Suggestions for Sigil Improvements or New Features

[MickiTee]

Can I request some amendments/enhancements to the Reports option?

1) Can you please add the Minimise and Resize icons next to the close icon. The problem is that the Reports window is always on top of the main Sigil window, so I can't edit the book I'm working on without closing the Reports window, fixing my typos and and then rerunning Reports to deal with the next issue. The reports window already has a Refresh button which at the moment is redundant.

2) Would it be possible to add Font Files to the left hand panel in Reports? Something similar to Images would be OK. Currently the only place they can be found is in the All Files option. It would also be helpful to know if the fonts are actively used.

3) You can double click on a file in Classes Used but the cursor is postitioned at the start of the file. Would it be possible to position the cursor at the first occurance of the class shown? If this can't be done would it be possible to allow us to copy the class name and then search for it in Find and Replace?

Many thanks.

[retiredbiker]

Testing the new character inspector:

I built from the new master, and loaded up a file I have with dozens of special characters that I've used or tripped on over time (used odt Import to create a new epub). Just lovely to see the names, especially invisible ones like "hair space". I noticed no slowdown at all.

Then I loaded a large book, and imported the special characters file. Just going through various files and making random edits inserting the characters, no slowdown noticed.

I don't think I have a book that is not ascii based, like something in Arabic, so can't I test that.

As to whether it is shown always or a menu item, I like the way it is now, since I can just glance at it, but if others report performance problems a menu item would also work.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by MickiTee

Can I request some amendments/enhancements to the Reports option?

1) Can you please add the Minimise and Resize icons next to the close icon. The problem is that the Reports window is always on top of the main Sigil window, so I can't edit the book I'm working on without closing the Reports window, fixing my typos and and then rerunning Reports to deal with the next issue. The reports window already has a Refresh button which at the moment is redundant.

2) Would it be possible to add Font Files to the left hand panel in Reports? Something similar to Images would be OK. Currently the only place they can be found is in the All Files option. It would also be helpful to know if the fonts are actively used.

3) You can double click on a file in Classes Used but the cursor is postitioned at the start of the file. Would it be possible to position the cursor at the first occurance of the class shown? If this can't be done would it be possible to allow us to copy the class name and then search for it in Find and Replace?

Many thanks.

1. What platform are you using? Where the minimize and resize and close buttons are located are a platform specific thing. We do not control that. You should be able to click on the title bar to resize and drag it out of the way or to another monitor if you have one available. The reason that Reports come out on top is that editing things (adding or deleting) generally makes the Report invalid so treating the Reports as modal is encouraged, although we do allow a refresh button. Refreshing Reports can be quite time consuming. You can always export any Reports to CSV if that would help and via it in any spreadsheet.

2. What do you want to see about the Font files that not already described in the All Files, report? If you need a list of Font files you can see that in BookBrowser. If you want to preview the font, you can do that in BookBrowser as well. If you are looking for which html files use fonts directly, the answer will be none as it is css files that directly specify the font files. Most people only have 1 or 2 css files in an entire epub so finding which has the fonts listed in them is usually trivial. So what new or unique report items would a Font report include?

3. You can already right click in a class in the editor and Sigil will take you directly to it in the css. I will look into allowing the Classes Used Report to do the same.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by retiredbiker

Testing the new character inspector:

I built from the new master, and loaded up a file I have with dozens of special characters that I've used or tripped on over time (used odt Import to create a new epub). Just lovely to see the names, especially invisible ones like "hair space". I noticed no slowdown at all.

Then I loaded a large book, and imported the special characters file. Just going through various files and making random edits inserting the characters, no slowdown noticed.

I don't think I have a book that is not ascii based, like something in Arabic, so can't I test that.

As to whether it is shown always or a menu item, I like the way it is now, since I can just glance at it, but if others report performance problems a menu item would also work.

Thank you for the testing and feedback! Glad to hear it is working well for you. And yes I asked that question about the menu item approach in case some testers reported significant (or just irritating) slowdowns.

Yes my worries would be non-ascii, CJK languages, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, etc. Hopefully someone who uses that language or at least has an existing epub that uses any of those languages could test and report back.

[BeckyEbook]

My comments after testing:

Ad 1. Python Function Replace – the fix definitely makes sense, so there's no doubt about that.

However, I would like to point out that your force_titlecase function (described in posts #19 and #24) only works when "Current File" is selected.
When "All HTML Files," "Selected HTML Files," and "Tabbed HTML Files" are enabled, the force_titlecase function does not work, and we see a "readonly attribute" error in the debug file.

Ad 2. Exporting selected/all words from the SpellCheck window – this works great. I personally had this feature added in my private build, but now I've removed my patch and will be using the official solution. My version exported all words from the window and I used tabs instead of commas.
I'm really happy with this feature because I actually use it, and the data separator is a minor detail.

Ad 3. And now we come to "displaying a character name."
I am VERY happy that this option has been added. Thank you!
Personally, I find it useful for quickly recognizing space types or shady characters and, of course, the correctness of diacritics. This has been less important for some time now, as Sigil now (>=2.3.0) uses NFC unicode normalization form for book content.

I haven't noticed any slowdown either, but I will be using the new build every day and if I notice anything worrying, I will definitely report it.

[philja]

[QUOTE=KevinH;4560511]1. What platform are you using? Where the minimize and resize and close buttons are located are a platform specific thing. We do not control that. You should be able to click on the title bar to resize and drag it out of the way or to another monitor if you have one available. The reason that Reports come out on top is that editing things (adding or deleting) generally makes the Report invalid so treating the Reports as modal is encouraged, although we do allow a refresh button. Refreshing Reports can be quite time consuming.

This is a usage difficulty in Windows 11. In the title bar of the Reports window, there is only the 'x' at the top right to close the window - no maximise or minimise icons. A right click on the title bar shows the minimise and maximise options grayed out.

On my Macbook, the Reports window when minimised, shoves off to a separate desktop so is easily refound.

On my linux box, the system places the traditional 3 icons in top right of the title bar so the Reports window can be minimised and recalled normally like any other.

[BeckyEbook]

@philja: In Windows, all internal Sigil windows are displayed with only a close button. This has always been the case.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

My comments after testing:

Ad 1. Python Function Replace – the fix definitely makes sense, so there's no doubt about that.

However, I would like to point out that your force_titlecase function (described in posts #19 and #24) only works when "Current File" is selected.
When "All HTML Files," "Selected HTML Files," and "Tabbed HTML Files" are enabled, the force_titlecase function does not work, and we see a "readonly attribute" error in the debug file.

Interesting! I think, the difference is when using ReplaceAll across multiple files, you are using a real re match object that marks its "string" attribute as read only.

The fix is to create your own SigilMatch object from the re match object,
then modify its string to pass that along to the replace_titlecase function. I will modify the replacement code to use that approach. Should be easy. Thanks for the head's up.

I haven't noticed any slowdown either, but I will be using the new build every day and if I notice anything worrying, I will definitely report it.

Wonderful! Thanks for testing all 3 changes and reporting back.

If you get a free moment, could you take a peek at Misc/CodepointNames.cpp at the XHTML_CHARS line. If we wanted to expand this list to include a few of the most common characters used in European languages (such as Polish) what additional frequently used characters would you add if any?

[BeckyEbook]

This is intentionally limited to commonly used Latin-based European characters (PL, CZ, SK, SI, HR, LT, LV, EE, DE, AT, CH, FR, ES, PT, IT, NO, SE, DK, FI, NL, HU, RO).
Non-Latin scripts (CJK, RTL, etc.) are deliberately excluded and will continue to fall back to Python on demand.

static const QString XHTML_CHARS =
    "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
    "1234567890!@#$%^&*()_-+={}[]:;\"'<>,.?/|\\…„”“’»«"
    "ąćęłńóśżźĄĆĘŁŃÓŚŻŹáàâäãåÁÀÂÄÃÅéèêëÉÈÊËíìîïÍÌÎÏ"
    "òôöõøÓÒÔÖÕØúùûüÚÙÛÜýÿÝŸçÇñÑšžŠŽđĐœæŒÆß";

P.S. I also added some punctuation marks.

[BeckyEbook]

@philja: Of course, you can add a button to the Reports window (just add one line to the code), but in Windows this behavior will not be user-friendly, as the window minimizes to the lower left corner, which is not very intuitive, although understandable.

Maybe others should have their say.

[KevinH]

@BeckyEbook,

Okay here is a new force_titlecase that should work no matter if in Current File or in Multiple Files and should work with ReplaceAll

It basically makes a SigilMatch object from a re match object. It worked in my testing. If this works under your test I will probably change functionsearch.py to make this a simple convenience function to make this even easier for people to use.

def replace(match, number, file_name, metadata, data):
    if match:
        #create a SigilMatch from the re match object
        grouplist = []
        n = len(match.groups())
        if  n > 0: n = n + 1
        s = match.start()
        for i in range(n):
            grouplist.append([match.span(i)[0] - s, match.span(i)[1] - s])
        new_match = SigilMatch(match.group(0), grouplist)
        new_match.string = replace_lowercase(match, number, file_name, metadata, data)
        return replace_titlecase(new_match, number, file_name, metadata, data)

[BeckyEbook]

I confirm that the force_titlecase function now works for all files.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

@philja: Of course, you can add a button to the Reports window (just add one line to the code), but in Windows this behavior will not be user-friendly, as the window minimizes to the lower left corner, which is not very intuitive, although understandable.

Maybe others should have their say.

Attachment 220319

Attachment 220320

But if you look at my Reports, they all have a way to minimize, and maximize the screen built right in. So is this a Windows Issue of some sort?

See this screenshot.

[BeckyEbook]

Yes, this is a issue/feature of Qt in Windows.
I even checked it on version 0.9.13 in Windows XP, and it was the same there.

It must be clearly stated that the button should be:

setWindowFlags(windowFlags() | Qt::WindowMinimizeButtonHint);

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by MickiTee

Can I request some amendments/enhancements to the Reports option?

1) Can you please add the Minimise and Resize icons next to the close icon. The problem is that the Reports window is always on top of the main Sigil window, so I can't edit the book I'm working on without closing the Reports window, fixing my typos and and then rerunning Reports to deal with the next issue. The reports window already has a Refresh button which at the moment is redundant.

On Windows I have a startup program (Actual Title Buttons) that adds extra buttons to application title bars, one of which is a Roll up/down toggle





The other buttons you see are: Stay on top, Send to bottom, Align window, and Configure.

Been using it since 2007 - it's not free, but unlike similar gadgets that are free, it works and does not crash other applications ==>> https://www.actualtools.com/

Oh, and it works everywhere, rather just one window in one application.

BR