Feature Request: Correct Typos in Viewer

[Steven Karp]

Let me be perfectly clear here: I know about the editor, I use it frequently. It's overkill for what I would like to do.

I often spot typos in books while I'm reading. They're annoying, but fixing them is even more annoying, because I have to close the viewer, open the book in the editor, find the typo, correct it, save the change, close the editor, and reopen my book.

What I'd love to be able to do is select the error using the existing selection functionality, and choose "Replace" (or something similar) from the context menu. That would open a small text entry dialog. I'd type the correction and hit OK. Behind the scenes, the viewer would update the file, the same way it updates the file to track the current reading position.

Is this feasible, and would anyone else find it useful? Or am I the only obsessive around here?

[Divingduck]

Well, maybe not in that way because for my understanding a viewer should be not an editor. But I also often thought there should be a way to mark text like an annotation for using that in the editor for making the changes I like to do later.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Divingduck

But I also often thought there should be a way to mark text like an annotation for using that in the editor for making the changes I like to do later.

It's on the TODO list for the in-browser viewer, see ==>> https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...e/srv/TODO.rst. And IIRC KG has indicated he intends backporting the in-browser features into the stand-alone viewer.

The problem with doing the corrections in the viewer would be the same as Book View (WYSIWYG) editing in Sigil, which has a number of problems. So much so that the current developers often threaten/promise to remove it. KG is well aware of the problems it creates in Sigil, and it was probably a factor in him not including a similar feature in the calibre editor.

BR

[Divingduck]

Yes, I know and to the second yeah, that's why I think too that is not a good idea. But now Kovid need to add an additional point to the list: An editor interface to manage/use annotations for corrections and what ever else we could think about

[Only dreaming around this...] But using this will be a bit tricky too. E.g. think about one want to change thinks in a book where positions are changing in the file during those changes. I like the idea having such a tool

@Kovid, one out and one in to your list

[nqk]

If the Browser Viewer, in the future, will support annotations, which can be exported to a list, something like
text 1=text I;
text 2=text II;
text 3=text III;
text n=text N;

I think we can use Regex Function and Saved Searches to do a batch replacement in Editor. I don't know anything about Python functions but I can make use of existing shared codes to convert the above list to a saved-searches file, which can be imported. It is now cumbersome, but at least it is faster than manually find and replace one by one.

Of course it would be best, I think, if the Browser Viewer and/or Viewer can export the list to .json format which can be directly imported to Editor for use (and then be removed)

[Steven Karp]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

The problem with doing the corrections in the viewer would be the same as Book View (WYSIWYG) editing in Sigil, which has a number of problems. So much so that the current developers often threaten/promise to remove it. KG is well aware of the problems it creates in Sigil, and it was probably a factor in him not including a similar feature in the calibre editor.
BR

Can you expound a little on (or point me to a discussion of) the problems? I don't use Sigil, so I'm not up to speed on the issues.

If it makes a difference, and in case I wasn't clear, I would neither want nor need any ability to edit the layout/HTML. I'm thinking strictly in terms of text editing, and very small chunks of text at that.

That said, I'd be very wary of any sort of batch search/edit/replace functionality. If I find (as happened last night) a spot where the text had "of" instead of "off", I'd just want to add the missing "f" without risking changing every "of" to "off"!

[deback]

I recently edited and formatted four OpenLibrary books by one of my favorite authors. I wanted to make sure there were no remaining errors in the books, so I read each of them using the Calibre editor. While reading, I was able to correct all the remaining errors (in the middle section of the editor) and then hit F9 to save the file each time (F9 is my "save" hotkey set up in Calibre's editor preferences).

Before I started reading each book, I highlighted all the HTML files for the paragraphs, right-clicked on them, and then chose to merge them all into the top file.

After I completed each book, I converted the file, so the HTML files would be recreated.

Before I did each conversion, I did a regex find for all the lines for page-breaks (such as, blahblah_pb(\d+)...) and removed them all.

This worked well, even though it was more of a hassle than just reading the books in ADE and ignoring the errors. Doing this is the only way I know to be able to correct errors as I read the book.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Steven Karp

Can you expound a little on (or point me to a discussion of) the problems? I don't use Sigil, so I'm not up to speed on the issues.

If it makes a difference, and in case I wasn't clear, I would neither want nor need any ability to edit the layout/HTML. I'm thinking strictly in terms of text editing, and very small chunks of text at that.

That said, I'd be very wary of any sort of batch search/edit/replace functionality. If I find (as happened last night) a spot where the text had "of" instead of "off", I'd just want to add the missing "f" without risking changing every "of" to "off"!

A search for "book view" in the Sigil forum should find some issues. I've never used BV, in fact for a a long time I couldn't work out what it was trying to be, until I read a post in the Sigil forum saying it was a WYSIWYG editor (yes I know I should have RTFM).

Maybe KevinH or DiapDealer (Sigil devs) have a summary tucked away on their GIT repo, if not, I'm sure they'll respond to a post asking for details.

BR

[Steven Karp]

Okay, I've spent some time poking around in the Sigil forum.

As I understand it, the major concern seems to be, in essence, "where do you put the cursor" relative to the actual HTML markup that's not visible when looking at a WYSIWYG view.

I see the relevance.

BUT.

In the form I've described the functionality I'd like, I think it's nearly a non-issue. As a general rule, you don't get tags in mid-word. So if the "Typo Corrector" is only available when the user selects a single word (i.e. a string of printable characters bounded by whitespace (or possibly an HTML tag), and you only allow limited space for entry, the chances of screwing up your document are somewhere between slim and infinitesimal.

Really, it's more of a "search and replace" without the "search" than an actual editor.

Does that simplify the problem space enough to make it feasible?

And again, am I the only person obsessive enough to want to fix typos but not obsessive enough to launch the editor?

[kovidgoyal]

THe viewer is never going to have editing features, the closest you will get is annotations, which you can then use to do corrections in an editor.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by Steven Karp

And again, am I the only person obsessive enough to want to fix typos but not obsessive enough to launch the editor?

I fire up the editor at the smallest of provocation (if I'm actually proofing a new version to upload to Project Gutenberg, I'll leave the editor open and switch over from the viewer or my e-reader when I find problems). And I'll dog-ear* pages with typos when I'm on the road and fix them in the editor when I get home


*Kobo lets you just tap the upper-right corner of the screen to dog-ear a page, which bookmarks it for later reference; dunno whether Kindles and other devices do this as well.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

THe viewer is never going to have editing features, the closest you will get is annotations, which you can then use to do corrections in an editor.

I'm annoyed when the viewer modifies my book to add bookmarks, I'd be horrified if it edited the book too.

Having said that, what if you opened the viewer and editor at the same time, would it be helpful to add a feature that would let you click/mark a spot in the text in the viewer and instantly have the editor jump to that spot?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by compurandom

I'm annoyed when the viewer modifies my book to add bookmarks, I'd be horrified if it edited the book too.

Having said that, what if you opened the viewer and editor at the same time, would it be helpful to add a feature that would let you click/mark a spot in the text in the viewer and instantly have the editor jump to that spot?

The Viewer has a preference to NOT place bookmarks inside the file.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by Steven Karp

And again, am I the only person obsessive enough to want to fix typos but not obsessive enough to launch the editor?

I often want to fix typos but I don't want to do it there and then. I'll usually bookmark it and go back later. But then again if I finish the book and I'm unlikely to re-read it, I probably won't go to the effort of a big clean-up.

(Besides the other day I "fixed" some typos only to discover later that they were legitimate alternate spellings.)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by compurandom

[ . . . ] Having said that, what if you opened the viewer and editor at the same time, would it be helpful to add a feature that would let you click/mark a spot in the text in the viewer and instantly have the editor jump to that spot?

- Kovid, would it be possible to add a "Show bookmarks" feature to the Editor's Preview window, with "Next bookmark" and "Previous bookmark" buttons/kb shortcuts.

BR