Suggestions for Sigil Improvements or New Features

[KevinH]

Hi All,

I am again opening a new thread for your suggestions for improvements or new features for future versions of Sigil WITH THE FOLLOWING CAVEATS:

1. No "advanced editor" features. If you have a file editor you love more, then use it with Sigil's "open with" feature.

2. Nothing that is better done in a plugin (ie, no AI generation of summaries, no AI translations, etc, a separate plugin or even a real wordprocessor is the right place for those kinds of tools). Sigil is an epub editor not a Word Processor.

3. No changes just for the sake of change (.ie no new Mac icons, etc)

4. Your suggestion will benefit the vast majority of Sigil users.


Please post your suggestions in this thread for all users to comment on.


Thanks

[un_pogaz]

I would like to put on the table the possibility of having more than 3 automate list and that the 3 button are just favorite, like plugins. Could be very handy.

Else, Sigil is very complet to me so, great job to you and thanks.

[KevinH]

So maybe an new top menu item named "Automation" with a menu that allows you to Edit a Automate List, and Launch an Automate List, Name an Automate list, Delete An Automate list , or something along those lines.

Then maybe replace the 3 automate list buttons with a short toolbar of say 5 buttons for fast launching that show the short List name.

So something similar to how we handle Plugins now?

Is that the idea?

[un_pogaz]

Yes, exactly!

The "like plugin" with so obvious for me that a forget to explain abit more the detail.

[KevinH]

Let's wait to hear what others think of this feature request and if generally positive I will add it to my future to-do list.

[Doitsu]

Remember h* selections

Make Sigil remember the last [h*] selection. For example if you want to add multiple h2 tags, Sigil should change the button image to h2 after the first h2 selection and keep that setting until Sigil is restarted.

Allow advanced users to customize the book language dropdown list

Most book producers probably only use the usual EFIGS languages and their local language, but the language list is very long and contains several languages that are highly unlikely to be ever used in an epub. For example, Middle High German.

I realize that creating another settings dialog would be a lot of work, but you could have Sigil check for a lang_codes ini entry that advanced users would have to manually add.
For example:

lang_codes = en-US, fr-FR, it-IT, de-DE, es-ES

Sigil would then only display the languages defined via lang_codes, provided that all language codes are valid.

Alternatively, you could reorder the language list to prioritize languages the app is fully translated for.

Chinese (China) (zh-CN)
French (fr)
German (de)
Korean (ko)
Polish (pl)
Portuguese (Brazil) (pt-BR)
Russian (ru)
Serbian (sr)
Spanish (es)
Ukrainian (Ukraine) (uk-UA)

[User_Z]

Hello.

How can I make the editor open the last opened book file instead of a new one when I launch it?

Maybe this feature already exists and I'm just unaware of it.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by User_Z

Hello.

How can I make the editor open the last opened book file instead of a new one when I launch it?

Maybe this feature already exists and I'm just unaware of it.

There is no feature that does exactly this, nor is one currently planned.

But there is a "recently used" menu once Sigil is open that you can use to load the book you want. You can also launch and load Sigil with a filepath to any epub from the command line so you could use your own shell or bat file. And of course dragging and dropping your epub onto Sigil will launch with that book loaded as well.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Remember h* selections

Make Sigil remember the last [h*] selection. For example if you want to add multiple h2 tags, Sigil should change the button image to h2 after the first h2 selection and keep that setting until Sigil is restarted.

Can't you just use a clip for each of the h1-h6 elements you use a lot? Clips are really the fastest way to add tags. I have not used that multi-button menu in literally years once I set common tags as clips.

Allow advanced users to customize the book language dropdown list

Most book producers probably only use the usual EFIGS languages and their local language, but the language list is very long and contains several languages that are highly unlikely to be ever used in an epub. For example, Middle High German.

I realize that creating another settings dialog would be a lot of work, but you could have Sigil check for a lang_codes ini entry that advanced users would have to manually add.
For example:

lang_codes = en-US, fr-FR, it-IT, de-DE, es-ES

Sigil would then only display the languages defined via lang_codes, provided that all language codes are valid.

Alternatively, you could reorder the language list to prioritize languages the app is fully translated for.

Chinese (China) (zh-CN)
French (fr)
German (de)
Korean (ko)
Polish (pl)
Portuguese (Brazil) (pt-BR)
Russian (ru)
Serbian (sr)
Spanish (es)
Ukrainian (Ukraine) (uk-UA)

The epub spec itself specifies the user can use any of the language codes in that iso list. So restricting it to commonly used languages would place out-of-spec limits on Sigil but the spec says nothing about the order they are presented in or a user override of that list.

Your idea of a environment variable to allow the user to specify the initial order or somehow force the list to be limited might be a good approach.
Let's see what others think.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by User_Z

Hello.

How can I make the editor open the last opened book file instead of a new one when I launch it?

Maybe this feature already exists and I'm just unaware of it.

Originally Posted by KevinH

There is no feature that does exactly this, nor is one currently planned.

But there is a "recently used" menu once Sigil is open that you can use to load the book you want. You can also launch and load Sigil with a filepath to any epub from the command line so you could use your own shell or bat file. And of course dragging and dropping your epub onto Sigil will launch with that book loaded as well.

I almost never just launch Sigil to an empty epub. I simply double-click on the epub I'm working on. So long as Sigil is configured as your default handler for .epub files, I fail to see how it could be any simpler than that.