Sigil 1.8 will only run in a specific folder

[KevinH]

And what we are trying to tell you is that Sigil has not made any changes that would cause this. Are you even sure that Sigil caused the unknown exception?

Being able to write to one location but not being able to write to another location is caused by something on your file system. It must be some permissions, some security, some anti-virus or something. No one else has reported anything similar on any platform for Sigil 1.7 or Sigil 1.8 or in fact on any earlier version of Sigil.

If it is not permissions/security/defender related, could you have added a Windows file system extension that uses an old version of Qt that kicks in when opening a file browser.

To test for that try rebooting your machine in Safe mode to disable 3rd party extensions, and see if that makes any difference.

[KevinH]

I am grasping at straws here but could where you are trying to read and write be on a network or some other shared drive? Could it be network driver related?

[Domenick]

I have now removed Sophos Home. It was a holdover from a previous career.

I rebooted in Safe Mode and Sigil exhibited the same behaviors:
In the NEW folder it crashed on the HTML file load if the CSS file was already present.
If loaded in the order HTML then CSS, the manuscript loaded and rendered correctly. Save as into the NEW folder crashed.

Microsoft Defender Antivirus:
Controlled folder access: OFF
Reputation-based protection: OFF
heckappa and files: OFF
Potentially unwanted app blocking: OFF

[KevinH]

What do you mean by "crash" here? A unable to read or write a file should create a "file exception" and Sigil will catch that and at least try to handle it. But an "unknown exception" is not a file exception. That is what is so confusing.

What do you mean by if the css file was already present. You are not trying to read or write directly into Sigil's temp folder are you?

Let's debug from scratch with known good /safe locations. Please try the following and let me know what step causes the failure.

1. On your Desktop create a folder called "test" and copy an html file and its css file into it

2. Fire up Sigil and verify that Sigil is using its default temp folder in Preferences

3. You should have an empty epub after Sigil starts up. Please do a file save as and tell it to write the epub to your Desktop folder to verify it has write permission there.

4. Then use Sigil's Add Existing menu and navigate into the "test" folder on your Desktop created in step 1. Tell it to load the html file you copied there.

Did step 3 pass? Did step 4 pass or fail? Did it give you the same error messages or something different?

I am hoping if this fails it will give us a more informative error message of some sort as this has got to be permissions related in some way.

[Domenick]

I'll answer your questions, then run your test.

By crash, I mean the program winks out--no exception, no warning, just "poof". It's gone. This is a different behavior from the error message and details it presents in other contexts.

> What do you mean by if the css file was already present.
> You are not trying to read or write directly into Sigil's temp folder are you?

No. I am not writing directly into Sigil's temp folder.
What I meant above was if the files are Added to Sigil in the following order, HTML, then CSS, the files are loaded. On the other hand, if the CSS file is loaded first, then Sigil crashes (poof!) trying to load the HTML.

I'll get back to you after running your test. Thanks. I appreciate the time and effort you are putting into this.

[Domenick]

1. On your Desktop create a folder called "test" and copy an html file and its css file into it.
Done. /Desktop/test now contains only two files, a CSS, and an HTML

2. Fire up Sigil and verify that Sigil is using its default temp folder in Preferences
<SIGIL_DEFAULT_TEMP_HOME>

3. You should have an empty epub after Sigil starts up. Please do a file save as and tell it to write the epub to your Desktop folder to verify it has write permission there.
untitled.epub saved properly into /Desktop/test

4. Then use Sigil's Add Existing menu and navigate into the "test" folder on your Desktop created in step 1. Tell it to load the html file you copied there.
The HTML file loaded properly from /Desktop/test folder.

[KevinH]

So Sigil works normally in a new folder that it has write and read permissions for.

That tells us it has nothing to do with Sigil "remembering" anything and everything to do with how certain paths on your system are being protected by something.

But by what? If not Controlled Folder, not Anti-virus, not Defender, not a rouge 3rd party system file extension, then what is preventing Sigil from reading and writing to where you tried to add things from originally that failed?

Please try repeating the test above but this time copy and paste your "test" folder to someplace inside the NEW location you were using for your testing that caused crashes earlier. Then repeat the test above but in step 3 try to save-as the untitled.epub to the parent folder now holding the "test" folder. And in step 4 try to addexisting from the new location of the "test" folder.

Did step 3 fail this time? If so did it have any good error message? Or did step 4 fail? And if so with a more informative message.

[Domenick]

Please try repeating the test above but this time copy and paste your "test" folder to someplace inside the NEW location you were using for your testing that caused crashes earlier.
- Done: copied /Desktop/test into the NEW folder creating NEW/test.

Then repeat the test above but in step 3 try to save-as the untitled.epub to the parent folder now holding the "test" folder.
- I think what this means is to load CSS and HTML files from /Desktop/test and try to save the epub to the NEW folder.
- HTML and CSS files loaded and rendered.
- Save as into test folder's parent folder resulted in the error message and details listed in a previous post.
Sigil has encountered a problem.
Sigil may need to close.
Error info: Unknown exception
Sigil version: 1.8.0
Runtime Qt: 5.12.9
Compiled Qt: 5.12.9
System: Windows 10 (10.0)
Architecture: x86_64
- Sigil closed after dismissing the popup.

And in step 4 try to add existing from the new location of the "test" folder.
- From ../NEW/test
- HTML and CSS files loaded and rendered.
- Save as into ../NEW/test resulted in error message and details as above.
- Sigil closed after dismissing the popup.

[KevinH]

No I mean manually move your "test" folder from your Desktop into your New problem folder.

Then repeat the steps from earlier

1. Fire up Sigil to get an blank epub.
2. verify sigil temp folder is default
3 do epub file save-as to the new parent folder ofthe "test" folder (new location)
4. try using Add Existing to load the html file from the relocated "test" folder in its new problematic location

Share the error messages.

[KevinH]

BTW, Why the ../NEW? What exactly is the full path including drive letter to your New folder that seems to be causing the issues?

Could there be some illegal file name chars in the problematic path?

[Domenick]

Sorry. Move vs. copy. Got it.

So, I moved /Desktop/test into NEW.
Added the HTML and CSS into Sigil. Loaded and rendered properly.
Save as into the moved folder NEW/test generated the same error message and details as earlier. Sigil closed when popup dismissed.

[KevinH]

So it is clear Sigil has no write permissions to the New problematic folder or something is preventing the write from completing successfully.

What is the full path with drive letter to the relocated "test" folder?

And for comparison purposes, what was the full path with drive letter to the OLD path that worked earlier?

We may be able to tell something by seeing how and where they begin to differ?

[Domenick]

Here are the full path names involved.

What I am calling the PREVIOUS folder in which Sigil works:
C:\venezia\Personal\Fiction\Novels\LM\LM.01.Libera tor.Legacy\03.Compiled.Book\DOCX.to.HTML.to.EPUB.C onversion.LL\Amazon.KDP.Format

What I am calling the NEW\test folder in which Sigil does not work:
C:\venezia\Personal\Fiction\Novels\LM\LM.02.Minido ka.Legacy\03.Compiled.Book\DOCX.to.HTML.EPUB.Conve rsion.ML\Amazon.KDP.Format\test

As you will notice I have a standard novel manuscript folder structure.

At the \LM\ level I have a total of 5 such subfolder trees in which Sigil worked in all of them at one time.

Both have a creation date of April 29, 2020 because that was the date I transitioned to this laptop.

[KevinH]

So now the folder that is protected against Sigil must be one *after*:

C:\venezia\Personal\Fiction\Novels\LM\

which is common to both.

So I recommend repeating the Sigil empty epub save-as step in each folder *after* LM one by one until it fails to see where the permissions problem or lock issues start. That may give us some idea of what is going on.

Once you have the offending folder, look at its properties to check what permissions it has. And each folder under it. Change those properties to give full access (read, write, and etc) and repeat.

[Domenick]

I believe I have found the issue! All along I have telling myself, "It's got to be something simple--something basic."

First I checked my file permissions and verified Full Control up and down the folder tree.
Then I did as you suggested.

Created a test folder at every folder level up and down the folder tree and copied the same known working files into them all. The test folders worked in every case, even in the problematic folder.

To me, this narrowed the issue to the files in question, the one CSS and the one HTML.

The CSS file in the folder in which Sigil did not work,
C:\venezia\Personal\Fiction\Novels\LM\LM.02.Minido ka.Legacy\03.Compiled.Book\DOCX.to.HTML.EPUB.Conve rsion.ML\Amazon.KDP.Format\,
was set to read-only.

The working CSS file was NOT set to read-only.

Sigil generated the same, familiar errors with the ready-only CSS file loaded, but not with the read/write CSS file loaded.

All of Sigil's failure modes can be repeated with a read-only CSS file. Even the "poof" crash if the CSS file is loaded before the HTML. I tested this on other novels' manuscripts and can replicate and fix the failure at will in other subfolder trees.

I only ran into this issue because I was going back to create Edition 2 of existing manuscripts. I'll have to keep this in mind as I commonly set my files to read-only after publishing a manuscript.

If this truly is the issue, I am surprised I am the only report of this behavior.

Thank you!
Thank you for your patience, effort, and time spent tracking this down. I'll be needing Sigil sometime this month to publish another manuscript.