Is Sigil 072 the latest User Guide?

[JustinThought]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

What is your opinion of Mr Heiland's Guide? It is, as I posted, available on Scribd.

Actually, the version I wrote about was on my laptop, which I use only lightly for epub editing. On my desktop, where I do most of it, I had the 0.7.2 version, and I used it extensively.

I did do a page-by-page comparison of about the first 20 pages, and they were basically the same. It could be that later in the book there may have been more extensive changes, but I didn't get that far.

Grab the 0.9.0 from the link above. Then, besides reading it, you can also edit the book and discover some useful techniques.

I would offer to help with the updating process, but honestly I'm more of a N00B than a skilled user.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by elibrarian

That's probably the same situation most of us are in. We use the corner(s) of Sigil, that suits our needs, but none of us use all and every function. (I myself usually feed Sigil with a near-perfect epub made by a notetab-clip and only uses Sigil to polish: TOC, splitting (notetab puts the splitmarks for me), footnotes, making the trial epub for the distributor and some final testing - nothing else - and I rarely encounter any of all those problems reported by other users, that use Sigil for all and everything and even something it's not meant to do).

Which leads me to think, that an epub manual might not be the best way to do it. Of course it's awesome to make the manual with Sigil itself - but some sort of "collaborative manual", if such and animal exists - a wiki-like thingie or something might be a better solution (which otoh also could end up in a mess without some coordination/moderation ...)

Well, just a thought.

Regards,

Kim

Actually, a wiki isn't a bad idea.

Four or so years ago, I used Sigil pretty end-to-end, although, much like you, my "HTML" came from NoteTabPro, via clips+elbow grease. I don't use Sigil very much now at all, just quickies, like, "oh, so and so screwed up this text," and fixing it PDQ. I'm the paper-pusher now. (bummer).

But a wiki--something easily collaborative--MIGHT be a really good idea.

FWIW, I'm still able to tweak this or that, if your spelling or grammar or writing skills are something you (any of youse, not Kim-you) are want fixed-up.

Hitch

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by JustinThought

Grab the 0.9.0 from the link above. Then, besides reading it, you can also edit the book and discover some useful techniques.

The only link I can see is to 0.7.2, not to the supposed 0.9.0 manual.

Perhaps it is only the 0.7.2 manual with a new title?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Perhaps it is only the 0.7.2 manual with a new title?

That's pretty-much it, yes.

[faltradl]

Originally Posted by Hitch

But a wiki--something easily collaborative--MIGHT be a really good idea.

A wiki is a bad idea for all, who whant to use ist offline.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by faltradl

A wiki is a bad idea for all, who whant to use ist offline.

Nope, because most wiki's have the option to export to PDF if you want. Especially with multiple editors it is the easiest way of working and fastest to adapt changes.

[Freehunter]

Originally Posted by faltradl

A wiki is a bad idea for all, who whant to use ist offline.

Well, actually some wikis can be used offline. I tend to like TiddlyWiki but others might be capable also. Just as a point of possible interest in the idea for other purposes.

As an example a quick-and-dirty wiki I put together for new users of MakeHuman Portable. It expand from the original Quick Start to include some other things that new users might ask about. The embedded images could use some more optimization to reduce the overall size, but is an example of the possibilities.

It was originally on Dropbox but since they no longer allow rendering of the content, moved to Tiddlyspot which was created to host TiddlyWikis.

Because of size, 13 MB, it is a little slow to load online.

http://portable3d.tiddlyspot.com

download:
http://portable3d.tiddlyspot.com/download/

[KevinH]

Hi Hitch,

Originally Posted by Hitch

Kevin:
IF you (or anyone else here) has stuff you've drafted up, but just want polishing for, or details, or screenshots + polishing the writing, I'm happy to leap in with both feet. Can't say I'll be FAST, 'cuz timecrunches, but I will work on it.

Hitch

Doitsu has jumped in and has taken a shot at updating the User's Guide! It has reached the point of just needing some polishing which I hope you can help us with.

We would hope to have the following small changes made as well as cleaning it up and polishing it (shrinking screenshot file sizes, etc) if possible:

1. Replace any mention of the specific versions of Python/Qt that are included with the installers with just "Python 3" and "Qt5" because the specific version are likely to change a lot and really do not matter to the end user. That will help to keep the manual more up-to-date.

2. To somehow make it clearer that the toc tools (minus the html one) affect the NCX when editing an epub2, and affect the NAV when editing an epub3. I think Doitsu mentioned it in one place, but we'd like to see that emphasized everywhere it's applicable if possible because many users are new to the changes with editing epub3 ebooks compared to epub2.

3. Replace all screenshots with screenshots from a Windows box as github download statistics indicate that Windows Users are by far the largest downloader way overwhelming both Mac and Linux/Source downloaders combined.

So I hope you can squeeze in the polishing of this updated manual (see the attachment). If not, please just let us know and we will try to find some other volunteers.

Once we get the final version we will post it to github for everyone and then if there is enough interest, I can try to wiki-fy each chapter of the guide so in the future, users can share the workload of updating it.

I do not know much about shared editing with a Wiki but if that doesn't work we could create a github repository for just the user's guide and people can post pull requests to get things changed.

Thanks,

KevinH

ps. Everyone ... please thank Doitsu for all his hard work on this guide! Not to mention all of his great plugins, all of his testing and feedback on new features, and all of the help he provides here to anyone with questions! Sigil would not be the same without all of his help and support.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I do not know much about shared editing with a Wiki but if that doesn't work we could create a github repository for just the user's guide and people can post pull requests to get things changed.

I really like this idea, actually. We could create a github repo with an OEBPS version of the Guide. If people wanted to use Sigil to do the actual editing, an input plugin could be written to pull everything from a local cloned repo into an epub (as well as having an export plugin that could writes the changes back). That way, people could do standard pull requests to get changes reviewed for inclusion. Or they could edit the files outside of Sigil if they choose.

[KevinH]

Hi DiapDealer,

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I really like this idea, actually. We could create a github repo with an OEBPS version of the Guide. If people wanted to use Sigil to do the actual editing, an input plugin could be written to pull everything from a local cloned repo into an epub (as well as having an export plugin that could writes the changes back). That way, people could do standard pull requests to get changes reviewed for inclusion. Or they could edit the files outside of Sigil if they choose.

Yes that does sound interesting! It is free to get a github account so that should not hold people back.

Even if we decide to go with a wiki of some sort, we should still be able to periodically grab changes from the wiki and push them to the User's Guide github site.

+1 from me fwiw

Perhaps we should do it with the Sigil Plugin Guide as well.

KevinH

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Hi Hitch,




Doitsu has jumped in and has taken a shot at updating the User's Guide! It has reached the point of just needing some polishing which I hope you can help us with.

<SNIPPAGE>
I do not know much about shared editing with a Wiki but if that doesn't work we could create a github repository for just the user's guide and people can post pull requests to get things changed.

Thanks,

KevinH

ps. Everyone ... please thank Doitsu for all his hard work on this guide! Not to mention all of his great plugins, all of his testing and feedback on new features, and all of the help he provides here to anyone with questions! Sigil would not be the same without all of his help and support.

I'm delighted to give an assist. I will dl this ePUB now, and work on it at night & weekends. Really, I am super-happy to donate this time, as ever since you (fabulous) guys took over, there isn't a viable way for me to express my true appreciation like I used to be able to do. In shekels, that is. So, I shall become the official polisher. :-)

@Doits!!!

You de best, mon.



Hitch

[Gregg Bell]

What about me? Do I get any credit? (I asked the question, after all!)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

What about me? Do I get any credit? (I asked the question, after all!)

Yes. We'll give you credit for being the last in a long line of people asking about a newer version of the user guide.

[Gregg Bell]

Thanks Diap!

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I really like this idea, actually. We could create a github repo with an OEBPS version of the Guide. If people wanted to use Sigil to do the actual editing, an input plugin could be written to pull everything from a local cloned repo into an epub (as well as having an export plugin that could writes the changes back). That way, people could do standard pull requests to get changes reviewed for inclusion. Or they could edit the files outside of Sigil if they choose.

In fact, the current user's guide was uploaded at the old googlecode site, as the sigil.web git repository (and was used as an online version of the guide).

You could upload that as a Sigil-ebook.github.io repo, to get the guide back online, and then work from there.