Improvements? New Features? post sigil 2.7.6

[Turtle91]

I find myself editing just about every image in Photoshop using Open With. It is mostly to resize an image from a really large file size to something reasonable. Occasionally I change the format from jpg to png to get a transparent background (can’t stand big blocks of white around an image when using dark mode). I don’t know how easy that would be using the python modules… I would expect to need a gui to get the selection process perfect. I’m totally ok continuing to use open with for those changes - but it would be awesome to have basic image edits built-in.

[KevinH]

FWIW, there are a huge number of applications on every platform to do simple image editing. I really hate to bloat the Sigil code just to duplicate one just for those unwilling to use Open With.

Here attached is a screenshot of Sigil running on my Manjaro Box after using OpenWith with a single right click to open the image from our User Guide in "gwenview". Its interface is very simple and includes everything you can do in Calibre plus more.

I can do the same thing on a Mac with the built-in Apple Previewer.

It could not be simpler.

Are there really no good simple image editors for Windows?

I am just not convinced (yet) adding this in any way helps given the flexibility of OpenWith ot use your favorite editor. You do not need to open images with Gimp or Photoshop just to do a simple resize or rotate.

If you have to do this to lots of images in a single epub, a plugin is the way to go.

All of these tools are available in Python (even gui ones) via PySide6 and Qt or directly in Python via the PIL library, so handling this via a plugin for buld changes can be done.

And Doitsu already has png optimizers and jpeg optimizer plugins to use to do both lossless and lossy file compression.

[DiapDealer]

I haven't used it in a long time, but IrfanView on Windows used to be dead simple to use to rotate, resize, flip, etc...

[retiredbiker]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Shameless plug: I created two plugins for image compression.
[Plugin] PNGOptimizer - Lossless/lossy image optimization
[Plugin] JPEGOptimizer - Lossless image optimization

OK, note to self, write on wall above the PC in bright red crayon: CHECK FOR PLUGINS FIRST!

I loaded up these plugins, made a quick epub with a bunch of junk images, both png and jpeg. Ran the plugins with some different settings, lossless and lossy.

They work great! Thank you Doitsu, once again. I especially like the quick and efficient file size reduction of the png images.

This takes care of most file size edits as far as I can see, for what I do with images. Still sometimes will want to reduce physical picture size, for example some cover that comes in at 7000x9000 or the like, but that is easily done using open with.

[ElMiko]

Once upon a time, selecting a clip from the clip window didn't change the window focus. That is, similar to if one were to apply a <b> tag to selected text, the cursor remained in the code window; one need not mouse back into the code window to start typing. If this functionality was removed for a reason, no worries. But if it just got lost in the shuffle during one of the updates, it'd be nice to have it back.

The only other thing I'm curious about is dragging/dropping files into the Book Browser window. It'd be nice to be able to drag and drop images, font files, css, etc. into the book browser as an alternative to the "Add Existing Files" dialog.

[DNSB]

For myself, I've been using Paint.NET on Windows to edit images from inside Sigil. I've also played with GIMP, ImageMagick with batch files, and InkScape. Once I had the batch files created, ImageMagick was the easiest for simple predefined actions.

A plugin to handle those simple resize, rotate, recompress, etc. jobs might be handy but I would prefer not to see Sigil adding image editing functions to the base code.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

Once upon a time, selecting a clip from the clip window didn't change the window focus. That is, similar to if one were to apply a <b> tag to selected text, the cursor remained in the code window; one need not mouse back into the code window to start typing. If this functionality was removed for a reason, no worries. But if it just got lost in the shuffle during one of the updates, it'd be nice to have it back.

The only other thing I'm curious about is dragging/dropping files into the Book Browser window. It'd be nice to be able to drag and drop images, font files, css, etc. into the book browser as an alternative to the "Add Existing Files" dialog.

It was done for Accessibility reasons for people who have issues using a mouse. The ClipsWindow now gets focus so that keyboard arrow keys can be used to select a clip or clips. There is now a shortcut you can assign to move focus to and from CodeView, ClipsWindow, BookBrowser, etc. That way Sigil can be navigated directly from the keyboard. This necessitated ClipsWindow getting focus. That change was made a few releases back. Not something we want to change now.

If you use the Clips toolbar (either clips 1 or clips 2), as toolbar buttons never get focus themselves, those clips still work with a single click like before. Hopefully the covers your most often used clips.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by KevinH

It was done for Accessibility reasons for people who have issues using a mouse. The ClipsWindow now gets focus so that keyboard arrow keys can be used to select a clip or clips. There is now a shortcut you can assign to move focus to and from CodeView, ClipsWindow, BookBrowser, etc. That way Sigil can be navigated directly from the keyboard. This necessitated ClipsWindow getting focus. That change was made a few releases back. Not something we want to change now.

And As for Drag and Drop in Qt, it simply has broken and caused crashes too many times. So we limit its use greatly. No one on Qt seems to care enough to make it truly robust across all platforms.

If we ever decide to add Drag and Drop onto BookBrowser as an alternative to Add Existing, we would probably disable it by default and warn users that enabling it may cause Qt internal crashes and thus is unsupported by Sigil.

Not sure it is worth the effort. But I am open to hear others' opinions.

[ElMiko]

Originally Posted by KevinH

It was done for Accessibility reasons for people who have issues using a mouse. The ClipsWindow now gets focus so that keyboard arrow keys can be used to select a clip or clips. There is now a shortcut you can assign to move focus to and from CodeView, ClipsWindow, BookBrowser, etc. That way Sigil can be navigated directly from the keyboard. This necessitated ClipsWindow getting focus. That change was made a few releases back. Not something we want to change now.

If you use the Clips toolbar (either clips 1 or clips 2), as toolbar buttons never get focus themselves, those clips still work with a single click like before. Hopefully the covers your most often used clips.

The "Move Focus" shortcut is just as good! Thanks for pointing it out. It's been explained before that the windows like Spellcheck and Reports are treated a child windows (presumably of Code View) and therefore can't be focused out of any way other than via mouse. Is that structure a must-have for other functionality? Any chance of making it possible to focus out of those child windows without clicking or closing, too?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

The "Move Focus" shortcut is just as good! Thanks for pointing it out. It's been explained before that the windows like Spellcheck and Reports are treated a child windows (presumably of Code View) and therefore can't be focused out of any way other than via mouse. Is that structure a must-have for other functionality? Any chance of making it possible to focus out of those child windows without clicking or closing, too?

On Windows Alt+space,N will minimise those windows to the Desktop, on MacOS CMD+M should do something similar… not sure about Linux.

BR

[KevinH]

Actually, Macs will not do that, nor will some Linux. As for moving focus out of the Reports or Spellcheck by keyboard, I will look into that but right now you must use Tab to move focus to close out of Reports or Spellcheck.

[BetterRed]

On Windows, Tab in modeless child windows cycles around the elements within those windows. Here is the route Tab takes in Reports:



Spellcheck is similar, although a bit more more circuitous.

The main window is sort of similar, but harder to track because of its dockable elements - IIRC that is why the Focus on. . . items in the View menu were implemented.



And this is what you see if you press Alt+space on those windows



BR

[KevinH]

@BetterRed and Others,

What are you thoughts on the following for dealing with the issue that the only way to change the reading order is via drag and drop and there is no real undo for that. Especially since it involves a mouse.

To add a second (non-drag and drop) way to handle it, I have added a new BookBrowser menu item for the popup for the Text folder called "Change Reading Order ...".

When it is selected the following new dialog (EditRO) is opened (see attached screenshot).

Users can use tab to cycle from the List to the buttons and back. Up and down arrow keys when inside the List can be used to change your selection.

The Up Arrow and Down Arrow buttons allows the user to move items in the list, as does the To First button and To Last button.

The entire re-ordering can be easily cancelled or aborted. If accepted, the full new order is updated in BookBrowser and in the epub.

But since Tabbing around is a bit slow, I thought about assigning key equivalents for the buttons to make things even easier. Simple keys like f for first, l for last, u for up and d for down.

Any thoughts?

Would this help?

[BetterRed]

IMO Accelerators on the buttons would be best, discoverable and translatable, and list would retain focus.

First
Up
Down
Last

BR