[solved] Plugins throw an error

[Banjo]

Greetings,

I am new to Sigil. I have been trying to install and run some plugins, and they do not work. The plugins appear to install OK, and they appear in the plugins menu, but when I try to run them I get an error that says

Error: A plugin by that name does not exist.

I installed the testplugin, and it appears in the menu Plugins=>Edit=>testplugin

The plugin is installed in the directory

/home/brian/.local/share/sigil-ebook/sigil/plugins
.
└── testplugin
    ├── plugin.py
    └── plugin.xml

I am running Sigil 0.9.5 on Linux Mint 18.1

Anybody know how to fix this?

Thanks,
Banjo
(_)=='=~

[DiapDealer]

KDE Desktop?

[Banjo]

Yes. KDE Plasma 5.8.9

System:    Host: LinuxMain Kernel: 4.4.0-135-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.8.9
           Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena

[DiapDealer]

Thought as much. There's a bug in KDE's KDEPlatformTheme plugin that affects Qt programs (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337491). The short of it is that it injects accelerator shortcuts (&) into the menu text of applications. That menu text is what we (Sigil) use to know which plugin to launch from the menu--so this messes with that functionality (and the functionality of a lot of other Qt applications affected by it).

I added a workaround for it in Sigil 0.9.8 that seems to do the trick, but unfortunately, the version of Sigil included in Xenial-based repositories is Sigil 0.9.5.

There are a few things you can do.

1) Assign plugins to the plugin menu button shortcuts and launch them that way (you only have 3 plugin shortcut buttons available on 0.9.5, though).

2) Build/install a newer version of Sigil yourself from source.

3) Install a newer version of Sigil from a third-party repository (there are several reputable launchpad repos that provide newer versions of Sigil).

There's also some mention of something that can be added to a "kdeglobals" file (in the above bug report comments), but I cannot vouch for its accuracy or effectiveness.

[DiapDealer]

Further info (untested by me) on that kdeglobals workaround is that adding:

[Development]
AutoCheckAccelerators=false

to ~/.config/kdeglobals should work.

[Banjo]

Thanks for the quick response.

I will look into your solutions. I am investigating how to build from source, but I have not worked through the details yet. I would like to build inside an IDE, but the instructions online address command line builds.

I will see if one of the other workarounds will suffice until I can get my act together on a build.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Banjo

I would like to build inside an IDE, but the instructions online address command line builds.

That's because a command line build is the easiest way to build sigil. An IDE adds levels of complexity and overhead that are unnecessary. Once all prerequisites are met, you configure Sigil with one command, you build sigil with one command and you install sigil with one command.

I suppose it could all be set up within QtCreator (configured to use CMake instead of .pro files), but I see no real advantage in doing so. *shrug*

[Banjo]

All very true, but I like to poke around in things and see how they work. I spent too many years looking through core dumps with gdb.

Banjo
(_)=='=~

[DiapDealer]

C++ code is a far cry from core dumps, but I get your drift.

[Banjo]

I thought that I would update this thread to follow up on what has worked for me to solve this problem, just in case someone else is having the same issue.

Running plugins from the buttons did work, but as mentioned, there are only three buttons, and the tooltips do not identify which plugin is assigned to which button.

So I tried the workaround, adding the following:

[Development]
AutoCheckAccelerators=false

to ~/.config/kdeglobals and that fixed the problem. I can now run the plugins from the plugin menu.

Once again, here are my system specs

Host: LinuxMain Kernel: 4.4.0-135-generic x86_64 (64 bit) 
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.8.9 Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena

Thanks for the help.
Banjo
(_)=='=~

[DiapDealer]

Thanks for verifying that the ~/.config/kdeglobals entry workaround does in fact work! I'll try to remember to make a note of it in the Linux section of Sigil's github wiki.

[Banjo]

How do I mark this SOLVED? On most forums you edit the first post, but that doesn't seem to work here.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Banjo

How do I mark this SOLVED? On most forums you edit the first post, but that doesn't seem to work here.

Another moderator took care of it for you, but marking threads "solved" just really isn't common practice around here.