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Originally Posted by RootlessAgrarian
Ah, I see -- Sigil is intended for use by people who already know the XML spec for EPUB? OK. I assumed it was meant to hide expert knowledge and guide the newbie -- in which case, user pre-knowledge of the names of metadata elements, and which ones are required, would not be a given (as in fact it wasn't in my case). If it's intended to be a helper app for people who already know the spec then I agree it should not do more than warn/remind.
If Sigil did want to be more newbie-friendly... perhaps in the metadata editor, any missing *required* elements for a structure could be created with value BLANK and visually highlighted, so if you pop open the editor you immediately see that the doc is damaged or incomplete? Most every commercial Web form on the planet flags (w/asterisks, colour, boldface, etc) "required fields" -- it's a visual convention familiar to most 'net users.
Yes a simple warning would also be reasonable, particularly at Save or Save As time: "This EPUB is missing some required elements of the metadata structure: title, author and language. See (URL) for correct keywords and valid values for these elements. This EPUB will not pass most validity checkers."
One last thought... Couldn't 'language' be inferred -- if left uninitialised -- from the local environment? It wouldn't be infallible (my LANG may be en, but I may also read/author documents in French from time to time). But it might be a good starting guess.
"Element 'language' missing from metadata. Initialised to best-guess 'en' from local language configuration."
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to be fair, when you open the meta editor in sigil (tools > meta editor), the only three fields which are specifically listed are the three which are required : title, author, language. "language" even has a drop-down list to choose from, so you don't even have to type it in yourself. you can add any further meta-data (like description for instance) using either the basic / advanced buttons, which give you the name of the meta-data and a short description of its purpose / use. i'm honestly not sure how much easier it could get, except for, of course, a warning if any of the three required fields are left blank, which is planned. compare this dialogue box to writing the entire content.opf and toc.ncx by hand in a text editor (as i have done... pre-sigil) and believe me, you'll have a whole new appreciation for user and newbie friendliness !