Just lost a whole day's work with a Sigil crash

[KevinH]

Hi,

Okay I finally found time to look at this and I can recreate it but only under specific circumstances:

1. Open any epub with extra styles in an style sheet and more than one xhtml file
2. make sure Preview is showing
3. open one of the xhtml files in the book so that it shows in CodeView *and* Preview
4. navigate to the stylesheet in book browser and double click it to open the css file in the front tab
5. Use right click in the book browser to delete the xhtml file you opened first (and still showing in Preview!)
6. With the CSS tab still open in front, invoke the Tools -> DeleteUnusedStylesheetClass and tell it to delete them when asked for confirmation
7. I crash here sometimes but other times I must try a Save.

From the backtrace, the bug is nothing to do with CSS updating, and instead seems to be due to the xhtml file that was deleted in step 5 above still trying to be loaded and shown by Preview. Somehow after deleting an xhtml fie, we have to make sure it is not current showing in Preview and if so , wipe it out.

This will always happen when Preview is not open or when you move to another xhtml as front tab (it will replace Preview's contents with a valid xhtml file). The problem happens because a CSS file is showing in front and it has no Preview!

If someone else can confirm this failure mode with a recent Sigil version on other platforms, that would be grand.

I will look at loading an empty placeholder into Preview when any non-xhtml file is in the front tab.

Kevin

Originally Posted by stumped

slightly off topic but I can crash sigil almost at will with by running remove unused styles ( while the style sheet is being displayed and after editing some values or removing some front matter pages, thus making some styles redundant followed by save
it's usually the save operation that triggers sigil has encountered a problem and needs to close
I have learnt the hard way not to save which the stylesheet is the active displayed page

[stumped]

Afaik, I never use preview mode, which is an recent enhancement ?
I use both book and code views
I think that most of my crashes when I save, while the stylesheet is visible in the main pane
Some others, maybe, are from running delete unused styles, while the stylesheet is in view.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by KevinH

If someone else can confirm this failure mode with a recent Sigil version on other platforms, that would be grand.

I was able reproduce this failure with the 64bit Linux and Windows Sigil 0.9.8 versions.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by stumped

one other issue if i may - only in the more recent versions , if I delete a single stylesheet line - say an unwanted line height or font family, the displayed page then jumps a little, or the page stays still & the cursor jumps? Either way it no longer points at the now blank line. Does that make sense

I believe that specific issue (jumping/recentering/losing highlighting when editing CSS) was addressed in Sigil v0.9.7 if I recall correctly.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by stumped

Afaik, I never use preview mode, which is an recent enhancement ?
I use both book and code views
I think that most of my crashes when I save, while the stylesheet is visible in the main pane
Some others, maybe, are from running delete unused styles, while the stylesheet is in view.

Preview's not really new at all. It's been around for quite awhile. The widget's just not visible by default. It's basically Book View with no editing ability. It allows you to see the effect of code changes on the rendered product in real time. If you don't do any editing in Book View, using Preview saves you from having to switch back and forth between Code View and the rendered content.

We've had other issues where non-xhtml tabs being open caused errors/crashes when certain features were used. Wouldn't surprise me if this wasn't something similar. The most recent one I can think of was when merging/splitting html files would cause crashes when non-html tabs (opf, ncx) were open. That one was just addressed in v0.9.8.

[KevinH]

@Doitsu - Thanks for the confirmation. I have now pushed a fix for this to Sigil's master.

@stumped

I have many epubs that have extra styles in them and while the stylesheet was in the front tab (showing) I was able to use Tools->DeleteUnusedStyles just fine and never saw a crash or any type of problem when Preview was not open.

I would be happy to keep digging but I will need a sample epub with step by step instructions on how to recreate the crash. With current Sigil versions, I simply can not cause it to crash in the manner you described without Preview open to a deleted resource.

[KevinH]

FYI - updated that fix to put back an overzealous removal of a needed line
So if you are building your own from Master, please repull.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I will look at loading an empty placeholder into Preview when any non-xhtml file is in the front tab.

Kevin

I hope that doesn't mean that the preview pane will go blank when I'm looking at a CSS sheet?!?!?

I regularly edit the CSS sheet with the previous HTML file still showing in the preview so that I can see my CSS changes in real-time. This makes it so much easier to see minor changes in the CSS and to confirm that my new styling looks how I want.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I hope that doesn't mean that the preview pane will go blank when I'm looking at a CSS sheet?!?!?

I regularly edit the CSS sheet with the previous HTML file still showing in the preview so that I can see my CSS changes in real-time. This makes it so much easier to see minor changes in the CSS and to confirm that my new styling looks how I want.

"This Preview Deliberately Left Blank."


Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

"This Preview Deliberately Left Blank."


Hitch

Or showing the CSS.

[KevinH]

No,
It will still show the last html page it showed.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by KevinH

No,
It will still show the last html page it showed.

You're no fun, Kev.

Hitch

[stumped]

Originally Posted by KevinH

@Doitsu - Thanks for the confirmation. I have now pushed a fix for this to Sigil's master.

@stumped

I have many epubs that have extra styles in them and while the stylesheet was in the front tab (showing) I was able to use Tools->DeleteUnusedStyles just fine and never saw a crash or any type of problem when Preview was not open.
....

i think it has to be delete unused style and then SAVE - its the save that causes the " sigil has sopped working"

I think the best way forward is for me to update to 0.9.8 then see if I get any more crashes - I will try to provoke it by doing the things I suspect cause it.

If I can get something re-producible how do I go about submitting evidence ( given the copyright issues with uploading any specific epub )

if nothing else, by cursor jumping issue wshoudl get fixed by upgrading

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

No, all previously installed plugins will continue to work.

Okay. Cool. Thanks.

[stumped]

well I managed to crash 0.9.8, by saving with stylesheet in main pane, after some tweaking.
this was while working on an epub conversion of a retail azw
I removed some intro pages, some nested divs, tweaked a couple of styles...
a couple of previous tweaks and saves for the same book had been ok
I think ( but not totally sure) that the previous command had been another check & delete any un used styles

it crashed on the save command
screen shot attached

PS after snipping and posting that, I reopened, reopened stylesheet, re-saved, could not get a 2nd crash ( but i did not actually edit anything that time, so that's an essential pre-requisite ? )

i will attach try to sigil.ini from app data as that has the most recent find replace activity

done - i had to zip it. could not upload an ini file directly

PS before anyone asks, I have no plug-ins installed in Sigil