Visual Content Editor for Sigil?

[hhtmp88]

Hi All!

I would like to suggest a Visual Content Editor for Sigil, do you want it also?
-> if yes, pls. raise your voice too
-> I hope that the developer of Sigil, or someone could help to develop it

The visual Content Editor will be something like that of "Kotobee Author"
-> pls. see attached screen capture

Hope that it can be a new feature in the coming new version of sigil!

Thanks for any kinds of help!

[DiapDealer]

It already exists. It's called PageEdit.

After taking years to finally rid Sigil of its problematic wysiwyg editing view, I can say with a great degree of certainty that there will never be a new wysisyg editing view added back into Sigil (as an integral feature) during the current maintainers' tenure. No matter how many voices are "raised."

PageEdit and Sigil's Open With feature already offers those who prefer a wysiwg editing environment a wide range of choices to meet their needs.

[Turtle91]

Isn't that what Book browser is?? I'm not familiar with Kotobee Author but it seems the OP is pointing at the file browser portion on the left.

[KevinH]

No idea what they are pointing at but either way, it does not seem to be a request from someone that has used Sigil much since I did not see anything in their BookBrowser in the image that Sigil could not do. It is almost like they are missing the Context Sensitive menus in BookBrowser.

[DiapDealer]

You're both right! I saw "Visual Content Editor" smack in the middle of a wysiwyg editor and entirely missed the arrow pointing to a widget that looks a bit like Sigil's Book Browser and ToC widgets combined.

[un_pogaz]

@hhtmp88 The functionality you're probably looking for is in "Tool>Table of Content>Edit the Table of Content".
However, each entry will have to be entered manually. It is possible to ease the work with the button "Generate the Table of Content": Sigil will search all Title tags <h1>,<h2>... and will create a default Table of Content.

@SigilTeam Eh, a good idea would be to add in the window "Edit the ToC":
A "Regenerated the ToC" button, with automatic default generation.
A "Added all XHTML files" button, which will index with brute force. I find that this feature is sorely lacking.
Possibly a "Mixed generation" button, which would be a merge of the 2, a merging the two.

EDIT: Actually, if you put the "Regenerated the ToC" in the "Edit the ToC" window, that would be great and probably better than today.
Currently the only big button in the UI dedicated to the Toc is "Generate the ToC", which will overwrite all preliminary work. For me, the logical choice would have been "Edit the ToC" (besides, the button next to it is "Edit the MetaData").

[KevinH]

There are already menus to allow Editing the TOC. Given that keyboard shortcuts exist and do work, there really is no need for buttons or icons for every single function.
The interface is already busy enough.

[hhtmp88]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

It already exists. It's called PageEdit.

After taking years to finally rid Sigil of its problematic wysiwyg editing view, I can say with a great degree of certainty that there will never be a new wysisyg editing view added back into Sigil (as an integral feature) during the current maintainers' tenure. No matter how many voices are "raised."

PageEdit and Sigil's Open With feature already offers those who prefer a wysiwg editing environment a wide range of choices to meet their needs.

No!
I am not talking about "PageEdit"


I am talking about the Visual Editor for the "Table of Contents" of an ebook. Pls. see attached screen capture of the ePub3.0 ebook.


You can download KotoBee Author below and try it out how visual contents editor look like:
https://www.kotobee.com/en/products/author/versions


The visual contents editor of KotoBee allow me to
move content titles freely
up or down,
in or out

[hhtmp88]

Originally Posted by un_pogaz

@hhtmp88 The functionality you're probably looking for is in "Tool>Table of Content>Edit the Table of Content".
However, each entry will have to be entered manually. It is possible to ease the work with the button "Generate the Table of Content": Sigil will search all Title tags <h1>,<h2>... and will create a default Table of Content.

@SigilTeam Eh, a good idea would be to add in the window "Edit the ToC":
A "Regenerated the ToC" button, with automatic default generation.
A "Added all XHTML files" button, which will index with brute force. I find that this feature is sorely lacking.
Possibly a "Mixed generation" button, which would be a merge of the 2, a merging the two.

EDIT: Actually, if you put the "Regenerated the ToC" in the "Edit the ToC" window, that would be great and probably better than today.
Currently the only big button in the UI dedicated to the Toc is "Generate the ToC", which will overwrite all preliminary work. For me, the logical choice would have been "Edit the ToC" (besides, the button next to it is "Edit the MetaData").

Totally Agree with "un_pogaz"!


* Shortcut for
# "Edit ToC" -------------- Alt-T
# "Add all xhtml files" --- Alt-X
which detects all new ToC created without associated xhtml files
and then create them all, e.g. c001.xhtml, c002.xhtml,...,etc

SHALL be GREAT!
-> if Visual Editor cannot be available in a short time


By the way, is it possible to do some simple coding to add these two shortcuts?

[hhtmp88]

Originally Posted by un_pogaz

@hhtmp88
....
@SigilTeam Eh, a good idea would be to add in the window "Edit the ToC":
A "Regenerated the ToC" button, with automatic default generation.
A "Added all XHTML files" button, which will index with brute force.
....

I finally get them done!

here are the instructions:
# Go top-menu: "Edit" -> "Preferences"
# In the "Filter Box"，search for "TOC" (or "目錄" if language is Chinese)
# In the filtered list of items, click on "EditTOC" (or "編輯目錄")
# In the bottom，look for the "Shortcut Box", click on it, and press the key sequence "Ctrl+Shift+T" -> click "Confirm"
# That's it！
#==============================
# Do the same for adding a new html file by "Ctrl+Shift+F"：
# In the "Filter Box"，search for "HTML"
# In the filtered list of items, click on "Blank HTML File" ( or "空白 HTML 檔案" )
# In the bottom，look for the "Shortcut Box", click on it, and press the key sequence "Ctrl+Shift+F" -> click "Confirm"
# That's it！

[DiapDealer]

Stop with the giant, bold text. It's not helping your case at all. And the answer is still no. We're not going to make Sigil exactly match some other epub editing tool's feature you prefer. If the other tool has the functionality you want, then use it and not Sigil. Problem solved.

[un_pogaz]

What our friend is looking for is probably an anchorable "Edit ToC" window, like "Book View". Right ?
I'm sorry, but I don't think that's planned.

As said, the "Edit ToC" window (and the "Generate ToC" tool) is perfectly suited for this.
...
Minute, In the "View" menu, there is a window "Table Of Contents" (anchorable) that allows you to preview and use the ToC. It is not editable, but allows you to navigate through the book.
Making sure you have it turned on, it can really help.

@KevinH: I'm not talking about adding a button, but replacing the action of the current ToC button.
It seems more intuitive than the ToC button, next to "Edit the metadata" is "Edit ToC", and not "Generate a new ToC that will overwrite the previous one".
Ok it's a change from the previous version, so, a otpion in the préférence? (This reminds me of the "Kobo Utilities" plugin in Caliber, it's possible to set the default action of the main button. A very nice option)

[KevinH]

I still can not follow what is going on. Did the OP find the Edit TOC feature of Sigil or not? Do they need help finding it? As I said in my reply, Sigil already has the features to move around ToC entries. Or are they referring to something else? Otherwise this seems suspiciously like a walking advertisement for Kotobee (with link and everything), or is this just about short cuts and icons now?

@un_pogaz, I think I agree with you that having the EditToC have an icon beside the EditMetadata Icon would be a good thing. I will look into that.

Although adding more preference settings is simply a giant pain for not much payback, as too much interface customization with too many ways to achieve the same thing can be confusing and make learning the software harder. I do think our icon interface is too cluttered right now.

[hhtmp88]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I still can not follow what is going on. Did the OP find the Edit TOC feature of Sigil or not? Do they need help finding it? As I said in my reply, Sigil already has the features to move around ToC entries. Or are they referring to something else? Otherwise this seems suspiciously like a walking advertisement for Kotobee (with link and everything), or is this just about short cuts and icons now?

@un_pogaz, I think I agree with you that having the EditToC have an icon beside the EditMetadata Icon would be a good thing. I will look into that.

Although adding more preference settings is simply a giant pain for not much payback, as too much interface customization with too many ways to achieve the same thing can be confusing and make learning the software harder. I do think our icon interface is too cluttered right now.

As I have responded in my previous post:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...2&postcount=10

-> before an visual TOC editor is possible, I have find a relatively simple way to get around editing TOC (by pressing Ctrl+Shift+T) and adding corresponding html file (by pressing Ctrl+H)

-> and no customization is required at this moment.

[hhtmp88]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Stop with the giant, bold text. It's not helping your case at all. And the answer is still no. We're not going to make Sigil exactly match some other epub editing tool's feature you prefer. If the other tool has the functionality you want, then use it and not Sigil. Problem solved.

Sigil has some great features that Kotobee Author does NOT have

I am requesting Visual TOC editor because I hope that this will make Sigil a perfect ePub Editor.

Practically an Visual TOC Editor will make jobs done much more quickly!
-> hope the developers of Sigil will consider it in the future.

I am not sure if a Paid Project will make things faster
-> if yes, pls. let me know.

Thanks for the great works of Sigil Development Team!