The limits of Sigil: file size, links, pages?

[mt.msla]

Was working and Sigil started dragging; then closed with no errors visible.

Is there a limit to file size? Or is there a limit to the number of links in an ebook? Or pages listed in the Book Browser?

I appreciate any information. I can't help but think of when the game Myst was being developed and the question posted to the folks at Bryce were asked how many points could be in their 3d models. And the folks at Bryce were astounded by the game devs for what they were doing.

Thank you for the program, I am not complaining! I guess I should save more often.

[KevinH]

There are no hard coded limits in Sigil since we worked around Chrome's 2 gig limitation per chapter. There are of course memory and processor limitations depending on your machine, operating system, etc.

That said, Sigil's editor is line based so having super large files without line end characters will make it crawl. Use of Preview which reloads the chapter at set intervals after each change will make it crawl as well with huge files. Enabling automatic spell check of huge files also slows things down.

So adding proper line ends, properly splitting contents into reasonable sized files, turning off auto spellcheck, turning off preview (or make it non-visible until it is needed), all help. As will using a computer with lots of ram and processing power, that has an OS whose security software does not cause memory leaks of pages used by jit compilers for javascript (ie. not Windows 10 and earlier without Microsoft's recent fix) etc will help as well.

The key to Sigil is to remember what the program is designed to do. It is meant to be a tool to help epub devs create reflowable epubs meant to be distributed to actual reading devices.

That means epub devs should:

1, keep the size of each chapter file reasonable (the entire book in one chapter is very poor design that will break many ereaders or make page turning horribly slow)

2. should not try to create monster book collections in one epub for the same reasons

3. should produce reflowable not fixed format layouts, use pdf for fixed format layouts

4. should minimize image file sizes whenever possible

5. should minimize additional fonts to those actually needed, etc

6. should understand and properly use shared css files

7. should design their content to be Accessible

etc.

Keeping all of that in mind, if you are not working with single huge files of content, and are using an up-to-date computer with lots of ram (32 gig or more) and are seeing slowdowns after long use (and after understanding the above) please provide a testcase epub, and report your Sigil version, platform and os version. Also try disabling anti-virus and related software for Sigil, look for and remove any broken system extensions or system utilities that interfere with Sigil and Qt, etc.

Once I have a testcase and can reproduce your slowdown, I will look to see what if anything can be done to speed things up or avoid the issue.

[mt.msla]

Thank you @KevinH.

[theducks]

There are folk that still believe they need to create/edit a book as a single (internal) monolithic file.
That is untrue. Sigil (and other book editors) are designed to work with the pieces of the whole. Just look at the Search and Replace scope (setting).

Rearrangements are simple:
Split out the piece, drag it to its new order (split that file if needed to insert other than end). Merge the sections (use the Book browser for this).

FWIW I started with a reader that 260K was the 'page' limit. That included Images and fonts. The book could be bigger (<2M file system limit)

[Notjohn]

Speaking of monster books, I have À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) on my Fire tablet both in French and in English. The novel is usually published in six volumes of roughly 600 pages each, and is conventionally regarded as containing a million words. I bought both of them cheaply on Amazon (the translation is the 1920s classic by C K Scott Moncrieff).

I've never had a problem reading or searching either "book", and Proust's chapters are very long indeed. To be sure, I haven't opened either one on Sigil, but I can testify that the Fire tablet can handle giga-books easily.

[DiapDealer]

Sigil would probably not handle such a monstrosity well at all. "Works for me" is not really evidence that reasonable standards were used to create it.

Are you reading the Kindle version on your Fire tablet, or using an epub with an app? If the former, it's not surprising at all that a binary format, like the various Kindle formats, would perform admirably regardless of size. Individual file sizes are not really relevant to binary Kindlebooks. Kindle apps/readers don't load entire flows (files) into memory like epub rendering engines do.