that python is probably the best choice for a plugin language, of those listed, unless it REALLY causes a performance hit.

Well, I'll stop rambling now, but not without saying once again how much I appreciate your efforts!
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