Option to NOT nominate for Open With candidature

[BetterRed]

Sigil registers itself to Windows as a candidate for opening files it can't open from the shell



Not just MP3 also FLV, AVI , MPG, PDF etc, etc. I appreciate they can be embedded within ePUB3.0, but surely I'm never going to do that by opening them in the Windows shell, would have thought I'd do that from within Sigil after opening the relevant EPUB container.

Could there be an an option in the Windows install to NOT create these 'candidate associations' and remove them if they're already there. Sigil (and plenty of others - browsers etc) 'get in the way' of programs that can do something useful with these files. Firefox puts itself forward as a candidate to handle CBZ's - when I dropped 'file:///users/BetterRed/Downloads/picturebook.cbz' into it -- if offered to download it - into my Downloads folder

With Windows 10 (maybe 8/8.1 too), MS made some radical changes with the way Open With works - Kovid calls in an 'unholy mess' I call it 'Calamities on Toast'. Sadly Nir Sofer is yet to produce an OpenWithView that works with Win10 so there is no simple way of removing these candidate applications, you have to wrangle the registry by hand.

Yes, I do use Open With a lot, as I've always done. Beats me why MS would make something that most of its user base don't use, even harder to use for those of us who do use it. At a guess I'd say 80% of Windows users never right click in the shell, much less use Open With. They click on desktop program icons, and use File Open.

BR

[DiapDealer]

I have no idea how Windows 10 decides what programs are a "candidate" for file associations, but I can assure you that there's nothing in Sigil's source or installer code that nominates anything other than .epub, .htm, .html, .xhtml for registry associations.

[BetterRed]

Well I did not put them there, that's for sure. Have a look at this thread - Install/Uninstall Windows 10 calibre

And the calibre-debug --default-programs command

(Un)register calibre from Windows Default Programs. --default-programs = (register|unregister)

And what goes on behind the CALIBRE_NO_DEFAULT_PROGRAMS environment variable - which Kovid implemented last week to address this issue

Prevent calibre from automatically registering the filetypes it is capable of handling with windows.

BR

[DiapDealer]

Calibre is capable of opening a slew of file-types--and dutifully reports to Windows that capability for each and every one of them. Kovid's environment variable override provides a mechanism for skipping the registration of all filetypes it's capable of opening.

Sigil doesn't notify Windows that it's capable of opening the filetypes you're mentioning. There would be nothing to "skip" with a similar environment variable override in Sigil (except for .epub, .htm, .html and .xhtml)

I'll look further into it, but I have no Windows 10 machine to experiment with. Nor any plans to get one just yet.

[theducks]

I have a suspicion that something went sideways with a W10 update and was (silently?) fixed (W10 does not give you control of updates).

If you were unfortunate to have done an install during the sad window, file associations were tampered with

A number of recently updated Programs (Calibre, Sigil, NP++) all had their long standing default associations messed with. The most obvious artifact is the Icons in Explorer are not as expected)

[Toxaris]

In Sigil 0.9.4 in the Open With screen for movies/etc Sigil is not an option. I would have to really select it. I use Windows 10 64-bit.

[BetterRed]

I use Windows 10 Professional - I wonder if that's a difference.

The reason I selected Sigil on an MP3's Open With list was that I was about to make my first EPUB 3.0 - and I thought... ah-ah, maybe I can start an EPUB 3.0 by getting Sigil to open an MP3 file. Just as I have started an EPUB 2.0 via the Open With Sigil option on HTML files.

Sigil is the only apparently 'spurious' application I've found that appears in any Open With lists, and I use Open With dozens of times a day on many different file types - I am fairly confident I would notice anything else 'out of order'. The Sigil entries were there in 0.9.4 not sure about earlier releases - could have been for longer. I ignored them because they didn't get in the way too much, and I assumed they had something to do with EPUB 3.0.

With calibre there were so many that they just had to go, and courtesy of Kovid they're gone.

When I have a moment I'll uninstall Sigil and remove all traces of it in the registry and elsewhere and then reinstall it.

@theducks - do you use Windows Home or Pro - I don't get any updates I don't know about, and none that Susan Bradley doesn't know about. Susan keeps a beady eye on MS and other Updates at Windows Secrets. I've read that Win 10 Home is a problem in this regard - but I've never seen or examined the logs first hand - just read the scuttlebutt in the Soc-Med echo chamber.

BR

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@theducks - do you use Windows Home or Pro - I don't get any updates I don't know about, and none that Susan Bradley doesn't know about. Susan keeps a beady eye on MS and other Updates at Windows Secrets. I've read that Win 10 Home is a problem in this regard - but I've never seen or examined the logs first hand - just read the scuttlebutt in the Soc-Med echo chamber.

BR

Pro as an update of W7 pro

the unwanted action was fairly recent.
It is a possibility it was something I did. I was looking around for how to change the Icon for a format (file extension). I was looking to change EPUB only. In earlier versions, everything had a Cancel (and/or Apply) That is now gone in some places

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

When I have a moment I'll uninstall Sigil and remove all traces of it in the registry and elsewhere and then reinstall it.

Duly done - took more than a moment though, as things always do - along the way I spotted some non-Sigil anomalies, so I sorted them out whilst I was there.

Progress - after removing everything Sigilish, and reinstalling there were no spurious Sigil's in the audio and video Open With lists

Possible Explanation of how they got there - whilst editing the registry I recalled that some time ago, like 2-3 years at least, I 'played' around in Sigil trying to get audio and video working in ePUB 2.0. I tried inserting various file types (quite probably the same ones I tried yesterday) without any success.

After poking around a bit in here and elsewhere I came to the conclusion that multi-media and ePUB 2.0 good bedfellows didn't make, so I gave up trying. Might Windows 7 and/or Sigil 0.8.?? have conspired to add Sigil into the OW lists for the media files that I opened from within Sigil at that time?

A Curiosity - after reinstalling Sigil, it wasn't in the Open With for .EPUB (I declined the offer to make Sigil the default), but it's in HTML's Open With List, haven't checked .HTM and .XHTML. Locating sigil.exe and adding it to the .EPUB OW list was easy enough, for me... but for others...

A Question - in the following screen shot, the only file I added to Audio folder was the Eisenhower MP3 (pity there isn't another one of him), all the rest were added to the Video folder - why aren't the files located in the folders I nominated.



Sadly the pristine install did not fix the right click crashes in the Open file dialogue.

BR