[Feature Request] auto-completion & highlighting matching

[Skydancer]

Hi,
Let me first just say that I love Sigil, and that I'm not writing this to complain. I think it's the best ePub editor.

Lately, I've been using Bluefish Editor for other projects, and I like how easy and quick it is to write code with Bluefish, mainly because of the auto-completition, auto-tag-closing, and highlighting matching features.

I think Sigil users would benefit from these features. I often find myself checking CSS reference on the web and it can be time consuming.

Anyway, just some food for thought ...

Here are 3 pictures of how it looks in action:

CSS:


XHTML


Highlighting matching:

[KevinH]

Use Sigil's clips features to insert or wrap text in any tag pair so that you do not need to worry about tag matching. Any unmatched tags will always be detected in Preview since it is set for xhtml. Or use Sigil's open with as desired.

[KevinH]

I took a look at QCompleter, Qt's autocompleter class. It turns out the auto-completion via QCompleter really makes little sense for xhtml as it requires the first three letters to be typed.

As most really html tags are quite short (body, html, img, a, p, i, b, sub sup, head, title, hr ... using autocomplete for them really makes no sense when you have to use a keystroke to invoke autocomplete.

That is why I strongly recommend using Sigil's built in editing icons to handle h1-h6, p, i, b, u, and even to create lists of any type. Furthermore, using clips you can create any tag pairs you commonly use and set them up in one of the clips menu to single click insert them. Or even create clips for tag attributes you commonly use ie. class="". You can do the same clips approach to apply commonly used CSS classes set by your your own stylesheet with a single click as well.

So please try setting up clips and learning how to use them to make your editing much more effective.

And as I mentioned above, if you still like your emacs, vim, Kate, Bluefish, xedit, bbedit, notepad++, or whatever editor or ide you prefer, you can set Sigil to use them using "open with" allowing you to easily use your editor of choice within the Sigil program.

Sigil is not in the game of making a better code editor. There are simply too many code editor programs out there already desperate for users that people can choose from.

Hope this explains better Sigil's approach to editing.

[Skydancer]

Thank you for your reply.

I'm already using clips and editing icons. They're really helpful, especially clips. And I see now that the "Open with" feature works nice & smooth as well, I just hadn't tried using it until today. Thanks for reminding me it exists.

[Mister L]

Not sure if this is what you are looking for but in xhtml I find really useful the "auto-close" feature in Sigil : type CTRL+SHIFT+. and any tag which is open where the cursor is placed will be closed. Can save a few keystrokes sometimes (blockquote, figcaption... ). You can also do it multiple times if you have nested open tags and you want to close all of them at once (li ul / ol for instance or strong / em / span p or similar).

[HaPeSchu]

Originally Posted by Mister L

Not sure if this is what you are looking for but in xhtml I find really useful the "auto-close" feature in Sigil : type CTRL+SHIFT+. and any tag which is open where the cursor is placed will be closed

Hmmm im unable to find this feature on a mac. I tried several combinations with ctrl option command and shift bnut none of them worked.

In the list of shortcuts in the preferences i cant find something mentioned as well. Is this not available on a mac?

[BeckyEbook]

Menu: Insert > Closing Tab
Shortcuts: Closing Tab

[HaPeSchu]

Thx. I was pretty sure i did know all points in the menu, but obvious thats wasnt the case

In the prefernce list the description starts with "insert" so if you sort this it doesnt appear under "c".

The name starts with "c", but the keyboard shortcut says ctrl + . and this doesnt work as it is command + . on a mac (i always tried with shift).

Is there a reason why the shortcut in the menu is correct (command + .) whereas in the list in the prefernces it isnt? is there no way to distinguish between win/linux/mac in this section?

[KevinH]

No. This is always how a macOS Shortcut keys are defined in Qt. They clearly document that.

[HaPeSchu]

So, you mean as a sigil user i have to read the Qt documentation? Or what else do you want to address to me?

No need to reply, just think about the value of your answer to a user of sigil. I have my answer, thx Becky,

[KevinH]

Yes, this should be documented in the Sigil User's guide and if not I will add it.

No, I am not changing the way Qt (and Sigil) has handled things since the very beginning to make a new macOS user happy while breaking long-time macOS Sigil users and Qt users.

ps. created an issue to remind me to add the Ctrl to CMD automapping by Qt on macOS to Sigil User's guide

[KevinH]

Here is the quote from Qt docs that explains their rationale which makes sense:

Note: On macOS, references to "Ctrl", Qt::CTRL, Qt::Key_Control and Qt::ControlModifier correspond to the Command keys on the Macintosh keyboard, and references to "Meta", Qt::META, Qt::Key_Meta and Qt::MetaModifier correspond to the Control keys. Developers on macOS can use the same shortcut descriptions across all platforms, and their applications will automatically work as expected on macOS.

So using this convention allows each platforms most common shortcut key sequenes to work as expected from a single codebase. Ctrl+C will work for Windows/Linux to copy as will Apple+C for copy on macOS without any code changes. This is how it has always been and it makes good sense for a cross-platform app like Sigil which is what Qt was designed for.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by HaPeSchu

No need to reply, just think about the value of your answer to a user of sigil.

Gee... what a novel idea.

[HaPeSchu]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Gee... what a novel idea.

Of course i will read the documentation of c++ before asking my next question here.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by HaPeSchu

Of course i will read the documentation of c++ before asking my next question here.

Please do!