Please welcome John, the new maintainer

[charleski]

PCRE will certainly be a nice addition. I think one thing worth thinking about for the future would be the sort of automatic tag-matching system seen in commercial xml editors (i.e Oxygen, Dreamweaver, etc). This is because RegExps are unable to handle balanced tags with arbitrary levels of nesting, and it might ease some problems with accessibility (and with those who have difficulty with RegExps). Since the entire document is stored as a Xerces DOM it won't be too hard to extract the required information, and just needs a fair amount of GUI code. But we can put that off for the time being, since there's already enough to be working on. Right now I'm just trying to stamp out the lingering bugs.

[user_none]

charleski has been a bug fixing machine.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Thank you for making Sigil, it is very good program. I would suggest not worrying about catering to those who make ebooks as a business and focus on those who make ebooks for fun and to share with friends.

Yes, of course, because, heaven knows, those of us actually donating to help support the thing should have FAR less of a say than those who don't.

Hitch

[charleski]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yes, of course, because, heaven knows, those of us actually donating to help support the thing should have FAR less of a say than those who don't.

Hitch

As far as I'm concerned the attraction of Sigil is that it's better at its clearly-defined purpose than programs that cost $$$ (like OxygenXML, which costs $$$, then costs an extra $$ if you want any support or upgrades).

A large part of this advantage lies in the words "clearly-defined purpose". Sigil, in my mind, is a tool for people who are comfortable with the idea of coding in xhtml and css (which are, frankly, ridiculously simple in general) rather than for those looking for a 'word-processor' experience.

If you're in the latter group, then I highly recommend Atlantis Word Processor, which can handle .docx files from Word and also has a powerful set of word-processor functions. It's not free, but it's really cheap. It's also the only program I've found that really manages to produce clean xhtml from Word files, and can directly export an ePub with very clean code (and is certainly a lot better than other automatic conversion tools). [Though I generally clean up the css it produces to match my own notion of the correct conventions for reflowable content.]

So, Giggleton (and every one else), if you're looking for an easy-to-use program to create ePubs from basic text without having to worry about the intricacies of the format, then AWP (or something like Pages or Scrivener if you have to use a Mac*) is a great idea.

But if you want a tool with the power to give you total control, then with great power comes great responsibility, and for Sigil to have the power it does, it needs to assume that you know WTF you're doing. This assumption is key -- Sigil is a tool for people who know WTF they're doing, and that should never change. This has nothing to do with commercial interests (there are a whole slew of commercial issues with book production that Sigil completely ignores, and should continue to do so, because they're best addressed by other tools).

Originally Posted by user_none

charleski has been a bug fixing machine.

Strahinja's code is very sound. But (as is usual) it's easier to spot the bugs when you have a fresh set of eyes on the code.





*I typed my PhD thesis into a PowerMac Duo (OUCH) [which dates me], and despite owning an aging MBP I hate the Dock with a passion, so don't look to me for unbiased opinions, since I've been burnt already.

[Hitch]

AMEN, BROTHER.

Hitch

[Freeshadow]

+1 on charleski
while I agree it's great that Sigil takes over all the tasks repetitive which you would have to keep an eye on when making whole epubs manually like epub specific zipping, not forgetting to insert the files in the required listings etc. It d
would be a great loss putting a lid over sourcecode manipulation (and I say this as not savvy in any *ML or CSS)

this just because it

1. helps in learning by doing when you see that code while you format in a WYSIWYG mode
2. the source is the key when you ask somebody smarter than you about why your book does NOT look like you intended it to do.
3. there will always be finetune opportunities or needs which NO GUI in the world can cover even if it became option-overloaded and non-intuitive like hell.

The lessons above always return - in case of maintenance of operating systems feel free to replace sourcefiles with command-line/shell work

If you always want to do it properly you will one day run across a problem which requires to do at least part of the work by hand.

And it's great that Sigil is a double-sided epub-wrench keep that.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yes, of course, because, heaven knows, those of us actually donating to help support the thing should have FAR less of a say than those who don't.

This attitude bothers me. You're donating, not paying. Why would that entitle you to anything? Regardless of whether or not one has donated, everyone's opinion should have the same weight.

[cuthbert19]

Originally Posted by Manichean

This attitude bothers me. You're donating, not paying. Why would that entitle you to anything? Regardless of whether or not one has donated, everyone's opinion should have the same weight.

Exactly, BUT he was replying to Giggleton's suggestion that the opinion of "casual" users was to be preferred to the one of business users

[Zeypxi]

Originally Posted by charleski

This is because RegExps are unable to handle balanced tags with arbitrary levels of nesting, and it might ease some problems with accessibility (and with those who have difficulty with RegExps).

I'm sure people are using regexps to find specific tags with specific classes or attributes. xpath would be a nice addition to this programme.
eg: //p[@class="someclass"]

Originally Posted by charleski

Sigil, in my mind, is a tool for people who are comfortable with the idea of coding in xhtml and css (which are, frankly, ridiculously simple in general) rather than for those looking for a 'word-processor' experience.

Couldn't agree more.

I've seen all the updates on the project website, thank you very much charleski for all the bug fixes. Thanks both of you.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by cuthbert19

Exactly, BUT he was replying to Giggleton's suggestion that the opinion of "casual" users was to be preferred to the one of business users

Precisely. My point was that being a commercial user does not disentitle me, nor negate the value of my opinion. If anything, commercial users have a lot more everyday and ongoing usage than the average "casual" user, and thereby more experience with the software. This obviously does not include non-commercial power users like Charlie (Crutledge).

It was Giggleton's assertion that if anything, I (and other commercial users) should have opinions of less value--opinions that should be cavalierly disregarded in favor of those "who make ebooks for fun" that I found particularly offensive. As if somehow, making ebooks as a business is a crass undertaking, polluting "art" for filthy lucre.

I make books for MONEY. I can't fix bugs like Charleski, so I donate MONEY to help support the project. It doesn't make me some craven lesser creature, and I won't be shunted aside by the suggestion that I am. I'm pretty sure that if Valloric and John find my opinions or my donations offensive, they'll bloody well tell me. And quite frankly, it's only their opinions that count--not anyone else's who may or mayn't take offense.


Hitch

[Freeshadow]

Damn right Hitch.
nuff said.

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by charleski

Strahinja's code is very sound. But (as is usual) it's easier to spot the bugs when you have a fresh set of eyes on the code.

How do you set up a Sigil development environment?

It's been some time since I last programmed in C/C++ and never used Qt, so it is unlikely that I could make any contribution, at least in the short term, but I would like to have a look at the code and see for myself how hard it is.

Thanks,

Pablo

[cuthbert19]

Originally Posted by Pablo

How do you set up a Sigil development environment?

It's been some time since I last programmed in C/C++ and never used Qt, so it is unlikely that I could make any contribution, at least in the short term, but I would like to have a look at the code and see for myself how hard it is.

Thanks,

Pablo

On Linux it's pretty straightforward, just install mercurial and pull the last revision of the code on your PC; then you can use an editor of your choice and the necessary build tools (cmake etc.), or an IDE like KDevelop if you prefer.

Can't really help you on windows, I suppose you can do something with VisualStudio, but don't ask me how...

[snarkophilus]

Originally Posted by Pablo

How do you set up a Sigil development environment?

There's a link off the Sigil homepage to http://code.google.com/p/sigil/wiki/BuildingFromSource.

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by cuthbert19

On Linux it's pretty straightforward, just install mercurial and pull the last revision of the code on your PC; then you can use an editor of your choice and the necessary build tools (cmake etc.), or an IDE like KDevelop if you prefer.

Can't really help you on windows, I suppose you can do something with VisualStudio, but don't ask me how...

Thanks, my idea was to work in a Linux VM, as I don't have a C++ compiler for Windows.