How about a plugin to hyphenate?

[KevinH]

I disagree.
It can easily be used as an output plugin so that people with devices that do understand soft hyphens have access to them, it could be used for as part of the kindle gen output process if someone so desired. It is just a plugin. No one forces you to use it.

FWIW - JSWolf, you are fighting a losing battle for "what works or doesn't" in your particular e-reader of choice. The draft for epub 3.1 is out and they are moving to allow pure html5 as used in a browser to have equal footing to to xhtml for epub3.1 publications.
This allows future readers to simply use open web technologies based on browser engines (Gecko, Webkit, Blink, etc). So if soft hyphens work in most browsers now, they will most likely work for most newer e-readers coming down the rode.

I think the IDPF has finally realized, they are fighting a losing battle with epub 3.0 with its need for xhtml and proprietary elements like epub:switch, epub:type and epub:trigger and the like. The IDPF seems to be jumping ship for the open web standards with aria roles replacing epub:type, and the removal of all proprietary xhtml elements, and proposing to accept full html5 alongside xhtml.

If you are interested see the Editor's draft for epub 3.1 here:

http://idpf.org/news/first-editors-d...ble-for-review

Frankly, I think the days of the standalone e-reader are numbered anyway. Everyone is moving to tablet like devices with web-baser browser stacks.

KevinH

[Toxaris]

I hope not. I hope that standalone e-readers will remain for quite some time, or at least e-ink devices. I do not read well on tablets. I don't like the screens for reading, the weight of the device, most reading apps and of course the daily charging requirements... Tablets that have more real uses are also a lot bigger than most e-readers. My e-reader fits inside my coat pockets, tablets not so much.

I will take a look at the ePUB 3.1 draft, I hope it is much better than the 3.0 specs. Thanks for the links.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I disagree.
It can easily be used as an output plugin so that people with devices that do understand soft hyphens have access to them, it could be used for as part of the kindle gen output process if someone so desired. It is just a plugin. No one forces you to use it.

FWIW - JSWolf, you are fighting a losing battle for "what works or doesn't" in your particular e-reader of choice. The draft for epub 3.1 is out and they are moving to allow pure html5 as used in a browser to have equal footing to to xhtml for epub3.1 publications.
This allows future readers to simply use open web technologies based on browser engines (Gecko, Webkit, Blink, etc). So if soft hyphens work in most browsers now, they will most likely work for most newer e-readers coming down the rode.

One really good reason not to have this plugin is that Sigil does not work with soft-hyphens. It thinks words with soft-hyphens are not spelled correctly. Also, you cannot search. So having an ePub with soft-hyphens in Sigil just won't work well.

ePub 3.1 is not yet developed. It doesn't exist. Sigil doesn't handle ePub 3.1. So until it's a reality and Sigil works with ePub with soft-hyphens, this plugin doesn't need to be written. People will use it and it will cause all kinds of problems where those problems don't need to be.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by rubeus

Again: no. My ADE is showing soft hyphens all the time, regardless if they are at the end of a line or in the middle of a line. If its there, its been showed. Thats the reason why i still stick to this version of ADE, as it shows almost everything like my PRS650.

Well, watch the following screenshots of my ADE 2.0:



The ebook showed is full of soft hyphens and they look fine in ADE.

Regards
Rubén

[KevinH]

JSWolf,

That is why I said as an **output** plugin. BTW, removing soft-hyphens is nothing more than a global find/replace. Furthermore it is trivial to make spellchecking in Sigil work with soft-hyphens by simply adding a decode routine that removes the & s h y ; soft hyphen before checking that word.

As for epub 3.1, it is a draft. Nothing supports it yet. It does not exist. But it may well be the future of many ebooks.

So yes a soft-hyphen output plugin is "reasonable" and easily "doable".
You can choose to use it or not. And most tablet based devices use web stacks now and they probably handle it just fine if based on a browser engine that already supports it.

KevinH

[DiapDealer]

For the record: I have no objection to a plugin like this existing, or users who know the ramifications of its use utilizing it. I was just voicing my personal opinion that I wouldn't want to see book-sellers using it to force hyphenation on readers who may not be able to override it. I can't stop them from doing so, of course, but I just don't like things used in ebook creation that takes choices away from end-users (or foils a feature of their chosen device/app that that prefer).

So write one, post one, use it, or don't--no sweat off my back. But ask me if I think book-sellers should pollute markup with a bajilion soft-hyphens just to "game" a particular device/platform, and you have my answer.

[KevinH]

Hi DiapDealer,

FWIW ... I agree completely. But a sizeable portion of Sigil users are simply ebook lovers who want to modify their ebooks to work and play well with their particular device. In that setting, a plugin like this might prove useful to people. I am not advocating for total use of soft hyphens by any publisher. Decent reading systems should have their own hyphenation software the user could turn on or off and not require the text to come "pre-hyphenated" with soft hyphens everyplace. Their internal hyphenator should do the trick only when an if a long word ends up on a boundary when reflowing the document.

Take care,

KevinH

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

For the record: I have no objection to a plugin like this existing, or users who know the ramifications of its use utilizing it. I was just voicing my personal opinion that I wouldn't want to see book-sellers using it to force hyphenation on readers who may not be able to override it. I can't stop them from doing so, of course, but I just don't like things used in ebook creation that takes choices away from end-users (or foils a feature of their chosen device/app that that prefer).

So write one, post one, use it, or don't--no sweat off my back. But ask me if I think book-sellers should pollute markup with a bajilion soft-hyphens just to "game" a particular device/platform, and you have my answer.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by KevinH

FWIW ... I agree completely. But a sizeable portion of Sigil users are simply ebook lovers who want to modify their ebooks to work and play well with their particular device. In that setting, a plugin like this might prove useful to people.

Yep. I have no trouble with that. I think someone probably should make the plugin. That's how I think something like this SHOULD be used. But the OP made it sound like they might be preparing books for distribution -- which is the only reason I voiced any concern at all.

[jbacelar]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Did you define the language of your epub with lang="es" (or xml:lang="es") in the <html> tags?

Glup!... I did not do it systematically, big mistake.
With the homework done, ADE works perfectly.

¡Muchas gracias Rubén!

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by jbacelar

Glup!... I did not do it systematically, big mistake.
With the homework done, ADE works perfectly.

¡Muchas gracias Rubén!

¡De nada jbacelar! Me alegra saber que dicha sugerencia solucionó tu problema.

[dhdurgee]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yep. I have no trouble with that. I think someone probably should make the plugin. That's how I think something like this SHOULD be used. But the OP made it sound like they might be preparing books for distribution -- which is the only reason I voiced any concern at all.

Nope, simply wanting to tailor things for the best reading experience on my Kindle. I should probably note that I am probably not going to be using Sigil as much for this as I thought.

I was using Sigil for two major purposes:

1) to make documents from web content for later reading on my Kindle
2) to tweak books for better reading on my Kindle (add covers, etc.)

It was brought to my attention that Calibre is a better tool for (2) above, so I installed it and am checking it out. It may serve my purposes. If so, I might be interested in a Calibre version of this plug-in for those books.

As noted, the reason for this plug-in is to deal with a weakness of the ebook reader. If at some point there is a better supported format, such as kfx, then once that format can be created there might be no further need for the plugin. This of course assumes that the conversion process to the new format incorporates these features.

Thank you for all the consideration given this issue.

Dave

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by dhdurgee

Nope, simply wanting to tailor things for the best reading experience on my Kindle. I should probably note that I am probably not going to be using Sigil as much for this as I thought.

I was using Sigil for two major purposes:

1) to make documents from web content for later reading on my Kindle
2) to tweak books for better reading on my Kindle (add covers, etc.)

It was brought to my attention that Calibre is a better tool for (2) above, so I installed it and am checking it out. It may serve my purposes. If so, I might be interested in a Calibre version of this plug-in for those books.

Yes, calibre is generally a better tool for (bulk!!!) post-processing of ebooks and ebook metadata for various devices.
It also has a recipes feature for automatically scraping web content, which might be a better idea...

But have you forgotten that there already is a calibre version of this plugin? It's the thing that prompted you to start this thread...

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by dhdurgee

Nope, simply wanting to tailor things for the best reading experience on my Kindle. I should probably note that I am probably not going to be using Sigil as much for this as I thought.

My mistake. No offense intended.

If you're primarily looking to tweak azw3s for reading on your Kindle device, I agree there's probably some calibre features that may work better for you in that regard. Not that I would discourage anyone from using Sigil or anything ... but if you're starting with an azw3 and want to end up with an azw3. There may be more streamlined ways to go about it. Do give the plugin (if someone creates it) a shot on Sigil, though.

[dhdurgee]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Yes, calibre is generally a better tool for (bulk!!!) post-processing of ebooks and ebook metadata for various devices.
It also has a recipes feature for automatically scraping web content, which might be a better idea...

But have you forgotten that there already is a calibre version of this plugin? It's the thing that prompted you to start this thread...

Yes, I HAD forgotten it! I will definitely check it out now.

Dave

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yep. I have no trouble with that. I think someone probably should make the plugin. That's how I think something like this SHOULD be used. But the OP made it sound like they might be preparing books for distribution -- which is the only reason I voiced any concern at all.

The OP posted in another thread about making Kindle eBooks and wants to use this proposed plugin to hyphenate the ePub so when it's converted, the Kindle eBooks automatically have hyphenation. This is instead of loading the Kindle eBook into Calibre and using the already existing Hyphenate This! plugin.

Given that there is a solution that works, I don't see a need for this plugin.