Sigil user interface issues and bugs

[Gary Harper]

I love Sigil and will be using it on my Mac to write all of my books henceforth. Its core engine appears to be rock solid, which surprised me considering the intricate relations amongst eBook files. Its manual is clear and comprehensive. However, it does have some user-interface quirks that dismay me.

1. Why is the tab bar grayed out for the active tab, and almost completely blacked out for the inactive ones? Is there some reason to prevent users from knowing which tab to click? Clarity always trumps style.

2. Can’t the cursor be coordinated better between code view and book view? I understand that the cursor in code-view often does not map directly to book-view because it might be inside a tag; but there is a direct mapping in the other direction. Even in the code-to-book direction, the nearest raw text could be chosen, which would make the cursor easy to find, and stay in place on sequential round trips, unlike now.

3. Cursor consistency might spontaneously solve the following bug. Say you have this text in code-view: “the next word is <b>bold<b/>. However …” You are editing in book-view because its semantics are clearer. You decide to replace the period with a semicolon, so you delete it and follow it with “but …”. Suddenly the semicolon is bold and so is “but …”. You look in code-view and discover the semicolon and “but” inside the bold tags where you never intended; and one of those damned &#160’s after the tag. Try it for yourself.

4. There is another minor bug: I made Sigil my default to open all eBooks. When I click on one, Sigil opens it and also opens a new blank eBook. I suspect Sigil can’t yet handle the fame and glory of being a default app.

5. Speaking of clear semantics and damned &#160’s, I suspect that authors who use Sigil to write with prefer to do all basic styling using the standard b, i, u, del, sub, sup, h1-to-h6, p. ol, ul, li tags; and do all other styling in CSS using their own class and id clips, like I do. Sadly, this currently requires editing amongst the murk of tags in code view where the semantics are obscured. Could you provide an option for “span-less, &#160-less book-view editing” ? (Or even better “Uniform no-inline-styling in either book-view or code-view editing”.) That would be eBook heaven. It would also make cursor coordination easier.

I truly do love Sigil, else I never would have invested a couple of hours trying to persuade you to make it better, like I just did.

[KevinH]

Some things ...

- Honestly, if you care about how your code looks at all, never edit in BookView. It is equivalent to editing a live webpage in a browser and results are highly browser engine dependent.

- Enable Preview and stop the need to switch back and forth from CodeView to a BookView

- the greyness of the tabs is part of Qt and your system choices

- Sigil requires at least one Main Window to be open and so always opens one to be safe. It is not meant to be passed a path or filename on Macs given their multi main window usage.

KevinH

[KevinH]

As for point 5, I am not sure exactly what you are asking/saying? In codeview I rarely if ever use the toolbar icons. Is that what you are referring to? Inline styles are used in BookView to implement some of those style icons because that mode is set in the Qt Webkit browser engine BookView uses internally. The alternative setting in Qt WebKit actually generates incorrect code (deprecated tags) and can no longer be used as a result.

[Gary Harper]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Some things ...

- Honestly, if you care about how your code looks at all, never edit in BookView. It is equivalent to editing a live wepage in a browser and results are highly browser engine dependent.

- Enable Preview and stop the need to switch back and forth from CodeView to a BookViewch

- the greyness of the tabs is part of Qt and your system choices

- Sigil requires at least one Main Window to be open and so always opens one to be safe. It is not meant to be passed a path or filename on Macs given their multi main window usage.

KevinH

Thanks KevinH. I will henceforth enable Preview and alway edit in CodeView, which makes my point 5 moot. How do I get your Qt webkit to stop blacking out my tabs?
Gary

[KevinH]

Please post here a screen capture pic (less than 600 pixels in width and height) showing exactly what you mean by blacked out tabs. I use a Mac as my main dev platform and have never noticed any issues.

[Gary Harper]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Please post here a screen capture pic (less than 600 pixels in width and height) showing exactly what you mean by blacked out tabs. I use a Mac as my main dev platform and have never noticed any issues.

[IMG]/Users/gary/Desktop/Screen Shot 2018-01-04 at 9.11.54 AM.png[/IMG]

[Gary Harper]

KevinH. I must not quite have mastered "Insert Image."

[KevinH]

When replying, choose "advanced" and attach the image to your reply, or zip it first if it is too big.

Originally Posted by Gary Harper

KevinH. I must not quite have mastered "Insert Image."

[Gary Harper]

[Gary Harper]

One other thing KevinH, I am 71 and have such poor eyesight that I am legally blind without my glasses.

[KevinH]

Your image looks just like mine and I have no trouble seeing or using any of the tabs. So I would guess that using your Mac's built in accessibilty features might be the right path forward. In addition, I will look into what is any code sets the tab background/colour and see if it can be changed using a Qt Config setting of some sort.

Take care,

KevinH

[BetterRed]

@KevinH - in Windows the delete button is red in the active tab, which gives a better visual cue - don't think I did anything special to achieve that.



BR

[KevinH]

Yes, the Sigil code leaves the default styling which is controlled by the platform specific look and feel and that will differ. I think a special qconfig setting file would help. I just need time to dig around to see how to create one for him.

[KevinH]

Hi Gary,

Attached is a zip archive that includes a qt css style sheet that should lighten/brighten the look of the tabs in Sigil. It is just a text file and can be edited to change colours and things.

I found it online here:

http://doc.qt.io/archives/qt-4.8/sty...et-and-qtabbar

So please try grabbing the qt_styles.qss.zip attached here.

Then unzip it and make sure the file name becomes qt_styles.qss as this is the name of the style file that Sigil will look for. Rename it if need be. It is a text file and it can be looked at and edited by any text editor.

Now fire up Sigil and then go to Sigil->Preferences,

You will see a button at the bottom of the screen called "Open Preferences Location" and if you press it, a Finder window will open to where Sigil stores its Preferences, plugins, settings, and etc.

Simply drag and drop the qt_styles.qss into that new Finder window (ie. folder).

Now exit completely out of Sigil using the Sigil->Quit Sigil menu item.

Now restart Sigil and look at the tabs. They should appear brighter when "selected" and "not-selected" than they were before.

If this is not enough, we can play around with colours in that qt_styles.qss file with a text editor to make something even more readable for you.

Basically you are using Qt css rules to replace the Mac styles for your tabs just in Sigil.

Please let us know if this helps.

ps: You must be running a very recent version of Sigil for this to work. I recommend the latest version Sigil-0.9.9

Take care,

KevinH

[Gary Harper]

Thanks Kevin, I got the styles and am playing around with them. The tab bar is much clearer now, and more colorful--great fun. One final question: I am now editing exclusively in CodeView, as you recommended, and I use the keyboard as much as possible; so I got rid of most toolbars. I would like to also get rid of the h1 ... h6 p toolbar too, and I could if there were a <p><p/> key option. Could that be accomplished? I would probably assign it command p.