Sigil for Mac & macOS 10.15 Catalina

[DiapDealer]

I don't know if Apple charges for notarization. I was referring to Windows and all the various certification issuers they're in cahoots with to get software devs to pay exorbitant fees for codesigning certs so they won't be an "unknown publisher" any more.

[kovidgoyal]

Apple does not charge for notarization but for notarization to work you need an active Apple developer subscription which costs $99 a year, so effectively you pay Apple a hundred dollars a year for notarization. With only codesigning, you could let the developer account lapse, renewing it only once every 5 years when the codesigning key expires, so the effective cost was $20 a year.

On Windows, you have to pay a third party, not microsoft, for a codesigning certificate, and the cost varies from about $50 to $100 a year.

[Vroni]

Uhhh this is becoming offtopic, but just to be sure i understood this correctly: The notarizitaion is only for apps not being solf through the app store to get rif of the message "You downloaded it from the internet and unsafe blablablabla Are you sure? blablabla?"

[odamizu]

Yes, notarization is only for apps distributed outside the App Store. Apps distributed inside the App Store have a different screening process.

When notarization was first announced, Apple implied that apps would not run at all on Catalina if they weren't notarized, which posed a problem for apps like Sigil if notarization proved too much of a pain in the behind for developers to implement.

Discussion on the Internet suggested there would be ways around notarization, including resorting to a Terminal command to disable Gatekeeper. Fortunately, that's not necessary as Apple has provided a simple, straightforward way around it.

[odamizu]

Hmmmm ... According to Oracle: "Eventually (as of January 2020), you will only be able to install and run Mac software distributed outside the Mac App store on macOS 10.15 systems that are notarized by Apple."

This is consistent with Apple's Sept 3 statement: "Mac software distributed outside the Mac App Store must be notarized by Apple in order to run on macOS Catalina. To make this transition easier and to protect users on macOS Catalina who continue to use older versions of software, we’ve adjusted the notarization prerequisites until January 2020."

This is a bit in contradiction to Apple's Oct 7 support document providing instructions to override Gatekeeper and run unsigned/unnotarized apps.

I suppose we just have to wait until January to see if Apple is indeed going to close the door to unsigned/unnotarized apps

[Vroni]

Good to know, thx. Then i will wait with Catalina, maybe Mojave is the last version.

[odamizu]

Poking around Catalina ...

1) Catalina defaults to zsh instead of bash in Terminal (though you can apparently switch it back to bash if you want).

I don't really know what this means, but what I'm trying to figure out is:

Does it matter whether you use zsh or bash when unpacking the Sigil .txz installer?

Does it matter whether you use zsh or bash for any other ebook-related Terminal things, like java -jar for epubcheck or running KindleGen or Calibre modules from a Terminal window?

2) Catalina includes Python 2.7.16.

As 2.7 is reaching end of life, if I install Python 3, will that screw up anything I have that requires Python 2 to run? From what I've read, I can have both 2 and 3 installed, but how do I point to one or the other at will? Or will the script or process know which one it needs and pick the correct one automatically?

It's probably obvious that I don't know what I'm talking about here. I'm not doing any programming. Just running Python scripts and apps and want to make sure I can keep running them.

Thank you!

[KevinH]

- Zsh should be a close drop in replacement for bash, so hopefully no issues there.
- python 2.x has always been installed on macOS. There are no issues installing Python 3.x at the same time. They end up in different places. Also Sigil has its own internal Python 3 on macOS again with no troubles.

So no worries here.

[odamizu]

Thank you, KevinH. As you predicted, zsh worked find to unpack Sigil's .txz (and also run epubcheck.jar and kindlegen from the command line).

What was surprising, though, is I accidentally double-clicked Sigil's .txz file, and Catalina's default Archive Utility unpacked it just fine. So Terminal command is not necessary in Catalina. (I tested it both ways — tar -xvf on Terminal and simply double-clicking the .txz file. Both worked.)

Launching Sigil the first time (I did a clean install) resulted in a pop-up that says, Sigil can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software. This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more information. It then offers two buttons: Show in Finder and Okay. If, instead, you right-click-Open, you get three choices: Show in Finder, Okay and Open. Clicking Open launches Sigil, no problem. You can also go to System Prefs > Security after the initial launch attempt and there will be a message saying, Sigil was blocked from use because it is not from an identified developer with a button to Open Anyway. This message is a bit off-putting since Sigil is code-signed (confirmed with spctl -a -v).

For unsigned & unnotarized apps, like the KindleUnpack applet, you get a pop-up that says, macOS cannot verify the developer of KindleUnpack 64 v0.81. Are you sure you want to open it? By opening this app, you will be overriding system security which can expose your computer and personal information to malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy. Once again you can override Gatekeeper with right-click-Open or System Prefs > Security.

Interestingly, some unsigned/unnotarized apps (like Alf's standalone app) won't open at all if unzipped in Catalina, but will open if you unzip it on Mojave or High Sierra then copy it over to Catalina.

Command line tools (like Kindlegen and epubcheck) run without any warning.

Some notarized apps (like BBEdit) pop-up a milder warning: BBEdit is an app downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it? But other notarized apps (like KindlePreviewer and Send to Kindle) launch without any warning at all.

I then did some very quick tests on plugins, all of which worked (after installing ActiveTcl). These include: EpubCheck, cssRemoveUnusedSelectors, ePub3-itizer, TagMechanic, KindleImport, KindleGen, PunctuationSmarten, ShowSemantics, etc.

I will spend more time with Sigil on Catalina in the coming days and report back anything interesting, but so far so good.

I have also spent a tiny amount of time on Calibre 3.48 and plan to install 4.2 once I get a chance.

[odamizu]

from MacRumors:

Apple this afternoon announced that developers who create Mac apps outside of the Mac App Store will need to submit them for the notarization process starting on February 3, 2020

As far as I can tell, it will still be possible to override Gatekeeper with right-click-Open or System Prefs > Security panel (and I have an external drive set up with Catalina to test )

[KevinH]

Yes, I am not yet going to worry about notarization. At some point, maybe. I personally think Apple's requiring a code signed app to be notarized is for the birds and will not truly help security.

[odamizu]

from Cult of Mac:

These changes won’t stop users from running unsigned apps, it just prevents you from being able to double-click an app to run it by default. If want to run a non-notarized app you can still right-click it and then choose Open.