How to make Sigil live

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I agree with this for the most part. Not because I'm anti-epub3 or anything. The fact of the matter is: changing Sigil into an ePub3 editor probably wouldn't be an insurmountable task. Difficult and very time-consuming, surely, but not insurmountable. I even think there's already a fork out there somewhere doing exactly that. The problem is that to remain truly useful, Sigil would have to be able to create, open, edit and save BOTH ePub2 and ePub3. You'd need to be able do all that as well as being able to convert between the specs (at least the direction of epub2 to epub3). Accomplishing that AND maintaining all the features we've come to know and love is where things would probably get a little too daunting to be practical (not to mention likely).

Yes...I see this as the looming issue. Sigil is really quite excellent as it is for ePUB2. What user_none and the gang have done this past year or so is not short of amazing. Many of the newer tools are just...spiffy. (The reports. I love those, really). The clip editor, etc.

But...as a pro, I see an increasing number of requests for all sorts of books that won't work for ePUB2. "Create your own adventure" books, and books with video and audio (yes, ePUB2 now on iBooks, but how much you want to bet that Apple abandons everything that runs on the first and second-gen iPad, and push up to ePUB3 for their ebooks shortly? I mean, it's not like they are big on supporting anything older than a year, much less 2-3); ditto for Kindle books that do "more," and the like. I fear that despite the general loathing for "immersedition"-type volumes, the demand will grow greater, particularly amongst the reading group with the attention span of gerbils.

Particularly as this type of book (I refer to the dreaded Amanda Havard "The Survivors" Immersedition app/book) can be used to create very useful Cliff's Notes type of books, for those that want the gist or data without the work of actually reading the damned things. I already have a client pushing this type of book to teachers, school administrators, and the like--it can be done (sort of) in ePUB2 and Kindle, but to get all the goodies (pop-ups with Google Maps, Wikipedia pages with information about geographical locations or historical data, etc.), you'll need ePUB3. I fear this type of educational demand alone will push ePUB3 forward.

Because honestly, aside from bells and whistles, and what I personally consider a lot of sizzle and very little steak, I don't see a lot of advancement in ePUB3, not really. Maybe I'm short-sighted. It wouldn't be the first time.

However, back OT: If this happens, most of us will have to either make 'em by hand, or use Sigil to get halfway there, then rip them open and make the rest by hand. OR...find another product. I imagine that Blue Griffon, all things considered, will stay near ePUB3, and upgrade that product shortly. I've never tried it, as they don't seem to want to tell you a bloody thing about it pre-purchase, and there's no trial. Some people seem to love it.

Julian will probably try to bring Jutoh up to spec for ePUB3...but I don't see a lot of MR'ers using Jutoh, myself. AWP? Well...I haven't tried that, either, but based upon what Diap said recently, I might give it a go, if indeed it outputs clean code, if for no other reason than to look for fallbacks, if I can't find a forker. (No...I couldn't resist). But what most of use love Sigil for, and use it for, is that "finishing touch;" most of us clean our HTML elsewhere, using something else, then drop it in, finish it up, and let Sigil make the NCX and OPF for us, which is massively time-saving. Dragging and dropping files, being able to edit images now on the fly...a lot of this is extremely time-saving and handy. Sigil now does a lot of time-consuming heavy lifting...and that has value to anyone.

It's not today I'm worried about. It's ePUB3 and the ever-increasing silly-buggers stuff that keeps showing up in eBooks that has me worried. As is, Sigil is pretty damned wonderful and I think we could even fix the few bits in-house that are still a little tweaky right now; but as we all know, the future comes, eventually.

I remember a wonderful little kluged-together CMS...wish I could think of the name (Article-something, I think), I still have the source around here somewhere, that put together a membership forum, an article CMS, RSS Feeds and something else, almost seamlessly, long before its time...and it was abandoned by its donation-ware creator after the demands for frippery tweaks drove him daft. That, and a lot of others all of us could name, that went the way of the dodo. Tons of 'em.

{sigh}

Hitch

[elibrarian]

Originally Posted by Hitch

However, back OT: ... I imagine that Blue Griffon, all things considered, will stay near ePUB3, and upgrade that product shortly. I've never tried it, as they don't seem to want to tell you a bloody thing about it pre-purchase, and there's no trial. Some people seem to love it.

Julian will probably try to bring Jutoh up to spec for ePUB3...but I don't see a lot of MR'ers using Jutoh, myself. AWP? Well...I haven't tried that, either, but based upon what Diap said recently, I might give it a go, if indeed it outputs clean code, if for no other reason than to look for fallbacks, if I can't find a forker.

More OT:

There *is* a trial for BlueGriffon - just download and install, some features are disabled (I tried it when it was new, didn't like it. To my mind it makes simple things more difficult than necessary - but your mileage may vary. Besides it's ridiculously high priced, and the author has some halfbaked leftovers behind him like NVU, so I guess I didn't trust this to last either. Thinking of it, maybe I should try it again. It's been some time. EDIT: Tried it again, still don't like it. It's really no more than a glorified XHTML-editor, you have to do the hard work yourself, more or less, and then import the files, make the links to TOC and so on. Which makes the price even more ridiculous.).

The Beta of Jutoh 2.05 has some epub 3 features, but the output doesn't validate. But Julian is probably working on it.

AWP does indeed make very clean code, but is still epub 2 only afaik.

Regards,

Kim

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Julian will probably try to bring Jutoh up to spec for ePUB3...but I don't see a lot of MR'ers using Jutoh, myself. AWP? Well...I haven't tried that, either, but based upon what Diap said recently, I might give it a go, if indeed it outputs clean code, if for no other reason than to look for fallbacks, if I can't find a forker. (No...I couldn't resist).

It's true, no one seems to be willing to give a fork.

[Perkin]

I think that epub2 books will still be around for probably the next 10+ years, at least until 60~70% of users current (epub2 only) e-readers have stopped working, and nearly all end-users will then be using some sort of tablet, rather than dedicated e-reader, and can then have multiple apps installed for both epub2 and epub3.

So Sigil' current 7.03 will still be useful for books for that period, and as has been said used for partway of any epub3 creations. So no need to panic for the next 119 months...

Sigil 'as is' is still in good condition.

I don't know C of any sort, but would like to know how 'impossible' [c/w]ould it be to port the project to a more useable language - say Python, are any of the dependencies C++ only? Or could not be re-done in Python. Could it be done in 5-7 tears time? Also adding any new (few) features and fixing known bugs.

Perhaps also creating PySigil3 which would incorporate the epub3 spec with an epub2 import.

Perhaps @user_none is in best position to comment on feasability of that, as he knows the code so well and will know what sort of work would be needed.

You may get a lot more hobbyist contibutors for any PySigil version.

[Toxaris]

You can forget about porting to Python or any other languages. That almost never work, it works for C# and VB.Net (to a certain point), because on a low level it is the same language.

If you want PySigil, it needs to be build up again from the ground.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by elibrarian

More OT:

There *is* a trial for BlueGriffon - just download and install, some features are disabled (I tried it when it was new, didn't like it. To my mind it makes simple things more difficult than necessary - but your mileage may vary. Besides it's ridiculously high priced, and the author has some halfbaked leftovers behind him like NVU, so I guess I didn't trust this to last either. Thinking of it, maybe I should try it again. It's been some time. EDIT: Tried it again, still don't like it. It's really no more than a glorified XHTML-editor, you have to do the hard work yourself, more or less, and then import the files, make the links to TOC and so on. Which makes the price even more ridiculous.).

They do? They didn't when last I looked; they had a trial for the XHTML editor, but not the "epub editor," or whatever they call it. Well, Kim, if you don't like it, I'm not going to bother taking a look. I have come to respect your opinions on these things, even if we occasionally disagree on the odd thing hither and yon.

The Beta of Jutoh 2.05 has some epub 3 features, but the output doesn't validate. But Julian is probably working on it.

Yes, Julian is very diligent. I don't really love the product itself, just because it makes one reinvent the Styles wheel, but, it's a very good end-user/DIY converter, all things considered. I like more finite control than Jutoh has given.

AWP does indeed make very clean code, but is still epub 2 only afaik.

Yes. And again...it's a little bit like reinventing the wheel, isn't it? I mean, if you clean something in Word, first...normally, you'd export the HTML, do some regex in your fave html editor, then to Sigil. This way, AWP, you'd end up doing all your regex in Sigil, right? I mean, clean in Word, put in AWP, I assume some minor stuff in AWP, then export to ePUB....Hmmm....I should have to think about that. I guess I'll try AWP, just to see if it's somewhat equivalent, process-wise, but I don't see it saving us much time. I might be better off just creating clips, or an AHK script to use some of the utilities available out there, but...dang.

Regards,

Kim[/QUOTE]

It's true, no one seems to be willing to give a fork.

Troo, dat. Other people have the Quest for the Holy Grail, now I have the Quest for the Holy Fork.

Hitch

[elibrarian]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yes. And again...it's a little bit like reinventing the wheel, isn't it? I mean, if you clean something in Word, first...normally, you'd export the HTML, do some regex in your fave html editor, then to Sigil. This way, AWP, you'd end up doing all your regex in Sigil, right? I mean, clean in Word, put in AWP, I assume some minor stuff in AWP, then export to ePUB....Hmmm....I should have to think about that. I guess I'll try AWP, just to see if it's somewhat equivalent, process-wise, but I don't see it saving us much time. I might be better off just creating clips, or an AHK script to use some of the utilities available out there, but...dang.
Hitch

You're right, of course, it's sort of crossing the river to get water (danish proverb, don't know the english equivalent) I use AWP sometimes for setting up epic poems, the code made by it is so clean that I can insert my own stylesheet in Sigil afterwards with almost no cleaning-up.

Otherwise we use Notetab with a lot of in-house clips and AHK scripts for keyboard shortcuts to proces the tekst, MS Word only for spellchecking - (the hunspell checker is not good enough for our strange & beautiful language, and no grammar control) -, back to Notetab and last Sigil to polish the job, so to speak

Kim

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Troo, dat. Other people have the Quest for the Holy Grail, now I have the Quest for the Holy Fork.

This persistent business of forking has me perplexed. Why do it? John is offering to do code management, which is still very valuable on a project of this size. Why take future changes elsewhere?

[kacir]

Originally Posted by elibrarian

In a fit of depression over the present state of Sigil development I used at couple of hours yesterday to idly search for possible alternatives - there being of course none right out of the box.

I have had an opportunity to briefly use program called Jutoh. It looked very promising back then, even on Linux. There is, of course, also Windows and Mac version and even FreeBSD.

By the way, I do not think that Sigil has a nasty bug preventing the use or missing important features. It can be used for years and years to come as a feature complete program.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by rkomar

This persistent business of forking has me perplexed. Why do it? John is offering to do code management, which is still very valuable on a project of this size. Why take future changes elsewhere?

If you read the reasoning from Hitch, you would understand. It is very logical. She might need changes specific for her company. And, to put it blunt, if she has to hire someone to do it, she should be free to do with the changes what she wants.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

If you read the reasoning from Hitch, you would understand. It is very logical. She might need changes specific for her company. And, to put it blunt, if she has to hire someone to do it, she should be free to do with the changes what she wants.

Acctually, no, the GPL is there to make sure one can't do "whatever one want".

Read https://github.com/user-none/Sigil/b...er/COPYING.txt for more info

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Acctually, no, the GPL is there to make sure one can't do "whatever one want".

Read https://github.com/user-none/Sigil/b...er/COPYING.txt for more info

Actually you can for private use.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Actually you can for private use.

Yes (as far as i understand anyway).

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

If you read the reasoning from Hitch, you would understand. It is very logical. She might need changes specific for her company. And, to put it blunt, if she has to hire someone to do it, she should be free to do with the changes what she wants.

Sure, but this was always true, even when the sigil team was in full swing. Forking your own private version and trying to keep it up to date with patches from other versions is a pain in the neck. It doesn't take long before the conflicts start appearing, and then you need a programmer who is expert in your and all versions that the patches are coming from. You also don't get any patches from those private versions others have forked for similar logical reasons. And you're probably not going to get much help from those working on the free code, since they'll resent you for not giving your improvements back. So, you're going to end up paying for a lot more programming than just the private changes you wanted. It doesn't make sense to me, unless it's really important that your private changes aren't shared.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Sure, but this was always true, even when the sigil team was in full swing. Forking your own private version and trying to keep it up to date with patches from other versions is a pain in the neck. It doesn't take long before the conflicts start appearing, and then you need a programmer who is expert in your and all versions that the patches are coming from. You also don't get any patches from those private versions others have forked for similar logical reasons. And you're probably not going to get much help from those working on the free code, since they'll resent you for not giving your improvements back. So, you're going to end up paying for a lot more programming than just the private changes you wanted. It doesn't make sense to me, unless it's really important that your private changes aren't shared.

{sigh}

I am not discussing forking Sigil for private use for private special reasons. I am simply discussing a fork of Sigil for the private use of my company, should a) Sigil stop being viable for my purposes, which are commercial, because it i) is not kept current with the changes in the industry or ii) user_none gets tired of being the flag-bearer on very difficult code and cannot find anyone to continue to contribute time/hours/whatever to keep the program up to date, and b) for my own purposes, on my own nickel, if needed, with no obligation to provide the code, or support therefor, to anyone else.

Your assumption, rkomar, is that the public team--the folks working on the free code--will continue to do so. My assumption is that the more likely outcome is that they will not. user_none has already made it pretty clear that he personally will not. On his blog, he's stated that no successors in interest have shown up, and the donations (of code) made by persons so far have achieved what those individuals wanted, and they've now moved on to other things.

Thus, given the terms of the GPL, which are fairly restrictive, my options, it would seem, as a person who owns a private company are to support Sigil entirely, or largely, with my own funds, to keep donating all the code to the public, and thus being open to the rather endless demands for support, changes, improvements, etc., which I have zero intention of doing, or spend my own money to support the code for my own company. I've already donated a chunk of change to Sigil over the past few years--as I've said bluntly, far more than I would have paid for commercial software in enough licenses for all my crewmembers thus far. And, in fact, other than PCRE, I don't believe I've asked for a single feature.

If other (code) supporters show up, I'm perfectly delighted to continue as we have--my company will continue to donate heavily to the OS code that we've all enjoyed to date. In hindsight, I'm sorry I ever mentioned forking; I should have just gone about MY business without saying a word. Other than my usual contributions to the forum, this is my last word on this topic. OS Sigil can live or die on its own. If it lives, I'll continue as I have, as I said. If it doesn't, what I do, in this matter, from this moment forward, is my own choice, and from this moment forward, I shan't be discussing it publicly.

Hitch