Adding new chapters the easy way??

[useroo]

Hi all,
while i can work easily with Sigil for most of the job, at present i mock around the bush to add a new Chapter and i think i am doing something wrong or better that i am missing some vital bit of "how-to" information.

I create my chapter in HTML.
I open the file in 1 sperate Sigil window and save as .epub.
So far so good.

In another Sigil window i have the actual, quite large book that i am putting together chapter by chapter.
In this Sigil window i find nothing that would let me simply insert a new .epub or .html file into a new Section...xhtml Chapter break page, so i basically copy and paste from the chapter by itself in the second Sigil window to the new Section page.

Sure, that works somehow, but there must be another way or??

The trouble with doing it the above described way is that images can't be copied and pasted along with text for instance, and that Sigil has no "Select all" option in it's "Edit" menu like almost every other software program on the planet has.

Please let me know how i can do this better, thanks.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by useroo

Hi all,
while i can work easily with Sigil for most of the job, at present i mock around the bush to add a new Chapter and i think i am doing something wrong or better that i am missing some vital bit of "how-to" information.

I create my chapter in HTML.
I open the file in 1 sperate Sigil window and save as .epub.
So far so good.

In another Sigil window i have the actual, quite large book that i am putting together chapter by chapter.
In this Sigil window i find nothing that would let me simply insert a new .epub or .html file into a new Section...xhtml Chapter break page, so i basically copy and paste from the chapter by itself in the second Sigil window to the new Section page.

Sure, that works somehow, but there must be another way or??

The trouble with doing it the above described way is that images can't be copied and pasted along with text for instance, and that Sigil has no "Select all" option in it's "Edit" menu like almost every other software program on the planet has.

Please let me know how i can do this better, thanks.

Many of 'The Standard' key strokes work in Sigil.
Ctrl-A =Select All


Tip (if your new work use the same stylesheet)
Paste your NEW chapter at the END of the Existing one, Then Split the chapter.

All the 'boilerplate' parts of the HTML will be included on the new page. that would not happen if you just pasted into a 'new' page.


If you use 'Add Existing' in the book browser: It will insert any Stylesheet (and renumber it if needed) along wit the HTML file. It does not test the stylesheet to discover if it is common to the various pieces..

[useroo]

Just played a bit around with your tip on using
'Add Existing' in the book browser "theducks".
If i bring in a html file it remains in the book browser as html, is not converted into xhtml - how come??
If i use the converted epub file instead of the html original Sigil does not even add it to the list but rather further down below into the Misc folder.
This confuses me now, shouldn't any file added to the "text" folder automatically end up as xhtml and why do epubs not go in there??

Since you bring up style sheets, i use the very very old Netscape 4 Composer for this projects text, image s and layout (yep, has some advantages to keep old software that is pure and simple...) - and there where no style sheet's to NS 4 back then.

So my question would be; if i only deal with pure HTML styling, do i need to worry about any CSS, or does Sigil anyway change code around? (i notice it pop's a good number of INLINE CSS right into the xhtml code, but that is easy to handle...

Originally Posted by theducks

Many of 'The Standard' key strokes work in Sigil.
Ctrl-A =Select All


Tip (if your new work use the same stylesheet)
Paste your NEW chapter at the END of the Existing one, Then Split the chapter.

All the 'boilerplate' parts of the HTML will be included on the new page. that would not happen if you just pasted into a 'new' page.


If you use 'Add Existing' in the book browser: It will insert any Stylesheet (and renumber it if needed) along wit the HTML file. It does not test the stylesheet to discover if it is common to the various pieces..

[Toxaris]

Why would the code be converted to xhtml? Sigil will not convert. Then again, there is probably not much to change...

You can only import txt and (x)html into Sigil for the text folder. Everything else goes either to their respective folder (images, fonts, stylesheets) or to the misc. I am not surprised that it ended up in the misc folder.

I would advise using stylesheets. You could everything in the HTML file itself, but that would include massive repeating yourself over and over again. Internal stylesheets could be used, but they are not usable across HTML files.

I am a little curious why you use Sigil to create a chapter separately and then add it to another Sigil session. You can just add a chapter by right-clicking on the text folder and say either 'create new' or 'use existing'.

[theducks]

And Why worry. Sigil will wrap HTML in the needed boilerplate to make it complient.

Style sheets are NOT only for (or required) XHTML
IMHO
Stylesheets make BIG projects simple(r) by having a single place to create a 'style' that can be used many places (and is easy to fix if you change your mind).