Suggestions for Sigil Improvements or New Features

[jd1004]

When I search/replace “ or ”, in the "Find:" or "Replace:" fields only closing quotes ” show up. The search/replace works correctly, though. The same happens with single quotes ‘ and ’: the display always shows ’.

[jd1004]

CSS selectors are consistently separated by a single blank line, indentations are consistently two spaces, and the last line is terminated in a semicolon ... sure looks like some sort of pretty-printing to me.

Also, on Windows 10, Sigil 2.7.0, I can't seem to locate a popup menu for CSS formatting. A little pointer please?

[BeckyEbook]

Originally Posted by jd1004

When I search/replace “ or ”, in the "Find:" or "Replace:" fields only closing quotes ” show up. The search/replace works correctly, though. The same happens with single quotes ‘ and ’: the display always shows ’.

The system font is simply not always ideal – at small font sizes, the details of quotation marks become indistinguishable.

Use tip from Sigil User Guide (Advanced Topics > Customizing Sigil with Qt QSS)

Source: here

Set the Font Family and Font size for the Find and Replace fields

#cbFind, #cbReplace {
font-family: "Georgia"; font-size: 16px;
}

[BeckyEbook]

Originally Posted by jd1004

Also, on Windows 10, Sigil 2.7.0, I can't seem to locate a popup menu for CSS formatting. A little pointer please?

Simply right-click in the Code View window while editing the CSS file.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by philja

On my linux box, UbuntuStudio 24.04.3 LTS and KDE Plasma, with Sigil 2.7.0 QT6.9.3 (from the appimage), the text for the replacement string name is truncated.

See screenshot:

This could be a system issue, but I've never encountered it elsewhere in Sigil or in any other application on my linux box.

Doesn't affect the usage - just the appearance.

Here is what I see on my Manjaro box with KDE Plasma (default theme).
So I am seeing none of the truncation you are. I ran this test with both my own built Sigil and with the latest AppImage version of Sigil. So it is probably something specific to your window manager or theming, as on stock Manjaro Plasma KDE, it does not happen.


UPDATE:

That said, I looked into the RERenamer.ui file and it has hard coded widths for the label field. I have no idea why that is but I will try removing them.

UPDATE2:
I have now pushed this change to master. Let's hope that does the trick.


UPDATE3: Whoops that lost all the labels so I will revert and keep looking.

UPDATE4:
Reverting that change and just grew the width of the QLabel fields which should hopefully prevent the the text clipping in the RERenamer label fields. Master should now have this fix.

[jd1004]

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

The system font is simply not always ideal – at small font sizes, the details of quotation marks become indistinguishable.

Use tip from Sigil User Guide (Advanced Topics > Customizing Sigil with Qt QSS)

Source: here

Thanks! I don't know what the default font was, but with

#cbFind, #cbReplace {
font-family: "Courier New";
font-size: 10pt;
}

it works fine now.

I'm not sure the problem was the font size of the default font, though. I pasted “ ” ‘ ’ into both fields, and the quotation marks are both clearly the same (see screenshot).

[jd1004]

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

Simply right-click in the Code View window while editing the CSS file.

Thanks again! Learn something new every day :-)

[KevinH]

Summary so far: (numbering is random)

1. show clip # in Clip Editor so easy shortcut assignment
(accepted - no work on this yet)

2. add min and max titlebar buttons for Reports to make hiding them temporarily easier
(accepted- change already in master and added it to Spellcheck Editor as well)

3. fix force_titlecase to work with multiple file search and replace
(accepted - fix pushed to master)

4. Regex Renamer - make Regex field have focus on launch
(accepted - change already in master)

5. fix Regex Renamer label truncation on some platforms
(accepted - fix already in master)

6. Add a Font Report
(not accepted - since you can easily use the All Files report along with the filter or sort the Type column by clicking on it to easily find all your fonts in that report.)

7. add tool like "Check Epub" from calibre with autofix
(not accepted - WellFormed Check already handles structural errors and has a cleaner error report via Validation, Mend will autofix these errors but as in calibre - autofixing may not be the right thing to do.

8. Add IDE syntax colouring for errors
(not accepted - latest calibre does NOT do this and there is no accurate way to highlight an error condition, nor is there a way to highlight errors of omission. Tested the latest calibre Check Epub with autofix and it lost complete paragraphs depending on error. Tested Sigil for error detection, Well Formed Check, epubcheck, and css validator, and I feel these are much better tools than allowing autofix without forcing a Checkpoint first.)

9. add session ID for plugins
(not accepted - no reasoning given why Sigil process ID was needed plus a way to generate a proper cache key can be done easily inside python - including the parent process id.)

10. autofix attribute order for old nook e-readers
(not accepted - against the xhtml and xml specs on attribute order and supporting old broken epub2 nook e-readers is not something for Sigil. Much better to discourage their continued use)

11. add name for char under cursor in status bar
(accepted after much trial and error - under test for negative editing speed impacts, this change is already in master, and improvements by BeckyEbook have already been added)

12. add live CSS panel
(not accepted - this functionality already exists in Preview's Inspector. FWIW, calibre is adding lots of data- attributes with line number info for every element to what they input to Preview behind the scenes in order to identify elements inside the DOM and uses javascript to do what the Inspector already does. These types of wholesale changes to what Preview is showing just add overhead with no benefit given Sigil's tag path approach.)

13. add way to get a complete list of words in an epub written to CSV
(accepted - added Save Selected to SpellcheckEditor, change already in master)

14. allow Classes Used Report to take you directly to that class in the CSS (just like the CSS Selector Report does now)
(under evaluation)

15. Fix "extra find needed bug" when in html but searching all css files, js files, svg files, etc
(accepted, fixed pushed to master)



Thanks for everyone who has taken the time to make suggestions. If a suggestion was "not accepted" the reason behind this decision was also provided.

[jd1004]

I've got another one: If I search for a class name in "All CSS Files" and the CSS file is not already open, then clicking the "Find" button will only open the CSS file, but not find the right selector. To get that, I have to click "Find" again.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by jd1004

I've got another one: If I search for a class name in "All CSS Files" and the CSS file is not already open, then clicking the "Find" button will only open the CSS file, but not find the right selector. To get that, I have to click "Find" again.

That is a bug. I will look into why the css file must be opened first.

It appears that the first CSS file is opened but the text inside the CodeView has not yet quite been loaded yet.

So this is a race.

The routine that waits until a new Tab is Open and Loaded is not working properly.

UPDATE:

The bug was found and fixed. The fix has been pushed to master.

[MickiTee]

Originally Posted by KevinH

1. What platform are you using? Where the minimize and resize and close buttons are located are a platform specific thing. We do not control that. You should be able to click on the title bar to resize and drag it out of the way or to another monitor if you have one available. The reason that Reports come out on top is that editing things (adding or deleting) generally makes the Report invalid so treating the Reports as modal is encouraged, although we do allow a refresh button. Refreshing Reports can be quite time consuming. You can always export any Reports to CSV if that would help and via it in any spreadsheet.

2. What do you want to see about the Font files that not already described in the All Files, report? If you need a list of Font files you can see that in BookBrowser. If you want to preview the font, you can do that in BookBrowser as well. If you are looking for which html files use fonts directly, the answer will be none as it is css files that directly specify the font files. Most people only have 1 or 2 css files in an entire epub so finding which has the fonts listed in them is usually trivial. So what new or unique report items would a Font report include?

3. You can already right click in a class in the editor and Sigil will take you directly to it in the css. I will look into allowing the Classes Used Report to do the same.

1) I am currently using Windows 11 Pro version 24H2 and I've been using Sigil since Windows 7 and then Windows 10 and the resize & minimise buttons have never been available on the Reports window. I've attached a screen shot of what happens when I make the main Sigil window active. As you will see the Reports window is still sitting on top and no matter what I do I can't resize or move it out of the way.
I only have a single, 21" monitor as I don't have enough room for a second or larger one.

2) The problem is that if you have a large book it can be difficult to locate the font files in All Files even if you sort by file name. I can live without this if there is not enough interest from other users for it.

3) Thanks.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by MickiTee

1) I am currently using Windows 11 Pro version 24H2 and I've been using Sigil since Windows 7 and then Windows 10 and the resize & minimise buttons have never been available on the Reports window. I've attached a screen shot of what happens when I make the main Sigil window active. As you will see the Reports window is still sitting on top and no matter what I do I can't resize or move it out of the way.
I only have a single, 21" monitor as I don't have enough room for a second or larger one.

2) The problem is that if you have a large book it can be difficult to locate the font files in All Files even if you sort by file name. I can live without this if there is not enough interest from other users for it.

3) Thanks.

If you check out the summary post I made earlier in this thread,

1. has already been fixed in master for Windows users.
3. is under consideration. As a work around you can always use the CSS Selectors report to do that now.

But your 2, since it involves nothing that can not be found in the All Files Report, or by using GetInfo, or by looking in BookBrowser in the Fonts virtual folder, or by double-clicking a font file in BookBrowser, means there is no general need for a Font Report just to get file sizes, etc.

In fact if you click on the Type field in the All Files Report right now you can easily see all your fonts. Alternatively if your font files all live inside a "font" or Fonts" folder simply typing "Fonts" or "fonts" in the Filter field makes them easy to see as well.

Also note, you can always export the All Files Report to CSV via the pop-up menu and use a spreadsheet to subset, sort and examine it to your heart is content.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

. . .

11. add name for char under cursor in status bar
(accepted after much trial and error - under test for negative editing speed impacts, this change is already in master, and improvements by BeckyEbook have already been added)

Although I was the instigator of this

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I also like calibre's display of character name preceding cursor (at bottom right), would quite like to have it Sigil.

I stayed out of the discussion

a) because your initial response was "to display the current character name in the status line would require the addition of a 31Mb library to Sigil's 600MB install". So, for performance reasons you would make it an on-demand display - i.e click something or press keys.

b) when @icallaci posted this and this, and after reading @retiredbiker and @BeckyEbook's contributions I assumed the 'on demand' approach was a done deal.

It's the 'always there' nature of calibre's implementation that I 'like'.

But the images in this seem to indicate the 'always there' approach has been implemented.

I would prefer the position of the character follow the name of the character not precede it - i.e. LATIN SMALL LETTER X — Line 1, col 3 (U+nnnn)

BR

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Although I was the instigator of this



I stayed out of the discussion

a) because your initial response was "to display the current character name in the status line would require the addition of a 31Mb library to Sigil's 600MB install". So, for performance reasons you would make it an on-demand display - i.e click something or press keys.

b) when @icallaci posted this and this, and after reading @retiredbiker and @BeckyEbook's contributions I assumed the 'on demand' approach was a done deal.

It's the 'always there' nature of calibre's implementation that I 'like'.

But the images in this seem to indicate the 'always there' approach has been implemented.

I would prefer the position of the character follow the name of the character not precede it - i.e. LATIN SMALL LETTER X — Line 1, col 3 (U+nnnn)

BR

Yes, no one is claiming it was anybody's idea but yours.

Yes, the "always on" version was what I implemented. I finally figured out a way to prebuild a cache of codepoints vs character names that ended up greatly reducing the need to call into the python interpreter during editing. That means editing has not slowed too much according to most testers who have reported back.

As for the ordering, I like the name at the end beside the codepoint value.
In addition, this is the name that comes after the insertion point cursor, unlike calibre.

I see no reason to change the order of what is presented as Line and Col are more important as the exact name of the character really only matters for selected special chars and diacritics. So appending that at the end makes the most sense to me. So that is what has been done and will appear in the next version of Sigil.

Thank you for your suggestion.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Yes, no one is claiming it was anybody's idea but yours.

Nor did I suggest anyone did. Read my reply again and take note of the punctuation, including its absence.

Added : I was also going to mention that "after the insertion point" is correct… IMO. I even took screen shot of Notepad++ to demonstrate it with its block mode cursor, but then I remembered it's Windows only. I won't speculate on why Kovid choose to make it 'before the insertion point'.

BR