What do you use Sigil for?

[morriss003]

I got some great feedback when I asked about Calibre. I just downloaded Sigil. How should I use it?

[crich70]

I use it mostly for basic editing of epubs before converting them to mobi format. On occasion I've started with html pages and done the same thing. The recent upload I did of "Varney The Vampyre" started out as three separate HTML pages which I then edited for unneeded text and then saved as an epub.

[latepaul]

I've used it the most to split up anthologies and collections into individual books.

I've used it to create a couple of short ebooks from scratch.

I have used it to tidy up coding on books - but I tend not to do that now unless the formatting is really bad and/or I'm likely to re-read it a lot. Otherwise it's just not worth my time.

[booklover6]

I use it a lot to take out advertising, reviews, excess images. I don't want excerpts for other books, info about other authors, anything like that. Just the book.

[DiapDealer]

I use it as a vegetable peeler.

[JSWolf]

I use Sigil to rename files after a Calibre conversion so I know what file is what. Also to fix up a ToC, to split as needed and to remove unused CSS entries.

[Dillinquent]

Its good for making epubs

[theducks]

Correcting:
1) poorly formatted chapter heading/titles
2) fixing broken (up) paragraphs)
3) removing stray bits (ads, page numbers...)
4) Making the overall style 'Your Way' or to be conversion friendly
5) Fixing Spelling errors
6) Fixing gross HTML usage perversions
7) Making a quick TOC
"
If you like your book 'as delivered', don't bother. "There is nothing here for you..Move along."

[cathalmc]

Sigil is superb for creating beautifully-formatted ebooks using CSS. It has one or two idiosyncratic glitches, but in general it's one of my best software friends.

[JSWolf]

I also use Sigil when I am checking the text of an ePub and I don't want the code to get in the way. This way, I can make corrections very easily.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by theducks

Correcting:
1) poorly formatted chapter heading/titles
2) fixing broken (up) paragraphs)
3) removing stray bits (ads, page numbers...)
4) Making the overall style 'Your Way' or to be conversion friendly
5) Fixing Spelling errors
6) Fixing gross HTML usage perversions
7) Making a quick TOC
"
If you like your book 'as delivered', don't bother. "There is nothing here for you..Move along."

theducks summed up most of what I use Sigil for, but add to that list:

8) Checking images included in the epub and deleting the 50 duplicates of the identical image, and compressing the others remaining, which can drastically reduce the file size of the epub.

One of the most annoying things I find even on purchased books is 4 different styles within one paragraph switching back and forth for absolutely no reason, there's no change in the appearance of the text at all. Once in awhile it will be there for italics, but that's handled by just using <i> and </i>. The majority of the time it's just left over junk from people using automated software on the book and not bothering to check the results.

Sigil is a fantastic piece of software, I'd be lost without it.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by morriss003

I got some great feedback when I asked about Calibre. I just downloaded Sigil. How should I use it?

Uh... I don't really understand. It's an IDE to create or edit EPUB-files. What else would you do with it? If you mean to ask if I use Sigil for minor editing or creating ebooks from scratch: I do both.

By the way, now that we're talking about Sigil: what engine does it use to render the EPUBs? I suspect it to use Webkit or Gecko, as those are the major free ones, but that's just a guess. It's different from the engine used by ADE: Sigil supports CSS that ADE does not. Some Adobe products in the past used Presto (Opera's engine), so maybe this is also true for ADE.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

theducks summed up most of what I use Sigil for, but add to that list:

8) Checking images included in the epub and deleting the 50 duplicates of the identical image, and compressing the others remaining, which can drastically reduce the file size of the epub.

How do you do this? Penguin cozy mysteries suffer the problem a lot.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

How do you do this? Penguin cozy mysteries suffer the problem a lot.

You delete all the duplicate and search/replace them in the XML code to the one remaining image.

I've seen this done before. It's just stupid to have the same image duplicated for each time it is used.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've seen this done before. It's just stupid to have the same image duplicated for each time it is used.

This is idiocy on a level that doesn't even exist yet.

The only way I can think of is that this happens when the EPUB is auto-generated from a file that actually includes the image multiple times, such as a Word-document.