0.7.700 still has bug...

[JimmyG]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

That doesn't sound even remotely right. I certainly have never had this problem, and would love to hear how you got it.

It would imply that the fundamental feature of the editor is so broken as to make the entire editor completely and utterly worthless. Can't imagine how that would've slipped by all our notices.



My background is white, I think that is the default. In any event, you could go to Preferences ==> Editor settings and choose several different color schemes, or even write your own.



I cannot say I use marked text a lot at all, but looking in Sigil, I see marking text will automatically switch the S&R mode to "Marked text". And calibre does the same.

You do not need to mark more text, in order to remove the old mark. Simply select nothing and re-mark it. It will unmark the text currently marked. That I think is a bug:

Sigil automatically senses when text has been marked and no other text has been highlighted, and changes the label to "Unmark Marked Text". calibre should also have an indicator that it is doing that. In the meantime, you could just pretend that is what the words say, and do it anyway.

EDIT: This has been fixed.



Fair enough. Clips are indeed something calibre noticeably still lacks. There are third-party paste managers that could duplicate the effects if you really want to use calibre but also need clips.

But if Sigil works for you and you need clips then by all means stick with Sigil.

It is your choice, and both are valid choices. Just don't say:
calibre is doing something it isn't in fact doing
or isn't doing something that it is in fact doing.

First, I wouldn't have said anything about Calibre if you hadn't brought it up.

When I fist opened the program, the editing area background was blue and the preview white. Okay, it can be changed? Fine. I was just giving it a try, not setting up house.

The Link style sheet gave me just what I said.

In New file I put Text/okey.xhtml. Afterwards, it occurred to me that perhaps I should have put Text/okey.html.

That's all I have to say on Calibre. I told you what I did and what I got. I didn't lie. Why the heck would I lie? I don't care enough.

[Divingduck]

Originally Posted by JimmyG

...
When I fist opened the program, the editing area background was blue and the preview white. Okay, it can be changed? Fine. I was just giving it a try, not setting up house. ...

This is ok from your point of view. We all have programs we like more than other programs.

The point is you made a statement that clearly indicates you do not know how the calibre editor is working and that you need to spend more then a quick shot for testing a program.

Same arguments you point out to calibre are valid for Sigil too. If you have no idea how Sigil works you will be lost too and build not only a house...

I use both programs and have spend a lot of time to learn how they are working and what need to do for setup a comfortable working habitat. Both tools are doing the job quite good if you know what you do. Moreover, both have different advantages.
I like for instance Sigil's reporting tools. However, I miss what Kovid is doing with the live CSS panel.
If I am working on big files, I do not like Sigil because I need to wait "hours" with no response from Sigil for opening a complex big EPUB. With calibre, the same file opens quickly and I can do my job while Sigil still tries to open the file with 100% workload.
On the other side of experiences, I have sometimes projects what are working better with Sigil for a first shot.

There are many arguments for and against both programs and this is why I take the chance to use both depending on what I am doing.

Any way, this is a Sigil thread and not an advertising thread for calibre. Maybe better to keep the topic again instead of doing fan boy things on both sides .

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by PeterT

But you can use the editor without adding the book to a library or doing any other processing with calibre.

It's foolish to cut off your nose to spite your face.

Oh, never looked at it (dont like calibre either), but good to know.

[JimmyG]

Well, kdp is reviewing the book.

When I finished it, I went back to see if every file was complete (45 files, ugh) and found one that had been truncated, but it was near the beginning of the book and I think may have happened before I took everybody's advice and stopped using book view. And keeping preview open and making sure there were no errors before doing anything.

Did a proofread and corrected a bunch of errors, saved and checked for completeness again, and said, enough, done.

Oh, on my proofread, I found an error that Sigil missed, <p clas="nib tb">, imagine that. I was proofreading on Kindle for PC and the para looked like all the others. When I opened the file in Sigil, preview did not indicate any error.

So, even tho I've proved to myself that it can be used without losing files, it still has me so paranoid that I feel compelled to check that every file is complete, and that is a pain.

And now back to the book I was working on when I quit Sigil. That one is a court case with almost 300 witnesses, I don't even know how many files. When I finish it, I'll probably rework my own program for general use. A program that deletes your work, for whatever reason, especially without any notice that it has done so, is flawed, imho.

[theducks]

p clas is wrong
"nib tb" is valid (2 classes)

I don't know of a checker that will find every possible foul up

[JimmyG]

And published! They sure have speeded up the process since the last time.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JimmyG

And published! They sure have speeded up the process since the last time.

If you want something that's going to double-check your syntax, etc., you might want to find and download the old MS Expression Web. I know at least one guy that swears by it. I tried it (once) and thought I'd died and gone to hell. However, for visual persons, it might be quite usable, and it's very "check-y." It checks HTML, CSS, etc.

I never did figure out how to REALLY use it, for an eBook, myself, but quite honestly, I'd be lying if I said I'd tried hard. I slapped some HTML pages in there, and it seemed good enough if you want a visual, highlighting, etc., editor for the HTML that you work on BEFORE you import it into something like Sigil. Then let Sigil finish the twiddly bits for you (breaks, making the NCX, etc.).

That's just a suggestion, you may already be using something like it, like Dreamweaver or one of those. I'm a NoteTab Pro person myself, but...it suits me.

Hitch

[JimmyG]

Originally Posted by Hitch

If you want something that's going to double-check your syntax, etc., you might want to find and download the old MS Expression Web. I know at least one guy that swears by it. I tried it (once) and thought I'd died and gone to hell. However, for visual persons, it might be quite usable, and it's very "check-y." It checks HTML, CSS, etc.
Hitch

Thanks, but "check-y" is what I'm trying to get away from.

[PeterT]

Um surely you WANT checky just not fixey!

[JSWolf]

I know someone who uses FlightCrew, ePubcheck 3.0.1, epudcheck 4 (still in alpha), and Calibre to validate and if it passes all of them (well, it could have an issue with epubcheck 4 as that could be a bug), it's good to go.

Whenever Sigil says it wants to correct something for me, I say no and do it myself.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Um surely you WANT checky just not fixey!

Yes, that was my inference. MS EW doesn't "fix," it simply checks (and color-codes and does all that other stuff that seems to suit some folks).

Maybe I've simply misunderstood. Day 5 of the abscessed tooth (waiting for the antibiotics to work) with unrelenting pain, plus very strong painkillers could, admittedly, dull the senses. ;-)

Hitch

[JimmyG]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Um surely you WANT checky just not fixey!

Elsewhere I mentioned that I wrote my own program to finish the book I was working on when I gave up on Sigil. I am 95% of the way through the final proofread. When I get it done I will have to decide if I want to make it general purpose, i.e., start a new book, open an existing book, etc. Now, it has NO error checking. And if I rewrite it, it will have NO error checking.

It has a viewer to view a file. It displays just what it gets; if something's wrong, it's usually fairly obvious where it is. Every now and then I run it through the idpf validator and fix any errors that pop up.

I'm not as hung up on errors as Sigil seems to be. I'm trying to put a book together. I'm concerned with typos, spelling, grammar, and "could that be written better?" When I get it all put together, I run it thru the validator until I've swatted all the bugs. Then I run thru a final proofread and correct content and style errors, then back to the validator. If there are any errors, I'm going to find them somewhere along the line.

[mrmikel]

Seems like to you are doing conversion too early. These kinds of things are more easily fixed in a word processor, then when happy with all that then convert and fix the epub bugs.

If you have Word, you can use Toxaris add in to create an epub. Atlantis word processor takes in Word and other files and publishes epubs.

Seems like that might be less work to approach it that way. Sigil was never designed to be the original source of text, though it does remarkably well.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JimmyG

Elsewhere I mentioned that I wrote my own program to finish the book I was working on when I gave up on Sigil. I am 95% of the way through the final proofread. When I get it done I will have to decide if I want to make it general purpose, i.e., start a new book, open an existing book, etc. Now, it has NO error checking. And if I rewrite it, it will have NO error checking.

It has a viewer to view a file. It displays just what it gets; if something's wrong, it's usually fairly obvious where it is. Every now and then I run it through the idpf validator and fix any errors that pop up.

I'm not as hung up on errors as Sigil seems to be. I'm trying to put a book together. I'm concerned with typos, spelling, grammar, and "could that be written better?" When I get it all put together, I run it thru the validator until I've swatted all the bugs. Then I run thru a final proofread and correct content and style errors, then back to the validator. If there are any errors, I'm going to find them somewhere along the line.

Honestly, you are likely better off with Scrivener. That's a word-processing and writing/authoring program. Sigil isn't. I really wish that when Valloric had launched this program, he'd left the whole "WYSIWYG" text OFF the description(s) of the program, because it seems to constantly cause this type of conflation.

I think you'd be better off simply using something like Scrivener, and when you're done authoring the book, THEN output your book in ePUB from that, validate it, and if you have issues, THEN use Sigil. Using Sigil for drafting/redrafting/editing is, to my way of thinking, the wrong tool for the wrong job. Or use Jutoh; another program that is far more "writer-friendly" in terms of what it does than is Sigil. As user_none said, somewhere in time, Sigil is simply an XHTML/CSS editing tool for those users already familiar with both--it's not an authoring tool, per se.

Hope that helps.
Hitch

[JimmyG]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Honestly, you are likely better off with Scrivener. That's a word-processing and writing/authoring program. Sigil isn't. I really wish that when Valloric had launched this program, he'd left the whole "WYSIWYG" text OFF the description(s) of the program, because it seems to constantly cause this type of conflation.

I think you'd be better off simply using something like Scrivener, and when you're done authoring the book, THEN output your book in ePUB from that, validate it, and if you have issues, THEN use Sigil. Using Sigil for drafting/redrafting/editing is, to my way of thinking, the wrong tool for the wrong job. Or use Jutoh; another program that is far more "writer-friendly" in terms of what it does than is Sigil. As user_none said, somewhere in time, Sigil is simply an XHTML/CSS editing tool for those users already familiar with both--it's not an authoring tool, per se.

Hope that helps.
Hitch

It's because I'm comfortable with html/css that I like Sigil.

I have Scrivener. Years ago, when I first started my website, I did the first pages in Word and exported them to html. Lord, what a mess. I learned a lot about Regex getting rid of all the (totally unnecessary) junk Word put in. I only tried one epub test with Scrivener, and it suffers from the same thing. Now, it has a gazillion settings for producing an epub, and somewhere in all those settings there is probably a way to turn all that off, but I don't have that many years left. I only publish on Kindle, and <i> and <b> work fine. Scrivener would put <span style="font-style:italic"></span> instead of <i> and <span style="font-weight:bold"></span> for <b>. Plus, as I remember, putting font information in every paragraph, never mind that they were all the same. And on, and on.

I'll admit, I don't have a lot of patience; the afore-mentioned years. I looked at Jutoh. The author of that program has his own way of handling styles; I've already learned css, I don't want to learn a workaround.

I finally finished that book I've been working on so long, and it's live (3540 KB.) Whew!

So. Now that that book is done, I have no excuse not to rework my own program so it knows how to start a new book. Most of the heavy work is all done, I've just got to relearn how I did everything. I don't have Alzheimer's, but close. I only remember new things long enough to use them, then if I have to do the same thing again, I have to relearn it all over again.

Thanks, Hitch, and everybody else who's chimed in.

Onward and upward.

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