New Features or Improvements post Sigil 2.8.1

[icearch]

Originally Posted by KevinH

So no promises.

Totally fine.

[philja]

Originally Posted by KevinH

If you build your own on MacOS, I have attached a patch and a screenshot showing the dock when *no* Sigil app is running.

Note: I have only opened two epubs in the Sigil version built with this patch, so its recent files in the dock is not as complete as the Sigil recent files menu, but they will sync over longer term use.

So unless these changes cause side-effects, this should be doable.

I gave up building my own on linux when the AppImages became available. I've never built my own on Windows or Mac - sorry.

[democrite]

As far as accessibility with TOC editing, I didn't realize the TOC editor doesn't change the heading level. Maybe it could do that too or have some checkbox or option to do such?

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by democrite

As far as accessibility with TOC editing, I didn't realize the TOC editor doesn't change the heading level. Maybe it could do that too or have some checkbox or option to do such?

Again, just use regex to insert the correct heading tags where you need and rebuild the TOC. That is how things are meant to work. The TOC is a product of the actual epub text not the other way around.

[democrite]

I don't know about what should or should not be done, and so forth. I'm for an app that is elegant, easy to use when appropriate, a joy to use, etc. As far as this, I can understand coding such to make changes to XHTML and CSS, with potential conflict resolution in CSS class names, or whatever else, maybe such would be a pain, so maybe it is a feeling that it is not worth it. I don't lknow. I think it'd be nice but maybe it'd be a fair amount of work; maybe AI coding such as Claude might help; perhaps instead of saying no just responding I'll think about, realizing it might be a big ask, and we'll hope for it someday.

[KevinH]

Your feature request is a no. I am not going to rewrite the entire TOC editor process to then change underlying structure of the source to match. And claude AI does not impact this at all.

Because it is the exact opposite of what should be done.

Fix the source xhtml first and then generate the TOC from it. Using the correct approach makes the book more Accessible for everyone. Proper Heading tags carry semantic meaning and should be used.

[DNSB]

Quite a few of the books I edit now are for authors for whom accessibility is becoming more of an issue. If you take a look at Amazon or Kobo, both now have accessibility information for ebooks highly visible in the book's listing. For those ePubs, I do need to create properly formatted headers, have decent alt="" for images, etc. For books intended for my personal use, being able to directly edit ToC entries might be useful but would require me to break a few habits I've established over the last few years and not use the various saved searches I've created.

[Doitsu]

The W3C added two new core media types in the EPUB 3.4 specs.

image/avif sample file
image/jxl sample file

I haven't seen them in the wild, but it could hurt to add support for them in the image viewer window if Qt supports them.

[kovidgoyal]

Somebody needs to buy the EPUB committee at the W3C a pooch with a curly tail so they can more productively occupy their time trying to straighten it.

[KevinH]

Sigil already recognizes those new image media types. I have no idea if QtWebEngine as used in Qt 6.10.2 or QImage supports them yet. When Qt supports them internally we should be good to go or close to it.

Have you tried adding them to a test epub , and opening an Image tab? Is it blank?

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Have you tried adding them to a test epub , and opening an Image tab? Is it blank?

Sigil says "Cannot load <file name>"

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Have you tried adding them to a test epub , and opening an Image tab? Is it blank?

Neither are able to opened in an image tab on Windows. I get a "Can't load /path/to/image.avif|jxl" error when trying to open the tab.

My .avif showed a preview in Sigil's "Add File" dialog (and was ultimately displayed in Preview after inserting into the xhtml). But my .jxl file did not show a preview, nor did it display in Preview after inserting it.

None show in the Add Existing preview area when adding them to the epub archive

[KevinH]

Yes, I just checked and both jxl and avif images require separate additional libraries and third party qt plugins for QImage support.

QtWebEngine supports avif but not jxl according to a web search.

Growing the Sigil codebase with 2 additional image libraries and two different qt plugin repos just to see these obscure images types seems a bit much.

Maybe we should file these under Qt bug reports or Qt new feature request.

I will play around with this but don't hold your breath.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Growing the Sigil codebase with 2 additional image libraries and two different qt plugin repos just to see these obscure images types seems a bit much.

Agreed.

[KevinH]

Based on QtBug reports search, there is a bug report to add support for avif to QImage from 2025 that appears to have no work done on it. Basically it has been ignored.

There was another request to add jpeg-xl to QtWebEngine from 2024 that was also basically ignored.

So if Qt does not support jxl in QtWebEngine we are pretty much up the creek without a paddle.

Update:

From another web search ...

Google Chrome reintroduced support for the JPEG-XL image format starting in Chrome 145 (released in February 2026).The feature returned to the browser's codebase after Google removed it in 2022, but it remains hidden behind an experimental flag and is not yet enabled by default.