Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
This is all theoretical. Again, I'm not particularly trying to be negative, but Kovid's userbase has different goals than I do, myself. Many of the Calibre users are making books for themselves, or converting/cleaning PD books, or...well, other stuff. I'm not saying that what they're doing is "bad" or not as important, or any other spin; I'm simply saying, my prognostications as to the direction that a Sigil-add-in will take, for Calibre users, is likely to be different than the direction I'd go, assuming arguendo I had those type of resources.
|
You seem to be afraid that a Sigil-like editor, hosted within Calibre, can never be a Sigil replacement because it's not a standalone program. You seem to assume that such an editor will always be second citizen to the "main" program Calibre. I think this fear is unnecessary, assuming this re-implementation is done right.
I'll explain what I meant by mentioning Adobe Lightroom. This program, together with another one called RAWShooter, had the same kind of merger we're discussing here, but in the world of photography instead of e-books.
Lightroom started out as a catalogue program with limited editing capabilities; it could be seen as the "photo version" of Calibre. RAWShooter started out with powerful editing capabilities, but no catalogue options. It could be seen as the "photo version" of Sigil.
Adobe bought RAWShooter, and used part of its editing core, and many of its idea's with regard to workflow, in Lightroom. While both Lightroom and RAWShooter people were apprehensive at first (Lightroom being a powerful cataloguer, RAWShooter a powerful editor, miles apart in usage and capabilities), fearing to see "their" program become the neglected part of the merger, that fear proved unwarranted. Lightroom is now one of the top programs in te photography world, for amateurs AND professionals.
Many people use Lightroom as a catalogue program only: importing their images, and setting an external RAW-editor as editor. Many other people use Lightroom as an editor only: importing pictures into a working library, editing them in the editor, and exporting them to another catalogue program when done. Most however, import the pictures into a working library, sort/tag/weed them there, do the required edits in the editor, and then move the finished pictures to a main library, all within the same program.
I've been using Lightroom since 2008, and used RAWShooter before. Let me tell you, Lightroom's editing module is no less powerful than RAWShooter was. There is no reason that an editing module in Sigil has to be less powerful than Sigil itself, but it may take some time to get there. Until that time, you can use Sigil itself.
Therefore, I think a Calibre+Sigil merger can become for e-books what Lightroom+RAWShooter became for photography.