Please welcome John, the new maintainer

[JeremyR]

To me, Sigil is pretty close to being a word processor for e-books (epub anyway). And so a spell checker would be extremely handy...

Indeed, most of what I load into it isn't HTML to begin with, but plain text.

And beyond that, I guess if you are a whiz at HTML, it's no biggie to open up an epub in a HTML editor...but for the vast majority of people, they'd prefer something dedicated just for that, you know, something like Sigil?

(And the trouble with Jutoh? It's a commercial product and not that cheap...while Sigil is a great program, a huge part of its appeal is that it's free)

[Zeypxi]

Thanks for taking over John and thanks for fixing the last bugs. And many thanks for the updates on google source code and the way you're working.

[JeremyR]

Actually, speaking of text files, firstly, thank you for taking it over.

But at the same time, part of the reason I started using Sigil in the first place, was that I had trouble with Calibre's text importing routines. They would come out funny looking in the resulting epub or mobi

Whereas if I load them in Sigil, they looked fine. So I would convert to epub and then convert that product to mobi (for my kindle).

So I hope that part of Sigil doesn't get improved.

[mohamedselim]

multiple wishes :
1- creating inline table of contents as Atlantis word processor by assigning the level of toc as h1 or h2 so we could but it any page we want easily.
2- assign by symantics the place the book opens first time in.
3- clean code automatically if we wish from garbage that come from other editors so only leave the code which benefit the epub and xhtml and get rid cof others automatically no more regex or find and replace.
4- auto suggestion of codes that solve problems if any errors appear by epub check.
5- tansform any imported html to xhtml automatically.
6- export epub to external exe program we assign in options so we press icon for that so file could be viewed externally in our preferred epub viewer or even we could associate it with kindle previewer so output will be mobi automatically.
7- basic styling that we could define and then apply to text by putting cursor then press button of style and style is applied so a bar contain syles for heading from 1 to 6 and style for basic paragraph and alternate paragraph that we define font and first line indent and line spacing and colour for each in options
thanks alot

[crutledge]

Originally Posted by Hitch

@kiwidude:

I guess my perspective is different; every competent html editor (I mean the software, not the human operator) has a spell checker already in it. My work flow, no matter the source material, is pretty simple stuff; we do all the primary editing in NoteTab Pro, which is probably the best html editor available, IMHO. I don't use it for merging and splitting, myself; but it has a clip editor that could probably do something equivalent--we used it to write a "clip" that converts epubs into mobi-ready epubs to drop on MobiGen/KG to create fully-compliant mobis. So I won't say it doesn't have merge/split; I simply don't know if it does. We run spellcheck in it BEFORE we export cleaned html to Sigil. I just don't see Sigil as a workhorse tool at this time; it's more of a finishing tool, IMHO. I don't care if someone's using it for one book or 100; my point about PCRE was about making it more of a workhorse and less of a finishing tool.
Hitch

I completly agree with HItch. The editor/regex provided with QT is simplistic and frustrating. Once ver 4.0 has the wrinkles ironed out, I'm a happy camper. Most of my work id done prior to Sigil. Having direct access to content.opf and toc.ncx is great.

I have approached John on the side with what could be the solution to this problem. An "EXTERNAL TOOLS" selection seems to me the obvious choice. NoteTab Pro (not quite as good as EditPad Pro ) and EditPad Lite/Pro have detailed Command Line calls to allow full communication with Sigil. The major addvantage to Edit Pad Lite is that it is free and is a great little html editor. Sigil would expose all tthe required parameters for the calls. All this would have to be worked out.

With a good html editor, a hyperlink editor is not needed.

The user could use his/her favorite Spell Checker.

Right clicking on an item in Images or the image in the document could pass the image to Photoshop, GIMP, or whatever.

Obviously, this not a simple few hour solution. But why reinvent the wheel?

Don't like what's there? Plug in your own.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

To me, Sigil is pretty close to being a word processor for e-books (epub anyway). And so a spell checker would be extremely handy...

Indeed, most of what I load into it isn't HTML to begin with, but plain text.

And beyond that, I guess if you are a whiz at HTML, it's no biggie to open up an epub in a HTML editor...but for the vast majority of people, they'd prefer something dedicated just for that, you know, something like Sigil?

(And the trouble with Jutoh? It's a commercial product and not that cheap...while Sigil is a great program, a huge part of its appeal is that it's free)

Are you serious? Jutoh is thirty-nine dollars. That's cheap in any reality, and for anyone who wants to make commercial ebooks, it's laughably cheap.

There's clearly a significant difference between DIY'ers and commercial interests. And I don't particularly care if Sigil is free; in fact, I'd prefer it if there was distinct development between a professional version and free version. Of course a huge part of Sigil's "appeal" is that it's free; people always like stuff that's FREE. And if enough people had actually donated to Sigil's development--which Valloric made clear was a problem, months ago--V probably wouldn't have felt compelled to find a new maintainer, either.

I'm particularly fond of Mohamed's wishlist. Can I get a pony, too?

Hitch

[user_none]

Originally Posted by mohamedselim

2- assign by symantics the place the book opens first time in.

0.4 implements all types defined at http://old.idpf.org/2007/opf/OPF_2.0...tml#Section2.6 in Semantics.

[Ahmad Samir]

Originally Posted by Hitch

@kiwidude:

I guess my perspective is different; every competent html editor (I mean the software, not the human operator) has a spellchecker already in it. My workflow, no matter the source material, is pretty simple stuff; we do all the primary editing in NoteTab Pro, which is probably the best html editor available, IMHO. I don't use it for merging and splitting, myself; but it has a clip editor that could probably do something equivalent--we used it to write a "clip" that converts epubs into mobi-ready epubs to drop on MobiGen/KG to create fully-compliant mobis. So I won't say it doesn't have merge/split; I simply don't know if it does. We run spellcheck in it BEFORE we export cleaned html to Sigil. I just don't see Sigil as a workhorse tool at this time; it's more of a finishing tool, IMHO. I don't care if someone's using it for one book or 100; my point about PCRE was about making it more of a workhorse and less of a finishing tool.

To me, adding a spellchecker in Sigil, and a hyperlink editor--both being freely and wonderfully well-done and available in html editors that run the gamut from free to cheap--seems like "another tool and complication in [our] workflow" that we certainly don't need. I like to see Sigil to those things that the fundamental, necessary tools can't--as opposed to reinventing the wheel by adding bells and whistles to Sigil that aren't actually necessary as they're widely available already. Sigil's regex is rough, and could use some work--and regex, or at LEAST, basic 'search and replace' is something that everyone who uses Sigil really uses, whether one is a dilettante or a commercial producer. Cleaning up a "bad OCR scan" is surely one of the best reasons to have PCRE, regardless of user-type.

And when you say, "open an epub directly," if you mean, in a WYSIWYG fashion, akin to Sigil--no. Even Bookbin is some whole other deal; but opening an epub in an html editor isn't difficult, and rezipping it is easy.

Would "spellcheck" be a nice addition? Sure. I think it sitting at the top of the next-in-line list is rather...frivolous, myself, but nobody asked me. Hyperlink editor? Again, handy, but...{shrug}. But a rock-solid regex would be nice. I get a lot of books back where a global change, for whatever reason, never changed that last item found, repeatedly--so I'd like the regex to be PCRE and reliable, and for 0.4x to be rock-solid, too, long before we get to niceties and/or what is essentially gingerbread.

BTW, FWIW, for anyone who doesn't want to work in html, or really use CSS, Jutoh has spell-check and you can split and merge "chapters" just as easily, if not easier than, Sigil (and it is pretty stable). I've played with it--I like to keep up on what's out there, and while it's not my personal kettle of fish (I always want to see what's behind the curtain), it works, pretty decently, to make epubs and mobis.

Not trying to be snarky, or what-have-you; just my $.02 and my perspective, and as Schember is the maintainer, it's his call--and he's already made it; you guys will get your spellchecker and your hyperlink editor. So, my whingeing isn't affecting anything, anyway.

Hitch

I probably couldn't have articulated it so eloquently, so can I just add $0.02 to your $.02?

I'd really like more regex power in any "text field" I use (even regex search capabilities in the firefox Find bar).

Anyway, I hope John "enjoys" whatever he does with/for Sigil.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I just don't see Sigil as a workhorse tool at this time; it's more of a finishing tool, IMHO. I don't care if someone's using it for one book or 100; my point about PCRE was about making it more of a workhorse and less of a finishing tool.

PCRE is being prioritized for 0.5.

Originally Posted by Hitch

To me, adding a spellchecker in Sigil, and a hyperlink editor--both being freely and wonderfully well-done and available in html editors that run the gamut from free to cheap--seems like "another tool and complication in [our] workflow" that we certainly don't need.

How does adding a spell checker complicate your work flow? It's not a fundamental change. If you don't want to use Sigil for spell checking you don't have to.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Would "spellcheck" be a nice addition? Sure. I think it sitting at the top of the next-in-line list is rather...frivolous, myself, but nobody asked me. Hyperlink editor? Again, handy, but...{shrug}.

On the bug tracker they are the the two highest voted (stared) items. Spell checking has more than 2x the amount of people wanting it than the third highest item. People overwhelmingly want these two features.

[Ahmad Samir]

Originally Posted by user_none

PCRE is being prioritized for 0.5.

Thanks for that!

[kjk]

Originally Posted by user_none

On the bug tracker they are the the two highest voted (stared) items. Spell checking has more than 2x the amount of people wanting it than the third highest item. People overwhelmingly want these two features.

I suppose there is no way (given Sigil's admittedly useful cross-platform development) to just access OSX Lion's system wide spellcheck function? I'm finding it (and the system-wide dictionary) pretty useful.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by kjk

I suppose there is no way (given Sigil's admittedly useful cross-platform development) to just access OSX Lion's system wide spellcheck function?

Actually, I'm looking at using Enchant for spell check. It uses the OS X dictionary by default. Other platforms would have to install something like Aspell.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by user_none

Actually, I'm looking at using Enchant for spell check. It uses the OS X dictionary by default. Other platforms would have to install something like Aspell.

Very cool, thanks!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by user_none

PCRE is being prioritized for 0.5.



How does adding a spell checker complicate your work flow? It's not a fundamental change. If you don't want to use Sigil for spell checking you don't have to.

Didn't say it did. Nor would it. My point, apparently not well-made, was that you have very limited expendable time, as you have a non-programmtic gig full-time, and how you spend that time is obviously crucial to Sigil's ongoing development. TY for the prioritization of PCRE for 0.5, even though I'd have liked to have seen it at the top of the list, obviously.

On the bug tracker they are the the two highest voted (stared) items. Spell checking has more than 2x the amount of people wanting it than the third highest item. People overwhelmingly want these two features.

That's hardly surprising, given how many people who use Sigil don't use html editors, which I think was my original point. Jutoh already exists for those folks who want a Word-meets-epub solution, for all intents and purposes, as Jutoh functions much like Word in many ways--it's practically the answer to Mohamed's wishlist. I guess my real question is: whither goest Sigil, anyway? An Atlantis clone? Jutoh with a way to see behind the curtain? Word-Plus-Plus? A Pro fork (my fondest wish)?

Thanks for putting PCRE in the priority list, although I have no idea when 0.5 might ever come into existence, given your limited availability. This isn't a criticism, mind you; but I too have a biz, so I know how precious "spare time" really is.

Hitch

[Giggleton]

Thank you for making Sigil, it is very good program. I would suggest not worrying about catering to those who make ebooks as a business and focus on those who make ebooks for fun and to share with friends.