Sigil 2.7.5 Release Candidate (RC) Now Available

[KevinH]

Given the large number of recent bug fixes and changes in Sigil, we are making a Release Candidate build of Sigil 2.7.5 available. These builds now use the just released Qt6.10.2 and Python 3.14.2 and are built using the very latest toolchains.

Please post any issues you may find in reply to this thread or in our github Issues.

Assuming no major bugs are identified in the RC builds, we plan a full release in about 3 or 4 weeks.

Please note:

1. The Windows Sigil installer is about 40MB larger than normal due to it using a lower compression settings than a normal release.

It IS conceivable that you might need to update your Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable runtimes. Sigil is now being built with Visual Studio 2026. Those using Windows 11 should be able to keep these up to date with the normal Windows Update service anyway.


2. Linux AppImage Users: don't forget to mark the .AppImage file as executable after downloading.


3. The new minimum Mac OS version for running and using Sigil is now MacOS 13 (Ventura) as it is the oldest MacOS version still receiving security fixes from Apple and is the oldest supported by Qt 6.10.

And these MacOS builds are fully signed but NOT notarized by Apple as we only use notarization in our final official release process. So if you run into difficulties try removing the Apple quarantine extended attribute before unpacking and running the release candidate. You should only do this for truly trusted software.

 
To remove the quarantine extended attribute, use the following:

Place the downloaded file on your Desktop (move it out of Downloads) 
and run Terminal.app and enter the following commands:

    cd ~/Desktop 
    xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./Sigil.app-2.7.5-RC-Mac-x86_64.tar.xz

or 

    cd ~/Desktop
    xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./Sigil.app-2.7.5-RC-Mac-arm64.tar.xz

Then try unpacking it and running the release candidate.

I have posted the Release Candidate builds to my personal github repo here:

https://github.com/kevinhendricks/Bu...nMac/releases/

The files you want are:

Windows
Sigil-2.7.5-RC-Windows-x64-Setup.exe

Linux x86_64
Sigil-2.7.5-RC2-x86_64.AppImage
Sigil-2.7.5-RC2-x86_64.AppImage.zsync

MacOS x86_64 (Intel) and arm64 (Apple M1-M* processors)
Sigil.app-2.7.5-RC-Mac-arm64.tar.xz
Sigil.app-2.7.5-RC-Mac-x86_64.tar.xz

Hope this helps get all the bug fixes and changes out there for feedback as we want the upcoming final release to be rock solid.

Thank you!

Your Sigil and PageEdit Development Team


ps. lots of thanks and kudos to those Beta testers who helped track bugs down.

[BetterRed]

You ain't gunna like this, Kevin, Diap

Originally Posted by KevinH

Thanks for testing those plugins! I had the same thought about multiple monitors, or just offset overlapping the two windows and popping back and forth but on some laptops, both are hard to do at times. Leaving the solution up to the user and using add-ons makes sense and users can still do that.

But, fwiw, I think I have found a way to auto close stale minimized windows after changing books. I will try that first before tossing in the towel.

Thanks

Update:

With my most recent commit, old minimized non-modal dialogs are now properly closed upon loading a new book preventing the stale dialog problem. I have pushed this change to master.

So as it stands, people on Windows and Mac can easily use their own supplemental tools to add in titlebar and window resizing abilities if they so desire. Windows and Linux users (depending on window manager used) can use the Minimize if desired. It just will not work on MacOS without making the window being created as a top-level window (parent = nullptr) which I am not willing to do. People who do not like allowing dialogs to minize need not use that feature.

Hope this is enough.

I got lost in the weeds with this issue.

I had the impression, for Windows, you were going to leave non-modal windows as they were in version 2.6.2 - with no Minimise or Maximise buttons: i.e.



However, in version 2.7.5 RC non modals have Minimise and Maximise buttons, as does the About box.



If any of those Windows are minimised I don't know to restore them other than a window inspection tool from somewhere like Sysinternals or Nirsoft etc.

I just checked my frequently used non MS programs — Firefox, Notepad++, Irfanview, qbittorrent, ATB, Shotcut, etc — none of them have Min or Max buttons on their About boxes.

Minimise has a well known keyboard 'shortcut', I probably use it 10 times a day — Alt+Space, N — quite often inadvertently. It's an Accelerator key in the window system menu:



I suggest you revert to what has been there, like forever… no Min or Max buttons on non-modal and About box windows. Tell any users who don't like it to get a third party tool. I paid $US19.95 for ATB more than 20 years ago… and it has never not worked, even with recalcitrant programs like Task Manager.

BR

[BeckyEbook]

@BetterRed: Don't worry, I suspect this is a side effect of the new version of Qt, and I didn't even notice it.
The conscious buttons introduced in Sigil only affect three windows, of which only two (Reports and Spellcheck Editor) were introduced recently.

It seems that Qt now adds these buttons by default, and this was not intentional.

[odamizu]

I gave the first beta a very quick try and didn't notice anything (which could be because my very quick try wasn't thorough enough), but with this RC, I've come across a possible bug on macOS Sequoia 15.7.4.

• Open epub
• Open an html page in Code View and see it reflected in Preview window
• Open css stylesheet in external editor (in my case, BBEdit)
• Make edits to stylesheet using external editor
• Save (but do not close) stylesheet in external editor

In previous Sigil versions, including 2.7.0, the Preview window would automatically update to reflect the changes made to the stylesheet every time I save it in the external editor.

In 2.7.5 RC, the open Preview window does not automatically update. Instead, I have to click the Update Preview Window button. Alternatively, I can open a different html page and it will accurately reflect the stylesheet, then go back to the previously open html page.

Please let me know if there is further information I can provide, and if this is just me and I'm doing something weird.

Thank you

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

@BetterRed: Don't worry, I suspect this is a side effect of the new version of Qt, and I didn't even notice it.
The conscious buttons introduced in Sigil only affect three windows, of which only two (Reports and Spellcheck Editor) were introduced recently.

It seems that Qt now adds these buttons by default, and this was not intentional.

Attachment 221094

Well I am going to worry about it, for me, and perhaps others too, it is a disability related accessibility issue.

If I hit Alt/Space,N while the Reports or Spellcheck window has focus its will disappear into the ether. To get it back I will either have to find and use an obscure utility to poke the window back to life, or stop and start Sigil. In the highly unlikely event I minimise the About box - I will probably have to kill Sigil.

---

Do you mean the buttons were not added intentionally in Sigil or were not added intentionally in Qt?

The 'standard' that states "No Min and Max buttons on About boxes" has existed for 30 maybe 40 years, WTL might even have a class for them. Not that anyone adheres to standards and suchlike these days… in fact they seem to go out of their way to disregard them.

BR

[DiapDealer]

Relax. We'll take care of it. This is exactly why it's a Release Candidate and not a release.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by odamizu

I gave the first beta a very quick try and didn't notice anything (which could be because my very quick try wasn't thorough enough), but with this RC, I've come across a possible bug on macOS Sequoia 15.7.4.

• Open epub
• Open an html page in Code View and see it reflected in Preview window
• Open css stylesheet in external editor (in my case, BBEdit)
• Make edits to stylesheet using external editor
• Save (but do not close) stylesheet in external editor

In previous Sigil versions, including 2.7.0, the Preview window would automatically update to reflect the changes made to the stylesheet every time I save it in the external editor.

In 2.7.5 RC, the open Preview window does not automatically update. Instead, I have to click the Update Preview Window button. Alternatively, I can open a different html page and it will accurately reflect the stylesheet, then go back to the previously open html page.

Please let me know if there is further information I can provide, and if this is just me and I'm doing something weird.

Thank you

Hmmm. If it did update previously when merely saving, I'm not sure that was ever intentional. The external editor routines are supposed to check for changes to files after the external editor was closed I believe. I could be wrong however. I'll let Kevin answer.

[DiapDealer]

@BetterRed. As to how things were meant to be left RE Sigil's non-modal dialogs, I leave you this from the earlier beta thread:

Originally Posted by KevinH

With my most recent commit, old minimized non-modal dialogs are now properly closed upon loading a new book preventing the stale dialog problem. I have pushed this change to master.

So as it stands, people on Windows and Mac can easily use their own supplemental tools to add in titlebar and window resizing abilities if they so desire. Windows and Linux users (depending on window manager used) can use the Minimize if desired. It just will not work on MacOS without making the window being created as a top-level window (parent = nullptr) which I am not willing to do. People who do not like allowing dialogs to minize need not use that feature.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Hmmm. If it did update previously when merely saving, I'm not sure that was ever intentional. The external editor routines are supposed to check for changes to files after the external editor was closed I believe. I could be wrong however. I'll let Kevin answer.

Yes, this was never meant to be a feature. It was caused by always flushing the cache for every single load of Preview which slowed things down and was wasteful.

Now when editing a css or svg file in Sigil, it tells Preview it needs to clear the cache.

So I will look into seeing if there is a way for external editors changing an svg, css, etc file to tell Preview it needs to empty the cache. I really do not want to have to clear the cache for every load of Preview as that is wasteful, slow, as Sigil's Preview can reload after every editing change causing thousands of unneeded cache flushes.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Well I am going to worry about it, for me, and perhaps others too, it is a disability related accessibility issue.

If I hit Alt/Space,N while the Reports or Spellcheck window has focus its will disappear into the ether. To get it back I will either have to find and use an obscure utility to poke the window back to life, or stop and start Sigil. In the highly unlikely event I minimise the About box - I will probably have to kill Sigil.

---

Do you mean the buttons were not added intentionally in Sigil or were not added intentionally in Qt?

The 'standard' that states "No Min and Max buttons on About boxes" has existed for 30 maybe 40 years, WTL might even have a class for them. Not that anyone adheres to standards and suchlike these days… in fact they seem to go out of their way to disregard them.

BR

It does not disappear into the ether. You just minimize Sigil, then click on the taskbar on the Sigil program icon and it should bring all subwindows and dialogs back. It does on MacOS and Linux and it did on Windows (but that was in my old VM).

And as I said, users who do not want to minimize need not use it. And BeckyEbook was correct in that the only minimize buttons added by us since the last release was to the Spellcheck Editor dialog, and the Reports Dialog. Any others you see have been there since the beginning or are due to changes in Qt 6.10.2 not us.

All I did since your bug report was about "stale previously minimized windows now existed" was add code to properly close both Spellcheck and Reports when opening a new epub so stale windows will no longer exist.

If Qt 6.19,2 has moved to all minimize buttons on all dialogs on Windows, then that is a bug that must be filed with Qt. To tell you, the truth, in my limited Windows testing, I never noticed it. But I only use Windows once in a blue moon.

[DiapDealer]

Everything I've been able to find suggests that dialog defaults for Qt6.10.x have not changed in this regard. Qt still relies primarily on the underlying OS when deciding whether or not to add the min/max buttons (and Windows typically does not add them). But if something HAS changed, I would hate to have to explicitly disable the buttons on every dialog but the couple that we want to have them! And they ARE on every dialog in the RC version

I have seen some code that suggests one might need to combine Qt::CustomizeWindowHint with the other hints for things to work properly. I'm also seeing info that there is a Qt::WindowMinMaxButtonsHint flag.

[retiredbiker]

When I run the RC appimage on Pop_os I get the following errors. Then it seems to run, but crashes if I ty and load a file.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by retiredbiker

When I run the RC appimage on Pop_os I get the following errors. Then it seems to run, but crashes if I ty and load a file.

Well that is not good. Sigil needs lxml to operate properly. That was my first time trying to build an AppImage by manually triggering the CI build in Github Actions and not using deploy.

Perhaps I did not do things correctly.

I will create a new CI build using deploy, maybe that will properly include the lxml python module and lib.

I will try that again.

@DiapDealer, any thoughts?

[DiapDealer]

There should be nothing special you have to do to build the AppImage properly. lxml should automatically be included. the Build process should fail otherwise. The version of lxml did not change for the RC AppImage from the previous betas, and I was under the impression that one of the previous AppImage betas worked for @retiredbiker. Or did I imagine that?

EDIT: Never mind, I think I see it now. The AppImage build failed to find the new version of Pillow I specified (looks like I fat-fingered it) just recently. So the final two modules (lxml and PySide6) did not install. Not really sure why the build continued after that to be honest--I'll have to look into that.

I fixed the requirements.txt file for the AppImage, so feel free to build again (just as you did). lxml and PySide6 should be included. I'll double check the logs after you run your named build to be sure.

[KevinH]

Okay, I have manually launched the CI build for the AppImage as Sigil 2.7.5-RC2 and when done I will upload it to my repo to replace the existing one and edit the first post to indicate the name change to RC2 for that binary.