Sigil-2.5.1 Released

[DiapDealer]

Sigil 2.5.1

Sigil 2.5.1 is primarily a bugfix release.

Bug Fixes

• fix CodeView to Preview syncing when cursor on empty lines
• fix build warnings related to overloaded-virtual

New Features

• Add AppImage .desktop file with version information
• strip AppImage bins when possible
• update docs to include Sigil_Plugin_Framework version 15

--------------------------------Notes -----------------------------------

The latest version of the Sigil User Guide can always be downloaded from the Sigil website, or from its own GitHub repository.

Please check the Sigil website for important Sigil support links, additional resource downloads, and platform-specific trouble-shooting tips/requirements.

The MacOS builds are signed AND notarized.

PGP Fingerprint (for signed tags and source archives): `B5A5 6206 AB0F BC1A 24EF AB8A A166 D29A 8FCD AC63`

All Sigil binary (and source) downloads can also be found as assets at the bottom of The Sigil-2.5.1 Github Release page.

[DiapDealer]

Post reserved for future use

[philja]

I've installed 2.5.1 on my MacBook this morning and have found a change in behaviour.

Usually, when entering the first tag of a pair, say <p>, Sigil immediately shows a pink warning message at the top of the Preview pane and this disappears as soon as the closing tag is inserted. This does not appear to happen.

Actually, if I scroll to the top of the Preview, the warning has been generated and is there. But it does not get focus so the user is unaware of any error.

I imagine this is an unanticipated change?

I'll check my linux box later when I've a bit of time.

Edit: It's the same behaviour on the 2.5.1 linux appimage and on Windows.

[DiapDealer]

I honestly can't even remember the last time I saw the pink warning box. Someone else will have to speak to past and present behavior.

[philja]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I honestly can't even remember the last time I saw the pink warning box. Someone else will have to speak to past and present behavior.

uti 2.5.0, whenever an 'error' (like an accidental damage to a tag, or an incomplete tag pair, or whatever) occurred, Preview pane immediately zapped to the top of the file and displayed an error message. As soon as the error was corrected, Preview returned to where you were editing.

Now, with 2.5.1, Preview's view stays where you were editing. So if that position is well down in the file, and an 'error' occurs, the user is not made aware of the error because it is pasted across the top of the file in the Preview.

It's easily demonstrated. Go far enough down in a file that the top is no longer displayed in Preview. Then remove a > from one of the tags in Code View. Preview 'flickers' and then continues to display where you are editing. To see the error message, you have to scroll up in Preview.

This looks like an unwanted side effect of Kevin's latest mod connected with improving Preview's alignment with Code View when dealing with large amounts of white space.

[philja]

OTOH, it was a real delight to follow the 'there's an update' message and to see a dedicated button for downloading the latest appimage for linux.

In UbuntuStudio 24.04 with the KDE Plasma desktop, all I have to do is put the new download into my appimages directory, right-click on the Sigil icon in the application-launcher display, select edit application. In the dialog box which opens, click on the Application tab, browse to the appropriate directory and select the new appimage.

The launcher then gets the latest version up and running. Hardly any longer than the download time. Many times faster and easier than upgrading Sigil in Windows.

[KevinH]

Well that is strange. The lost CV to PV sync was caused by a change I made in the code just for 2.5.0 It was actually reverted in 2.5.1 to return to the previous Sigil behaviour.
That change only has to do with CV -> Preview syncing. Nothing else changed. No idea at what you are seeing or why.

[KevinH]

There is no CV sync Preview to the error capability and there never has been. All CV does when syncing is to tell Preview where to scroll to to match its current position. After a pause in editing in CV, Preview is told reload the page. If there is an xml syntax error in the new page, Preview will alert you but show as much of the page up to the issue location as possible. Whether you can immediately see that or not has always depended on how much of the page Preview can show before it gives up. CV has nothing to do with that.

You may have seen it more often in Sigil 2.5.0 but only as a consequence of it constantly and incorrectly repositioning Preview to the top of page.

[philja]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Well that is strange. The lost CV to PV sync was caused by a change I made in the code just for 2.5.0 It was actually reverted in 2.5.1 to return to the previous Sigil behaviour.
That change only has to do with CV -> Preview syncing. Nothing else changed. No idea at what you are seeing or why.

Well, I did say it was easy to demonstrate.

I've just reverted to 2.5.0, and I'm not imagining things. In earlier versions, as soon as you made a slip up in editing, Preview pane zapped right up to the top of the file and displayed the warning. You couldn't miss the warning, and the Preview pane was then no longer in sync with the Code View.

The error warning at the top of the preview pane was always of interest to beginners I introduce to Sigil. The warnings are not always easy for them to understand but they were improved last year (IIRC, BeckyEbook helped to make the display better). Their most important feature was to shout 'you've done something wrong'.

Now with v2.5.1 in MacBook, linux and Windows, if you're editing well down in the file, you just don't see the error warning. Preview stays synced with your editing position.

[philja]

Originally Posted by KevinH

There is no CV sync Preview to the error capability and there never has been. All CV does when syncing is to tell Preview where to scroll to to match its current position. After a pause in editing in CV, Preview is told reload the page. If there is an xml syntax error in the new page, Preview will alert you but show as much of the page up to the issue location as possible. Whether you can immediately see that or not has always depended on how much of the page Preview can show before it gives up. CV has nothing to do with that.

You may have seen it more often in Sigil 2.5.0 but only as a consequence of it constantly and incorectly repositioning Preview to the top of page.

I never claimed that Preview Synced with the error in CV. But in my experience (and with a load of authors I've introduced to Sigil), the moment an error was made, Preview repositioned to the top of page to display the error message. The user then had to find the error from the line position indicated in the error message - although not perfect.

If, as you say, this was incorrect repositioning to the top of page by Preview, then it was a happy mistake. It enabled the user to know a mistake had been made.

With Preview staying synced with CV in 2.5.1, Sigil might as well not generate an error message because no one can see it.

You say " Preview will alert you but show as much of the page up to the issue location as possible." This is what it did but not any more in 2.5.1

The only time I can get it to behave as it did before is if I damage the </body> tag at the bottom of an xhtml file. Then Preview displays the error message at the top plus as much of the page as it can, from the top.

If I damage one of the tags in the last text paragraph of the xhtml file, no error is displayed (visibly) and Preview stays synced with CV and all looks good.

The same happens if I eliminate the final tag in the file, the </html> tag. The error warning message is not visible and Preview stays synced with CV at the bottom of the file and all looks good.

[KevinH]

Again, Sigil 2.5.0 had a bug that made it incorrectly sync to the top of file. That is why you saw your error messages more in Sigil 2.5.0. Please try the exact same test in the exact same epub on Sigil 2.4.2. It should act like Sigil 2.5.1, not Sigil 2.5.0 when it comes to syncing behaviour as that is the code we reverted to.

If Sigil 2.4.2 somehow syncs to the error message at the top, please let me know and I will try to look into what else changed between Sigil 2.4.2 and Sigil 2.5.1 that might change the behaviour. Unfortunately since 2.4.2 there has been a large number of changes, even Qt changes that could be a culprit.

Nothing from the Sigil 2.5.0 to Sigil 2.5.1 other than the reverted whitespace to top fix) should have impacted that behaviour (same Qt, etc)

[ElMiko]

WRT Preview syncing, for <hr /> tags, it still doesn't sync in the Preview window (i.e. instead, it snaps to the top of the html file).

In a related issue—which may even be a bug, per se—I've noticed that for px height-defined <hr> tags, they look a lot thicker in Preview than in PageEdit. Is this a known/explained behavior?

[KevinH]

As for the <hr /> thing, I have no idea why Preview will not sync to that tag, it syncs to other single self-closing tags. It is like inside the Preview it dom tree has replace the hr with something else.

Nothing we have done should have changed this. My gues this is a long standing issue. I will try to look into why that happens and see if there is anyway to work around it.

And no there is no reason other than default css that would impact Preview showing things in a different way from PageEdit at least when PageEdit is first loaded. That said, when you enable live editing of code in PageEdit, it mangles the tree in many ways to enable the editing, and will not properly normalize its tree without losing the cursor position. My guess is quirks of live editing mode inside a QtWebEngine Widget.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by philja

The same happens if I eliminate the final tag in the file, the </html> tag. The error warning message is not visible and Preview stays synced with CV at the bottom of the file and all looks good.

Okay I finally got to a place where I had access to my laptop, downloaded Sigil 2.4.2 for macOS, and tried the above.

And you are right, it will sync to the top of file to show the error (but if you remove the end html tag with find and replace and quickly move your cursor someplace earlier in the file, it did not sync to that top.

So someplace in the old code, it is somehow seeing (the error) but only when it happens up to the point that the cursor is located when Preview is reloaded.

And you are correct Qt 2.5.1 does seem to change that behaviour.

I will try to track down what other change might have impacted this.

If it ends up being a Qt internal related change, I may be able to work around if by running a well formed check and if a well formed error happens, do not move Preview to your location, instead scroll it to the top.

Thanks for the bug report.

[philja]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Again, Sigil 2.5.0 had a bug that made it incorrectly sync to the top of file. That is why you saw your error messages more in Sigil 2.5.0. Please try the exact same test in the exact same epub on Sigil 2.4.2. It should act like Sigil 2.5.1, not Sigil 2.5.0 when it comes to syncing behaviour as that is the code we reverted to.

If Sigil 2.4.2 somehow syncs to the error message at the top, please let me know and I will try to look into what else changed between Sigil 2.4.2 and Sigil 2.5.1 that might change the behaviour. Unfortunately since 2.4.2 there has been a large number of changes, even Qt changes that could be a culprit.

Nothing from the Sigil 2.5.0 to Sigil 2.5.1 other than the reverted whitespace to top fix) should have impacted that behaviour (same Qt, etc)

OK. I tried on Windows with 2.3.1 (which I had available) and I downloaded 2.4.2. Both those versions behave as I remember Sigil always behaving and NOT as 2.5.1 behaves. This behaviour is not epub dependent and is same with both epub2 and epub3.

2.3.1 & 2.4.2: when I damage a tag in the lower half of a lengthy xhtml file, the PV pane immediately zaps to the top of the page and displays a red error warning. The amount of the page displayed in PV is just what it can get in the space available.

There is no attempt to sync with the actual error in CV - (and I never claimed there was). That is the way I have always remembered Sigil working over all the past versions.

2.5.1 doesn't display the red error message in PV if you are editing below the scope of what it can display from the top of the file. A user has no way to know an error message has been displayed if he is working further down in the file (unless, as I said, he damages the </body> tag).

2.5.1 on the other hand, maintains the sync between PV and CV right down to the place where the error is BUT this prevents the user from seeing any warning message. The warning message has been generated and becomes visible ONLY if the user scrolls to the top of the file in PV or just happens to be editing in the upper part of the file - near the top.

If an error message is to be of use, it must be displayed visibly. PV should NOT sync with CV unless the error message can be made to float over PV and not be displayed at its head. It was always displayed, IIRC, in previous versions. This change has happened in 2.5.1.