Plugin Development

[KevinH]

FYI, we have modified Sigil to add 3 user-assigned plugin toolbar icons which means you can now assign Key Shortcuts to up to 3 of your most commonly used plugins.

The user can determine which plugin is assigned to which of the 3 new toolbar buttons using "Manage Plugins".

This along with "autostart" and "autoclose" should make it much easier and more seamless to run plugins in Sigil.

This new feature should appear in the next version of Sigil to be released.

KevinH

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by KevinH

FYI, we have modified Sigil to add 3 user-assigned plugin toolbar icons which means you can now assign Key Shortcuts to up to 3 of your most commonly used plugins.

The user can determine which plugin is assigned to which of the 3 new toolbar buttons using "Manage Plugins".

This along with "autostart" and "autoclose" should make it much easier and more seamless to run plugins in Sigil.

This new feature should appear in the next version of Sigil to be released.

KevinH

Very cool, thanks! I will incorporate autostart, autoclose and updatecheck in my plugin when I can (and have the time...).

Quick question, how will (or can) the current version of Sigil handle the new tags for autostart and autoclose?

[rubeus]

AddImagesasSVG has already those tags implemented, Sigil ignores them without warning

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by KevinH

FYI, we have modified Sigil to add 3 user-assigned plugin toolbar icons which means you can now assign Key Shortcuts to up to 3 of your most commonly used plugins.

Thanks for adding this very useful feature. I've just tested it with the Linux version and both toolbar icons and plugin shortcuts worked fine. For those who can't build Sigil, I've attached two screenshots of the new GUI elements to give you an idea what it looks like.

[KevinH]

Yes,

Absolutely correct. The the Sigil plugin.xml parser is an event parser so it only bothers to record pieces of information it knows about and ignores everything else. So current Sigil and all earlier versions will happily ignore tags it does not know to look for in the plugin.xml code.

KevinH

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Thanks for adding this very useful feature. I've just tested it with the Linux version and both toolbar icons and plugin shortcuts worked fine. For those who can't build Sigil, I've attached two screenshots of the new GUI elements to give you an idea what it looks like.

[rubeus]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Keep in mind that the Linux version of Sigil does not have a bundled Python interpreter. Check out the BuildingOnLinux docs at github to see what additional Python modules you'll need to install to meet the minimum requirements for a basic Sigil plugin environment.

This leads me to the question about sigil_bs4. If the linux version does not come with the internal python interpreter, what happens with this library? As far as i understood sigil_bs4 is a derivative of beautifulsoup with some enhancements/modifications.Are plugins using sigil_bs4 limited to win and osx? If yes, should this be marked in the plugin.xml?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by rubeus

This leads me to the question about sigil_bs4. If the linux version does not come with the internal python interpreter, what happens with this library? As far as i understood sigil_bs4 is a derivative of beautifulsoup with some enhancements/modifications.Are plugins using sigil_bs4 limited to win and osx? If yes, should this be marked in the plugin.xml?

sigil_bs4 is distributed with Sigil. It is available to plugins on all platforms (from Sigil 0.8.9xx on)--whether they use the bundled Python interpreter or not.

[roger64]

Hi

Since touch screens have been introduced some years ago, endnotes display on e-ink readers has been a recurrent hit-and-miss nightmare. From small anchors some years ago, I now use little billboards, hoping that the reader will catch the links accurately... Sometimes I go but do not come back.

This is a proposal for a new plugin: to transform normal endnotes (or footnotes) into pop-up endnotes. This pop-up feature seems to have been first implemented within docx and has been ported to Calibre converted EPUBs and the Calibre viewer some few months ago.

I had first looked for information because I am interested to add this feature to the converter I usually use. I now think it would be maybe easier - and quicker - to add it as a complementary feature, triggered by a plugin.

When you look at the Calibre code, it seems that some fixed tags or attributes have been added to the usual return links. If some expert was so kind as to look at it, he could tell us if this transformation could be made easily -or not.

On this thread you'll find an example of the Calibre code used for a pop-up endnote.

On thinking about it, there could be two steps:
- cleaning all the cruft around the return endnotes (mostly within the a tag), leaving only the href and id attributes
- rebuilding them and adding a new css class that could be used as a default and further customized

[rubeus]

That sounds very reader specific. I dont know any reader interpreting a definition list as a popup. Besides that, wothout the CSS the example is worthless.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by roger64

This is a proposal for a new plugin: to transform normal endnotes (or footnotes) into pop-up endnotes. This pop-up feature seems to have been first implemented within docx and has been ported to Calibre converted EPUBs and the Calibre viewer some few months ago.

I had first looked for information because I am interested to add this feature to the converter I usually use. I now think it would be maybe easier - and quicker - to add it as a complementary feature, triggered by a plugin.

When you look at the Calibre code, it seems that some fixed tags or attributes have been added to the usual return links. If some expert was so kind as to look at it, he could tell us if this transformation could be made easily -or not.

On this thread you'll find an example of the Calibre code used for a pop-up endnote.

Huh????


Popup footnotes/endnotes are pretty simple.
There is an EPUB3 standardized form.
Otherwise you don't get them, at all.

Some ereader applications perform heuristic checks to try to find footnotes and make them pop up.
calibre does, and so do the most recent Kindles.

It is pretty simple to get the Kindle to recognize footnotes -- as long as there are matching backlinks to/from the footnote to the main text.
IIRC, calibre uses the same general heuristics.

[Doitsu]

Even though several apps offer popup footnote support, neither the epub2 nor the epub3 standards require footnotes to be displayed as popups.

Originally Posted by roger64

When you look at the Calibre code, it seems that some fixed tags or attributes have been added to the usual return links.

AFAIK, Kovid uses a heuristic algorithm that considers all links to targets with backlinks as popups in Calibre. I.e., no special HTML code other than ¹ for the footnote text is required.

If I understand your other post correctly, your problem is that your favorite OpenOffice/LibreOffice epub plugin doesn't generate backlinks for footnotes/endnotes.

The obvious solution would be to save your .odt files as .docx files and to convert them with Calibre.
If your OpenOffice/LibreOffice generated .docx files don't contain footnotes/endnotes with backlinks, it's a OpenOffice/LibreOffice .docx filter issue and should be reported to the OpenOffice/LibreOffice developers.

In the meantime, you could use regular expressions to add the required footnote backlinks to the footnote definitions.

IMHO, writing a plugin for this would be overkill.

[roger64]

Thanks for your informed replies.

If the Calibre "heuristics" solution cannot be adapted, well, what can we do?

As the EPUB3 support is just around the corner, maybe an EPUB3 compliant solution will be available at that time. For me, svg extended support, mathml and endnotes pop-ups are the main reasons for using EPUB3. I have no idea how widely they are supported now by e-ink readers.

In fact, my endnotes work most of the time with Kobo and Koreader but I had to increase a lot the size of the anchors (margin-left 0.4em + brackets or accolades). I still find many books -mostly EPUB2 - where it's a pita to try to use them.

I do not seem to understand what's the definition of a "useful" plugin. But this would be another topic...

[rubeus]

The size of the anchor should be declared in the CSS. If you have a well maintained snippet library thats no problem.

[roger64]

@rubeus
indeed

@Doitsu

In the meantime, you could use regular expressions to add the required footnote backlinks to the footnote definitions.

This is interesting. I will submit one example to you on the relevant forum.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by roger64

If the Calibre "heuristics" solution cannot be adapted, well, what can we do?

Simple, make sure that you format the footnote links in your epubs in a way that Calibre can recognize as footnotes.

Originally Posted by roger64

As the EPUB3 support is just around the corner, maybe an EPUB3 compliant solution will be available at that time.

Most dedicated ePub3 apps (except for ADE 4.5/RMSDK 12.5/Readium) already support popup footnotes, even though the ePub3 standard doesn't require this. You can test epub3 popup footnote/endnote support with this simple epub3 test file and Azardi (OSX, Windows, Linux), Gitden Reader (iOS, Android) and ADE 4.5 (iOS, Android, PC, OSX).

Originally Posted by roger64

In fact, my endnotes work most of the time with Kobo and Koreader but I had to increase a lot the size of the anchors (margin-left 0.4em + brackets or accolades).

AFAIK, Kobos have two rendering engines; to select the ePub3 compatible NetFront ACCESS engine, you'll have to rename epub3 books to kepub.epub.