sigil 7.4 and maverick crashing crashing crashing

[radius]

Just wanted to say that I have been running 0.7.4 on Mavericks for quite a while, so it works in general. There must be something specific to Carrigboy's setup that is causing the crash. From what has been posted in the thread, there isn't enough information to guess what that might be.


Regarding continued development, I think the issue to me is that there isn't an active bug database right now (and nobody to triage it even if it existed) so new developers don't have small bits to work on as they learn Sigil's code. The only big feature I can think of to add would be epub3 support and that is complicated enough to add that it would be very helpful to be already familiar with the code, how it works, and how epub3 needs to be supported and has time to do it. That is probably a very small pool of people.

[KevinH]

Hi,

My guess it is the early Qt builds stored as Frameworks inside the app. Right now Qt 5 is up to version 5.3.1 and it seems to be much more stable than earler versions although the macdeployqt program stills seems to have issues with missing dependencies in some of the plug-ins.

I agree not having an open bug / issue tracker is a major hurdle. The only one I could find was in Googlecode and it has posts up to March and April of this year when it was closed. There are in fact many Mac OS X keeps crashing style bug reports there that duplicate what Carrigboy reported. I am hoping the updating to a newer Qt will help him.

As for Epub3 support, that can could come in stages ...

1. duplicate and modify the toc.ncx code to become the new nav.html
2. move guide info from content.opf to nav.html landmarks
3. modify the metadata code to grok the new metadata types while remembering the current metadata as well
4. Replace the entire Flightcrew with a simple interface to the standard epub 2 and 3 checkers
5. add plugin support for python based plugins similar to what calibre has done

The remainder can come with time and in small changes.

It is a lot of work but the actual code beyond the GUI is quite straight forward and easy to read. Having Qt familiarity is probably the single most important skill as Qt data types and structures/Strings are being used everyplace.

Anyway, as I said the bones/code are really good so I hate to see it go.

Take care,

KevinH

Originally Posted by radius

Just wanted to say that I have been running 0.7.4 on Mavericks for quite a while, so it works in general. There must be something specific to Carrigboy's setup that is causing the crash. From what has been posted in the thread, there isn't enough information to guess what that might be.


Regarding continued development, I think the issue to me is that there isn't an active bug database right now (and nobody to triage it even if it existed) so new developers don't have small bits to work on as they learn Sigil's code. The only big feature I can think of to add would be epub3 support and that is complicated enough to add that it would be very helpful to be already familiar with the code, how it works, and how epub3 needs to be supported and has time to do it. That is probably a very small pool of people.

[Carrigboy]

Hi Kevin

Thanks very much for all that.
I won't take advantage of your offer to walk me through building my own copy of Sigil as I just don't feel confident enough of my understanding of what's involved. As a refugee from ms-dos via the horrors of windows in the nineties, a hard, dark, knot of fear starts-up if ever any program/system problems appear, or if I ever hear the phrase "Plug and Play".

I will download your copy of Sigil, though (and thanks for for the tip-off and tip on how to check it), I'll post here how it goes.

Simon

[Carrigboy]

Hi Kevin,

Just downloaded and installed your Sigil.dmg and it seems to work almost perfectly, thanks very much indeed.

Edit/add/delete metadata, images and fonts; delete/split/merge xhtml; id's, links, insert chr's etc; generate/create TOC — all ok

But, a strange glitch on editing the TOC. When adding a toc entry above or below an existing one, then selecting the target, it places the target address in the toc entry, so that the target address (ie 'Text/chapter1.xhtml') appears as the entry in the toc and the actual target is blank. It's a simple fix, just copy the address from the toc entry field to the target field and type in the entry field as usual.

Thanks again

I hope very much someone can take over the maintenance of Sigil and keep it going, I find it very straight forward to use.

Simon.

ps, and maybe unrelated, does the application 'MacFuse' have any bearing on this? I didn't install it, I don't think I have any 3rd-party file-structures and uninstalling it was going to be my next step.

[mrmikel]

As for epub3 support....

That may be one of the issues the developer had. I suspect it might be almost easier to create a separate program for epub3 than try to shoehorn it into this existing epub2 program especially since it is always aiming for valid code. I think there is a lot in common, but not enough to just be able to bolt on epub3.

Kindle is the biggest part of the marketplace and many people start with epub as a base. It is not a stationary target though and there is the possibility of endless support questions about why the created epub won't work once converted to Kindle.

[KevinH]

Hi Carrigboy,

Yes, the only new "feature" in the tree was shifting toc elements by one and it probably broke something. Since the change is small, I will take a look at it and see where they messed up and fix it, or alternatively, I will revert that one "feature" since it does not work as it is supposed to.

Edit: Yes it is a bug introduced in the change. They use a list of Strings to represent then text of the toc entry and its target. The new code changes how that is done but forgets to load it into the correct spot in the list. I will fix that rebuild and repost, and then you should be good to go.


Happy to hear it helped. My guess is that the older Qt libraries in the original 0.7.4 is what was causing all of the crashes as the macdeployqt tool was quite broken. It would work fine for anyone who already had a Qt installed on their machine, but fail otherwise.

Take care,

KevinH

Originally Posted by Carrigboy

Hi Kevin,

Just downloaded and installed your Sigil.dmg and it seems to work almost perfectly, thanks very much indeed.

Edit/add/delete metadata, images and fonts; delete/split/merge xhtml; id's, links, insert chr's etc; generate/create TOC — all ok

But, a strange glitch on editing the TOC. When adding a toc entry above or below an existing one, then selecting the target, it places the target address in the toc entry, so that the target address (ie 'Text/chapter1.xhtml') appears as the entry in the toc and the actual target is blank. It's a simple fix, just copy the address from the toc entry field to the target field and type in the entry field as usual.

Thanks again

I hope very much someone can take over the maintenance of Sigil and keep it going, I find it very straight forward to use.

Simon.

ps, and maybe unrelated, does the application 'MacFuse' have any bearing on this? I didn't install it, I don't think I have any 3rd-party file-structures and uninstalling it was going to be my next step.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mrmikel

As for epub3 support....

That may be one of the issues the developer had. I suspect it might be almost easier to create a separate program for epub3 than try to shoehorn it into this existing epub2 program especially since it is always aiming for valid code. I think there is a lot in common, but not enough to just be able to bolt on epub3.

Kindle is the biggest part of the marketplace and many people start with epub as a base. It is not a stationary target though and there is the possibility of endless support questions about why the created epub won't work once converted to Kindle.

But, one of the features of ePub3 is backward compatibility with ePub2 viewers. So you still need to generate valid ePub2 in an ePub3.

But, (IMHO) if you are not using any features specific to ePub3, just stick with ePub2.

[KevinH]

Hi mrmikel,

Originally Posted by mrmikel

As for epub3 support....
That may be one of the issues the developer had. I suspect it might be almost easier to create a separate program for epub3 than try to shoehorn it into this existing epub2 program especially since it is always aiming for valid code. I think there is a lot in common, but not enough to just be able to bolt on epub3.

The reason Sigil shoots for valid code all of the time is that is uses Qt and QWebKit and probably libXML2 and therefore needs valid code to have it display in bookview properly and to be properly parsed the first time. It can actually be really hard to parse poor, improperly nested, mismatched, mixed case, junky html to create something understandable. That is why both Sigil (and Calibre I think) use a modified version of tidy to try and make something that at least can be parsed.

epub3 will not change that. In fact it is valid (and makes sense) that both a nav.xhtml and toc.ncx be present, that metadata in the old format be allowed and present (although ignored) as well and so on. It still has to be valid code to be understood and previewed.

I tend to think that epub3 simply is epub2 with strange new metadata formats with refines and ids, new xhtml navigation, etc. The scripting stuff and use of links to get internet based content can be ignored for now. And it should still parse just fine and can still be kept as "valid" code.

Kindle is the biggest part of the marketplace and many people start with epub as a base. It is not a stationary target though and there is the possibility of endless support questions about why the created epub won't work once converted to Kindle.

I like epub much better and find it much more sane in so many ways than the compiled Kindle formats. As one of the developers of KindleUnpack, I see the internals of the Kindle format in all its glory. Amazon spends huge amounts of developer time shoe-horning in new "features" into an ancient, small-memory footprint compiled format (mobipocket) just to keep backwards compatibility.
None of what they have done is needed or useful at this point. What a colossal waste of developer time and money! Amazon truly does not understand the KISS rule of engineering nor do that understand how to effectively deploy a software development team to have maximum productivity at minimum cost.

But you are right, part of the problem of keeping Sigil alive would be all of the time it takes to support all of the user errors that people keep reporting that really should not exist. As far as I can tell, Kovid is a true master at rejecting these insane reports with a minimum of effort. All young developers should learn from his approach, otherwise they run the risk of never getting any serious development done.

Interesting talking to you.

Take care,

KevinH

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But, one of the features of ePub3 is backward compatibility with ePub2 viewers.

Although backward compatibility is certainly a goal of epub3, it's by no means perfect, nor magically inherent. The onus still lies heavily on the creator to choose to build a backwardly compatible epub3. It is certainly possible to create an epub3 (that validates perfectly) whose features will not degrade gracefully in an epub2 viewer--and will in fact blow it up.

Sigil could certainly help (behind the scenes) in keeping things compatible, but it's not as simple as "just build it as epub3 and it will still work in epub2-only readers."

And if a decision was made for Sigil to ONLY build epub3s that were completely backward compatible in every way ... there'd be little point in supporting epub3 in the first place (except maybe as a transitional step toward full epub3 support).

[KevinH]

Hi Simon,

Originally Posted by Carrigboy

But, a strange glitch on editing the TOC. When adding a toc entry above or below an existing one, then selecting the target, it places the target address in the toc entry, so that the target address (ie 'Text/chapter1.xhtml') appears as the entry in the toc and the actual target is blank.
Simon.

It turns out the one new feature did break this but the fix is trivial (they just accidentally broke something when they cleaned up the code to actually try and simplify it).

I will post a patch here in case anyone else wants to build their own fixed version from master and I will post a new fixed version of the Sigil.dmg tomorrow for you since I am going to use that fix for myself as well.

Take care,

KevinH

[KevinH]

Hi Simon,

Here is the new version with that toc bug hopefully squashed (at least it works on my machine now).

Here is the new download link and md5 sum for the Sigil.dmg for Mac OS X 10.9.X

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/c1b6f037

md5 Sigil.dmg
MD5 (Sigil.dmg) = 35e34df2f10ddcb88de125d8e9534cae

Please don't forget about **unchecking** the "Use download manager" and remember to use the Smaller Grey download button on the left hand side (and not the huge one on the right).

In case anyone else wants this bug fix, I have also attached the patch to fix the bug. I have now deleted the older copy from datafilehost as it is no longer needed.

Take care,

KevinH

[Carrigboy]

Will do, and thanks again

I use Ghostery tracker blocker on my firefox, and the huge download button on the right just isn't there.

Simon

[varlog]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Hi Simon,

Here is the new version with that toc bug hopefully squashed (at least it works on my machine now).
...

In case anyone else wants this bug fix, I have also attached the patch to fix the bug. ...

Should it not go to Sigil as a pull request?

[varlog]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Hi,

...
4. checkout the latest Sigil source code using svn

mkdir master
svn co https://github.com/user-none/Sigil/trunk/ master
mkdir build

...
KevinH

Just curious: why subversion?

[KevinH]

Hi varlog,

Originally Posted by varlog

Should it not go to Sigil as a pull request?

The project is orphaned, it has no maintainer and is therefore not actually being developed so I don't think anyone is going to actually make the pull. The issue/bug list is closed, so no posting of patches either.

Kevin