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Gary Harper · 01-02-2018, 12:28 PM

I love Sigil and will be using it on my Mac to write all of my books henceforth. Its core engine appears to be rock solid, which surprised me considering the intricate relations amongst eBook files. Its manual is clear and comprehensive. However, it does have some user-interface quirks that dismay me.

1. Why is the tab bar grayed out for the active tab, and almost completely blacked out for the inactive ones? Is there some reason to prevent users from knowing which tab to click? Clarity always trumps style.

2. Can’t the cursor be coordinated better between code view and book view? I understand that the cursor in code-view often does not map directly to book-view because it might be inside a tag; but there is a direct mapping in the other direction. Even in the code-to-book direction, the nearest raw text could be chosen, which would make the cursor easy to find, and stay in place on sequential round trips, unlike now.

3. Cursor consistency might spontaneously solve the following bug. Say you have this text in code-view: “the next word is <b>bold<b/>. However …” You are editing in book-view because its semantics are clearer. You decide to replace the period with a semicolon, so you delete it and follow it with “but …”. Suddenly the semicolon is bold and so is “but …”. You look in code-view and discover the semicolon and “but” inside the bold tags where you never intended; and one of those damned &#160’s after the tag. Try it for yourself.

4. There is another minor bug: I made Sigil my default to open all eBooks. When I click on one, Sigil opens it and also opens a new blank eBook. I suspect Sigil can’t yet handle the fame and glory of being a default app.

5. Speaking of clear semantics and damned &#160’s, I suspect that authors who use Sigil to write with prefer to do all basic styling using the standard b, i, u, del, sub, sup, h1-to-h6, p. ol, ul, li tags; and do all other styling in CSS using their own class and id clips, like I do. Sadly, this currently requires editing amongst the murk of tags in code view where the semantics are obscured. Could you provide an option for “span-less, &#160-less book-view editing” ? (Or even better “Uniform no-inline-styling in either book-view or code-view editing”.) That would be eBook heaven. It would also make cursor coordination easier.

I truly do love Sigil, else I never would have invested a couple of hours trying to persuade you to make it better, like I just did.

01-02-2018, 12:28 PM	#1
Gary Harper Junior Member Posts: 9 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2018 Device: Sigil 0.9.9	Sigil user interface issues and bugs I love Sigil and will be using it on my Mac to write all of my books henceforth. Its core engine appears to be rock solid, which surprised me considering the intricate relations amongst eBook files. Its manual is clear and comprehensive. However, it does have some user-interface quirks that dismay me. 1. Why is the tab bar grayed out for the active tab, and almost completely blacked out for the inactive ones? Is there some reason to prevent users from knowing which tab to click? Clarity always trumps style. 2. Can’t the cursor be coordinated better between code view and book view? I understand that the cursor in code-view often does not map directly to book-view because it might be inside a tag; but there is a direct mapping in the other direction. Even in the code-to-book direction, the nearest raw text could be chosen, which would make the cursor easy to find, and stay in place on sequential round trips, unlike now. 3. Cursor consistency might spontaneously solve the following bug. Say you have this text in code-view: “the next word is <b>bold<b/>. However …” You are editing in book-view because its semantics are clearer. You decide to replace the period with a semicolon, so you delete it and follow it with “but …”. Suddenly the semicolon is bold and so is “but …”. You look in code-view and discover the semicolon and “but” inside the bold tags where you never intended; and one of those damned &#160’s after the tag. Try it for yourself. 4. There is another minor bug: I made Sigil my default to open all eBooks. When I click on one, Sigil opens it and also opens a new blank eBook. I suspect Sigil can’t yet handle the fame and glory of being a default app. 5. Speaking of clear semantics and damned &#160’s, I suspect that authors who use Sigil to write with prefer to do all basic styling using the standard b, i, u, del, sub, sup, h1-to-h6, p. ol, ul, li tags; and do all other styling in CSS using their own class and id clips, like I do. Sadly, this currently requires editing amongst the murk of tags in code view where the semantics are obscured. Could you provide an option for “span-less, &#160-less book-view editing” ? (Or even better “Uniform no-inline-styling in either book-view or code-view editing”.) That would be eBook heaven. It would also make cursor coordination easier. I truly do love Sigil, else I never would have invested a couple of hours trying to persuade you to make it better, like I just did.