Suggestions for Sigil Improvements or New Features

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by DNSB

That is pretty much what I wanted. Not a high priority item as I suspect I may be in a very small group who have multiple searches that are run/not run in sequence.

So to expand on this more by thinking out loud (so to speak):

We would store the number of replacements made for every replace all invoked by a "RunSavedSearchReplaceAll" command.

Then we would add 2 new commands:

OnSuccessRunSavedSearchReplaceAll
OnFailedRunSavedSearchReplaceAll

These two commands would conditionally run a saved search replace all depending on the number of replacements stored by the last "RunSavedSearchReplaceAll" command.

If the number of last search replacements was 0, then a OnFailedRunSavedSearchReplaceAll would work to run its search but a OnSuccessRunSavedSearchReplaceAll would not.

If the number of last search replacements was > 0, then a OnFailedRunSavedSearchReplaceAll would *not* run its search but a OnSuccessRunSavedSearchReplaceAll would run its search.

Is this enough logic to do what you want?

Should the two new commands also set the number of last search replacements made if run?

If you could create a small example of how these might be used and why, it would really help me to understand how conditioning on prior search replace all results should be handled.

Thanks,

[KevinH]

I am pretty much up to snuff on new feature requests for Sigil for the next release. So if you have new feature ideas not yet mentioned in this thread, please save them for the future.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by KevinH

So to expand on this more by thinking out loud (so to speak):

We would store the number of replacements made for every replace all invoked by a "RunSavedSearchReplaceAll" command.
...

Is this enough logic to do what you want?

Should the two new commands also set the number of last search replacements made if run?

That would be perfect for my requirements assuming that if the second search is not run, the number of results is not reset to zero. One example of how I use this would when removing a lot of the crud from Vellum created ebooks. I have a basic find/replace set that is specific to cleaning up an azw3 to epub extraction. If that set does not find/replace anything, a second find/replace set is run that is specific to Vellum cleanup on an epub original. If either of those two searches makes a replacement, a third set is run to finish the cleanup removing common items.

Currently, I run saved search 1, look at the results and if 0, run saved search 2. If both 1 and 2 make no changes, search 3 is not run otherwise it is run.

I have a few other search sets that I use in a similar fashion. Rather idiosyncratic and I'm still not sure how many other people would make use of this capability.

Another suggestion would be to have the Automation List preference also remove the Quick Launch icons when disabled.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Another suggestion would be to have the Automation List preference also remove the Quick Launch icons when disabled.

They are not actually disabled, just not visible. So you could in theory set preferences once to enable the Automation menu and assign things to quick launch widgets.

Then turn-off the Automation Menu in Preferences.

The QuickLaunch Plugins and shortcuts for them would still work.

I thought BetterRed would like that!

[KevinH]

@DNSB,

So you are okay with that idea. The key is if a conditional search is not run it leaves the last replace count unmodified. If a conditional search is run, it does update the last replacement count.

Is that correct?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

They are not actually disabled, just not visible. So you could in theory set preferences once to enable the Automation menu and assign things to quick launch widgets.

Then turn-off the Automation Menu in Preferences.

The QuickLaunch Plugins and shortcuts for them would still work.

I thought BetterRed would like that!

I think you'd be surprised at how few keyboard shortcuts I have enabled. I use the menu bar options and context menus for most things.

Because I regard EPUB as a final-form format, like PDF, I don't do any text formatting, so the preset text formatting shortcuts and many others have been set to null. Ditto the calibre editor.

BTW: I can't find a response to my suggestions for Metadata edit in post #14

BR

[KevinH]

If you are referring to this:

Metadata editor: Add a context menu to the Name column cells with: Add Metadata, Add Property, Remove, Move Up, and Move down. Having to tab to the buttons is a PITA.

If an item (e.g Author, Date etc) has Properties one cannot navigate into the item's Value with the → key, one must ↓ to the Property, → to its Value, and then ↑ to the item Value.

Then I have not responded to it.

To be honest I just missed it.

That said, I am not a big fan of context menus attached to individual fields in a treeview. Even BookBrowser which is a treeview only attaches to the virtual folder headers, not elements in the treeview itself.

I will look into improving navigation to add a value to a MetaData element without having to arrow down, across, and the up. Maybe we could advance the cursor to that field after adding a Metadata element so typing the value can more easily be done?

Let me play around with a few ideas to see if I can make this easier. Maybe the entire MetaEditor could have a pop-up menu whose elements are enabled or disabled based in the currently selected field in the tree? That may be possible, but it would still require a mouse click to launch the popup.

[KevinH]

@BetterRed

The behaviour you describe above about the right arrow when trying to move to a metadata value when it already has properties, must be platform os specific.

On a Mac this does not happen.

If collapsed (no property showing) the first right arrow expands it (so that I can see the properties) and the second right arrow moves directly to where I want.

If it is already expanded, then the first right arrow moves directly to the right one column.

I did look at the code and there is a QStyle Hint that seems to be platform specific that may impact this. Not sure if I can change it for the Qt Windows theme without moving to Fusion.

I really do not like double usng the right and left arrows as I always felt that a '-' key should collapse the tree entree and a '+' key should expand it. But Qt likes to use right and left arrow keys to handle that instead of just properly navigate the columns with it.

I will investigate further.

[BetterRed]

I regard the context menu issue as an accessibility issue within Sigil itself, whereas the roundabout keyboard navigation to the Element value is an irritant.

Put your mouse away. Tab to the Add Metadata button, press Enter, select Author, now count the tabs you need to press in order get back to the tree to enter an author name… in Windows I count nine, ditto in an elderly Linux Mate.

If the actions that the buttons provide were in the tree context menu, I could ignore the buttons.

BR

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by KevinH

@DNSB,

So you are okay with that idea. The key is if a conditional search is not run it leaves the last replace count unmodified. If a conditional search is run, it does update the last replacement count.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I regard the context menu issue as an accessibility issue within Sigil itself, whereas the roundabout keyboard navigation to the Element value is an irritant.

Put your mouse away. Tab to the Add Metadata button, press Enter, select Author, now count the tabs you need to press in order get back to the tree to enter an author name… in Windows I count nine, ditto in an elderly Linux Mate.

If the actions that the buttons provide were in the tree context menu, I could ignore the buttons.

BR

How do you launch the context popup menu without using a mouse? I thought the idea was you wanted a solution that was keyboard only. Wouldn't assigning shortcuts to the buttons be better?

As I said, your "irritant" does not happen on other platforms? Did you ever try right arrow to expand it followed by a second right arrow? Does that work?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

How do you launch the context popup menu without using a mouse? I thought the idea was you wanted a solution that was keyboard only.

By pressing the Application/Menu key ==>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_key

Shift+F10 does the same, which I use on my Surface Go and Alien Alpha

Originally Posted by KevinH

Wouldn't assigning shortcuts to the buttons be better?

No, a context menu is almost always better, a) all options are shown, b) any that are not available are greyed out, c) if an option does have a shortcut it is shown… which acts a reminder.

Originally Posted by KevinH

As I said, your "irritant" does not happen on other platforms? Did you ever try right arrow to expand it followed by a second right arrow? Does that work?

Yep tried that

Open Sigil user guide and press F8, arrow down to Creator:



Press →

Creator Tree opens

Press →

Highlight moves DOWN to File as

Press →

Highlight moves right to File as value

Press ↑

Highlight moves up to Creator value

The problem is, as you alluded to before, the → and ← are serving two purposes:

1. to expand and collapse a branch
2: to move between the Name and Value columns.

How about using the ↓ and ↑ keys to expand and collapse a branch.

Nah, that won't work either… how about Ctrl+→ and Ctrl+← to expand and collapse.

BR

[KevinH]

Okay I will take a shot at a Context Menu.

As for the "irritant" behaviour is built directly into the QTreeView class so it will take some work to subclass QTreeView and try to control how it work. Work that only seems to need to be done for Windows. I will see if that damn QStyleHint change will work.

[KevinH]

@DNSB

Originally Posted by DNSB

That is correct.

Okay, I took a shot at adding this and pushed it (up to date with all other changes no matter what github says) to my own personal Sigil repo (kevinhendricks).

Please pull from there and build and give it a try. If it does what you want, I will push it to regular Sigil master.

If you run into bugs, please let me know. I just tested the edit part but since I had no saved searches ready to go, I did not test the execution part but it should work.

[KevinH]

@BetterRed
I took a shot at adding a short context menu to the Metadata Editor entire QTreeView.

See the screenshot below.


As for your "irritant" it appears to be an real "irritant" to me too as there is no easy way to make Windows work like MaOS without changing its theme.

So fixing this irritant may take some work, and might not be part of the next release.