Possible To-Do List for Future Sigil Releases Post Sigil 1.8

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by democrite

I am not sure if this is ideal place for feature requests. So far seems to be yet I haven't checked other threads. If so, maybe the first post could be edited as a running list as others who may not read this thread or regularly check forums may find such less effort to find and remain up-to-date. Is this turning into the thread for requests?

This thread already is. There has been a similarly titled thread after every recent release to collect well thought through suggestions that will help many users and than can not easily be done in a plugin. The suggestions we (dev team) think are reasonable and useful get added to our To-Do list.

- keyboard shortcuts on macOS show ctrl instead of cmd and meta rather than ctrl.

This is already explained in our User Guide. Qt does it that way to that each platforms standard copy / paste key shortcuts work as expected on all platforms.

- preference to set linear=no on add cover?, and auto-set if cover is detected?

Simply direct edit the OPF now. In the future this will also be handled by a GetInfo like Dialog forfile semantics and opf manifest and spine properties (see the To-Do list above).

- adding cover, often with commercial specified in some other way undetected, Sigil adds a new file. possibly instead of needing to delete the old and edit toc, maybe in that dialog some place, perhaps expandable not shown by default, to replace some existing cover?

Just use Set Semantics to unset the old cover semantics before adding a new cover, or just use Add Existing to add a new image to replace the old cover image (same name).

- renaming files, if focus could remain in file list post-rename, I think easier to continue. e.g. select files, press shortcut to rename, arrow keys + selection, repeat.

Mass renaming, mass renumbering and mass changing of extensions are easily done. A Regular Expression Renamer was added to pretty much rename many things in any way. Manually renaming one file after another in a long list is not the way to go.

- as many or most commercial EPUBs bring up the message of missing DOCTYPE, html, etc., if there is no malformed XHTML, perhaps there could be an option to do such automatically? I am unaware if suggested, spoken of before, or of any dangers in such cases.
Mentioned before, I remain unclear at times when there is indeed malformed HTML vs merely a change in header.

No, as that would end up changing files under the user's nose without their permission. The old Sigil did that, new Sigil does not. Again use Sigil's Checkpoint features to easily see what was changed.

Tested one where such was fixed, made something malformed (removed closing tag somewhere), and same message.

I have yet to see a valid case where Sigil's gumbo repair parser broke anything, ever. I will need a full test case that clearly illustrates this happening.

Thus times where I may have, outside of Sigil, introduced some html syntax error of missing tag or something, vs. a harmless (?) DOCTYPE, html, … that is autorepaired, I do not know how to distinguish such.

That is the whole point of the Checkpointing feature added to Sigil. Say "no" to any changes on import. Hit make checkpoint. Now reload the epub but this time let Sigil fix things (Mend on open) and then compare to earlier Checkpoint's via the Sigils compare tools to see exactly what was changed and where.

- I was thinking, over time, I might contribute to making the app more macOS native if interested: UI elements (noticed status bar size), icons, and other. If someday buttons or other icons could use available resources such as recommended UI fonts per platform or environment (Gnome/KDE no idea if there is such) if available, as I kind of like seeing such refinement, I may experiment with finding such icons for macOS Big Sur+ (SF Symbols) or making use of the Qt API for a more native look. Perhaps uninterested or low priority, but maybe nice someday like possibly using such also on newer Windows. if qt 6 offers new such capabilities. maybe very far off yet perhaps Sigil could later slowly introduce changes to in the future make use of platform native offered by Qt.

Sigil already allows users to install their own custom icon sets. If you create a set of mac-like svg icons and most importantly are willing to keep them updated and add new icons when needed in a timely manner, we would be happy to add them to our custom theme repo.

FWIW, Sigil already uses Qt's mac style everyplace. Please remember first and foremost Sigil is a cross platform app. One codebase is used for all 3 platforms. Changes to make Sigil look more mac-like are really not something I am interested in at all unless they only require insignificant changes.

an option to set epub3 nav to linear unless also used as html toc and file is in ncx/nav TOC.

One of our existing To-Do items is to add a GetInfo like dialog invoked from BookBrowser where things like semantic, manifest properties, spine properties, etc can be displayed and changed easily by the user. Until then you just need to edit the OPF once to change things like that.

Take care,

KevinH

[Ashjuk]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Ashjuk,
On Windows and macOS we include our own copy of the hunspell en_US dictionary. So we could certainly improve our local copy. If you are sure that your 2000 long wordlist are all valid en_US words then please zip up the list, post it someplace and pm KevinH (me) with a link and when I get a chance I will add them to the en_US dictionary and rebuild our local copy.

Whilst some of them are the UK spelling of the word there is still a lot that are international words that probably should be in an up-to-date dictionary.

I will go through the list and pull out any UK specific spellings, and then zip up the remainder to send to you for inclusion.

[KevinH]

We host a copy of the en_GB one as well. So if you can split out the UK spellings ones into a separate list I can try to update both as appropriate.

See this list of local dictionaries we install for Windows and macOS users.

https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil...s/dictionaries

Of course users can supply their own hunspell dictionaries to replace these if they want.

Thanks!

[democrite]

I had a moment and was looking into ctrl/meta on macOS. Please excuse my lack of having read the docs. A bit surprised that since they are mapped as they are on macOS, they aren't by default also displayed to the user. I couldn't find anything from a brief look at docs or bug reports. Maybe just me, it seems surprising if no one has brought up the issue for Qt in general that if ctrl/meta are mapped as such, for devs they understand, but to users, why are they not displayed as cmd/ctrl. If there is no API, maybe a bug report?

Have not looked extensively for it, but maybe this would be the place to add it.

https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtbase.gi...pp?h=dev#n1086

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Ashjuk

Just a thought, but is there any chance of bundling a more comprehensive English dictionary with Sigil?

My default user dictionary now contains nearly 2000 words (all checked as being valid and correct English against two on-line dictionaries) that are not included in the dictionary that comes with Sigil.

Ehh... I'd be very careful with that.

Isn't hunspell's English dictionary already based off of SCOWL?

I wrote about that in detail in a recent LibreOffice thread on Reddit:

• /r/libreoffice: "Having used LibreOffice for a while, I feel the need to ask"

The person was complaining "how abysmal" LibreOffice's default dictionary is... and I had to explain why it wasn't.

What would be better, for you, is you may want to generate a larger custom dictionary from SCOWL using their online tool. (Or download the "en_US-large" dictionary instead.)

Default spellcheck lists use the "size 60" lists. These are common words that are found in most dictionaries.

If you go to "size 70", this includes rarer words, but the potential to miss actual typos.

"size 80" includes incredibly rare, but still valid, English words.

For example, I gave these rare examples in the post above:

• cherishable
• cheesewood
• classfellow
• clotes
• clubroot
• pollusion

Most people probably meant:

• cherish + able
• cheese + wood
• class + fellow
• clothes
• club + root
• pollution

Originally Posted by Ashjuk

I realise that you just pick up the Hunspell ones, but I was wondering if there was a better alternative that updated their dictionaries on a more regular basis.

You can go straight to the source.

• SCOWL's website: http://wordlist.aspell.net/
• SCOWL's github: https://github.com/en-wl/wordlist

If you want to handle both American/British variants? Generate a list.

Want to handle technical computer+"hacker" words? Generate a list.

Want -ize British endings instead of -ise? Generate a list!

Words actually missing from all the lists? Submit them to the Github. (Like I submitted the latest atomic elements... such as 118 = "Oganesson".)

Originally Posted by KevinH

If you are sure that your 2000 long wordlist are all valid en_US words then please zip up the list, post it someplace

I'd also be interested in it too. Last year, I spent a few months scraping all dictionaries for all valid English words.

I submitted a huge load of "missing words" to SCOWL to research.

Sometimes common words are accidentally in the rarer lists, and can be adjusted downwards too. Language usage is always changing.

Like this newer word: "crowdsource" + "crowdsourced" + "crowdsourcing". I just got those fixed up in LanguageTool! When someone accidentally types "crowd source", they probably meant "crowdsource"!

[KevinH]

This is not a bug. Qt has worked this way for over a decade, as has Sigil. This is part of what being cross-platform means. The exact same Shortcuts such as Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V on Windows and Linux for Copy and Paste become Command-C and Command-V on macOS with the exact same code base.

[democrite]

It is not how they work but how they are displayed to users. As menu shortcuts show the correct symbols as they function on each platform, why not too is the string name of the key also changed when displayed such as in shortcuts config? That is the curious thing for me. To me, it would be as if menus showed control on macOS, and there was need to explain to users it is really command.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by democrite

It is not how they work but how they are displayed to users. As menu shortcuts show the correct symbols as they function on each platform, why not too is the string name of the key also changed when displayed such as in shortcuts config? That is the curious thing for me. To me, it would be as if menus showed control on macOS, and there was need to explain to users it is really command.

Because the mac users and mac developers of Sigil have *long* used it that way. The shortcut key sequence strings shown are then universal (the same string is used across platforms) and can be stored, retrieved, and created and assigned in that manner. To me it is just not worth the time and energy to worry about. And I just do not want to add more platform specific code to make a change that will just mess up long term MacOS users of Sigil and other Qt programs.

[democrite]

Very well. Perhaps a seeming reaction of frustration in such need to explain is from some misunderstanding of one of us. It is not that I am asking Sigil to change. It’s that to me, modifier keys are referred to by some class or enum identifier, and that is distinct from how it displayed to the user. It’s that I think Qt itself should natively provide such. But maybe I am missing something. Yet to me it’s clear that’s how it should be. Devs understand how to refer to such, it is encapsulated or abstracted; users may not. E.g., if some new platform someday appears and uses not even the names Ctrl meta alt? Or other?

Started out as a curiously from unfamiliarly with Qt and never really having looked at custom shortcuts. Maybe it is that Qt apps like apps in general not all provide custom shortcuts sp have no need to display the string to the user. So less may have noticed. Yes or no, someday I think someone will file such a bug and eventually that’s how Qt will behave.

[Ashjuk]

Originally Posted by KevinH

We host a copy of the en_GB one as well. So if you can split out the UK spellings ones into a separate list I can try to update both as appropriate.

See this list of local dictionaries we install for Windows and macOS users.

https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil...s/dictionaries

Of course users can supply their own hunspell dictionaries to replace these if they want.

Thanks!

Thanks Kevin.
I will take a look at that as it may well include the majority of the UK variants I have in my list.

@Tex2002ans -
I realise that by including obscure words you run the risk of missing misspelled common words, but the majority of those in my list are those that I feel should be in any reasonable dictionary.

These are a few examples -
airplane - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/airplane
automobile - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/automobile
Egyptologist - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Egyptologist
stylesheet - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stylesheet (one you would expect to be included in any dictionary bundled with Sigil)
bestseller - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bestseller

[KevinH]

@Ashjuk Yikes! It is missing some common words. I will check the en_US and en_GB dictionaries we in include in Sigil.

@Tex2002ans - Thanks for the links. I am aware of scowl and Kevin Atkinson's Aspell from my days at running the OpenOffice lingucomponent project and as my role as creator of MySpell and MyThes way back then. I understand the concept of a working set (corpus) of most commonly used words and the problems of a larger corpus hiding common mispellings.

[KevinH]

Just checked and "stylesheet" and "Egyptologist" are missing from both en_US and en_GB dictionaries.

And "bestseller" "automobile" and "airplane" are missing from the en_GB one.

So both dictionaries Sigil embeds are a bit out of date but the en_GB one seems a tad extreme

Please do send me your lists and I will incorporate the fixes.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

. . . but the en_GB one seems a tad extreme

Why?

Outside the US/Canada 'bestseller' would more often be 'best-seller' or, IMO the better yet, 'best seller'.

And 'automobile' and 'airplane' would only be used in dialogue or quoted speech spoken by an American or Canadian. More generally '[motor] car' and 'aeroplane' would be used, and in a military context 'aircraft' is preferred in either variant.

Some publishers insist on 'Pharaonic scholar' rather than 'Egyptologist' - sigh.

Maybe what's needed is a universal English dictionary and exclusion lists that can be applied selectively depending on context. When I'm wearing my copy editors guise I'd prefer exclusion checking be separate from spell checking.

FWIW the Firefox English (Australia) dictionary flags 'bestseller', 'automobile', 'airplane', 'Pharaonic' and 'Egyptologist' as misspelt…

BR

[KevinH]

Interesting. I will check the online OED and the scowl lists to see if these have been added recently.

It seems aeroplane is preferred over airplane in en-GB but automobile is a word in British English. In fact Britain had one of the first "Automobile Associations" in 1905.

So these word lists updates will have to be carefully checked.

[democrite]

Unsure if permitted or wise. Or how useful. There is an OED in stardict, perhaps sourced from when it was last on CD.