Suggestions for Sigil Improvements or New Features

[KevinH]

We are running out of dock spaces but I can look to see if I can make it non-modal and add a Refresh button so it can be left open and used repeatedly. Lots of people use smart clipboard history apps that might be useful as well. I will try to add a min title bar button too.

[KevinH]

Okay, I was able to make the Clipboard History Selector dialog non-modal, and added the ability to auto refresh the history as new text added to the clipboard. Also add a Min button to the titlebar for those without a lot of screen space.

As as extension, I also made GetInfo dialogs non-modal to allow for multiple reports at once.

These changes have been added to master.

I have also kept the table of suggestions in this post updated for those who want a fast summary of accepted suggestions implemented so far:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...8&postcount=83

[KevinH]

Okay, based on repsonses so far (3 in favour, 1 either way is fine, 1 against (me)), I have reordered the status bar line to now start with the character name, then the codepoint value and end with line and column, so that the line and column positions are not so radically changing.

I will not try to pad the line or column to a fixed number of digits as I have seen epubs where the entire epub is in a huge single file, and even worse epubs with no new line characters in any single file, leading to huge changes in the number of digits in the line and column values.

I have pushed this change to master.

[DNSB]

Please read read KevinH's comments in message #96 in this thread before installing this code.

Anyone who is interested in testing the Windows build of the Sigil beta, here is a link to a compile of the 2026-Jan-25 code: Sigil-2.7.5-Windows-x64-Setup.exe.

[philja]

Originally Posted by KevinH

FWIW, a websearch shows Windows 11 does finally have a new feature to make the default encoding utf-8 for all apps, as it is in Notepad now, even for older apps.

But off course it defaults to off, is hidden under Region setting even though utf-8 is regionless, etc. But at least it is there. Hopefully Windows 11 users will find this and enable it so that their system can be just like Web, MacOS, and Linux systems which have had this capability built in for years, so that they can make/edit text that can contain any word, no matter the language. The days of old 8-bit encoding codepages has long passed.

Failing to find this setting in W11, I did a Google search which gave the following from learn.microsoft.com :

Set a process code page to UTF-8. To configure your app to render UTF-8 text via GDI, go to Windows Settings > Time & language > Language & region > Administrative language settings > Change system locale, and check Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support. Then reboot the PC for the change to take effect.18 Jul 2025

Sadly, when you're at 'Language & Region' there is no obvious 'Administrative language settings' and a search in Settings says it doesn't exist.

Further exploration in 'Language & Region' shows the top item is 'Windows display language' and this box has a drop down arrow at far right side (not the one to change the language selection) which when pressed reveals the Beta setting for UTF-8.

Hope this is useful to Windows users.

[KevinH]

Thank you. It sounds like they made it nearly impossible to find. Nice detective work!

Here is a hopefully useful link:

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/enable...dows-11.38649/

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Okay, I was able to make the Clipboard History Selector dialog non-modal, and added the ability to auto refresh the history as new text added to the clipboard. Also add a Min button to the titlebar for those without a lot of screen space.

As as extension, I also made GetInfo dialogs non-modal to allow for multiple reports at once.

These changes have been added to master.

I have also kept the table of suggestions in this post updated for those who want a fast summary of accepted suggestions implemented so far:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...8&postcount=83

Thank you!!

[philja]

Suggestion for improvement. When the Well-Formed Check epub tool is run, if all's well, the Validation Results pane shows 'No problems found'. This message is never cleared even if the Validation Results pane is closed and reopened.

After further editing, run the tool again, and there is no indication that it has run (unless a problem is found, of course). The same happens when Epubcheck plugin is run.

Is it easily possible first to clear the old message when the tools are run or maybe even change the message slightly on alternate runs? That would help my confidence level that all is running as expected.

[KevinH]

Yes closing and reopening the Validation pane is effectively a no-op as it is a QDockWidget that is only even hidden (invisible) not actually closed and deleted.

The status until a validation tool is run again is not changed.
Yes further editing does not change anything until a validation tool is actually run. When the tool is run it fully clears and updates the Validation window, so the Validation pane will either display a list of errors or No Problems found.

Closing the validation window is simply hiding it. To get updated info on a validation run you must actually run a validation tool. The pane will always show the results from the last tool run.

So as far as I can tell this is working as designed.

Exactly what are you looking for?

Is it just a way to clear the current results from a previous run without re-running a validation tool?

[philja]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Yes closing and reopening the Validation pane is effectively a no-op as it is a QDockWidget that is only even hidden (invisible) not actually closed and deleted.

The status until a validation tool is run again is not changed.
Yes further editing does not change anything until a validation tool is actually run. When the tool is run it fully clears and updates the Validation window, so the Validation pane will either display a list of errors or No Problems found.

Closing the validation window is simply hiding it. To get updated info on a validation run you must actually run a validation tool. The pane will always show the results from the last tool run.

So as far as I can tell this is working as designed.

Exactly what are you looking for?

Is it just a way to clear the current results from a previous run without re-running a validation tool?

My concern is a lack of confidence that a subsequent check tool has actually run. Nothing seems to happen - did I hit the F7 key correctly?

If the 'old' message simply cleared visibly for a fraction of a second, I would be convinced that the tool had run and generated a new all clear message.

Maybe the old message could be cleared after a short time, or 'no problems found!' could alternate with 'no problems found again!' ?

[KevinH]

Or just trust it when you hit the Well-Formed check, if it says No problems Found that your epub is well-formed and so is parseable. Epubcheck is a much more thorough in testing epubs. Well Formed detects if the code you have is correct enough to actually parse. Important since non-well formed code prevents the majority of Sigil tools from running successfully.

I will think about adding a quick main status bar message when a validation tool or plugin is being activated. You must still check the Validation pane for the actual results.