Feature Request

[Interrobang]

I like the availability of an external XHTML editor. I think it would be helpful if a link to the editor would appear on the menu when you right-click an .xhtml file.

Also, I would love to see the ability to specify an external CSS editor, with matching context menu option.

Thanks for all your wonderful work on the program to date.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Interrobang

I think it would be helpful if a link to the editor would appear on the menu when you right-click an .xhtml file.

Also, I would love to see the ability to specify an external CSS editor, with matching context menu option.

Thanks for all your wonderful work on the program to date.

Have you tried configuring an external editor via the right-click->Open With yet? You can configure up to five (I think) editors for each file type. Once configured, they will show up in the right-click "Open With" menu. Everything you're wanting is already available.

[Interrobang]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Have tried configuring an external editor via the right-click->Open With yet? You can configure up to five (I think) editors for each file type. Once configured, they will show up in the right-click "Open With" menu. Everything you're wanting is already available.

When I saw the "Open With" menu option, I thought it was the OS based one and not something separate within Sigil. Since you can configure an external XHTML editor with a button on the toolbar, I thought I needed to ask for another option for CSS files.

Still, maybe you can look at adding the option anyway in the future. I think it would be more convenient than having to open a sub-sub menu to trigger the editor. You could even just use the same toolbar icon since the file type would determine which editor to call.

Thanks for the reply.

[DiapDealer]

I doubt we'll be seeing much change to how the Open With Feature works. Book Browser may look like a regular Tree View of the file system, but it's highly specialized to work with Sigil/Epub. It's not going to mirror the underlying OS context menu. We're not likely to add potentially 5 different shortcuts for external editors directly to the main level of an already quite busy context menu.

Plus the External Html Editor toolbar button is completely separate from the Open With feature. There will be no interaction between the two features. The Toolbar button was mainly added for use with PageEdit--which allows all xhtml files in the epub to be viewed and edited.

The Open With feature is the one for customizing multiple external editors to work with different filetypes.

[Interrobang]

What about an option that would allow you to select one or more xhtml files and copy the contents of the h1 tag into the title tag?

<title></title>
<h1>My Title</h1>

[Perform function]

<title>My Title</title>
<h1>My Title</h1>

Or would that be easier to do as a plugin? If so, maybe @Doitsu could give me some pointers on how to write plugins.

Thanks
Tim

[KevinH]

It already exists in my plugin AccessAide. Alternatively, this is simple to do as a plugin if you are interested in learning to develop your own plugins.

[Interrobang]

Originally Posted by KevinH

It already exists in my plugin AccessAide. Alternatively, this is simple to do as a plugin if you are interested in learning to develop your own plugins.

Just point me in the right direction to where the writing plugins docs are, and, if you could, maybe point out some basic examples to learn from.

I'm sure at some point I'll be able to give back to the community by writing a plugin that others will find useful.

Thanks

[Interrobang]

Originally Posted by KevinH

It already exists in my plugin AccessAide. Alternatively, this is simple to do as a plugin if you are interested in learning to develop your own plugins.

I just tried your Access-Aide plugin.

Here are my results:

<title>Start</title>
<h1>Chapter One</h1>

<title></title>
<h1>Chapter Two</h1>

Only chapter one's title was changed, and that was to 'Start'. The remaining chapters' title tags are still blank. Was it supposed to copy the title info between tags?

Thanks

[KevinH]

No it takes the titles from the ncx or nav titles for that file. All epubs needs a valid ncx or nav but not all epubs properly use heading tags (unfortunately). Have you built an ncx or nav? Access Aide is meant to be run on almost finished epubs to add accessibility features.

Try using Sigil tools to create or update the table of contents (TOC) before running Access Aide and it will use your headings tags to build the ncx, nav.

[KevinH]

There is a Sigil Plugin framework epub in the docs/ folder on our github site. A forum thread devoted to plugin development and a plugin index with links to lots of existing plugin examples exist here in our forum.

[Interrobang]

Originally Posted by KevinH

No it takes the titles from the ncx or nav titles for that file. All epubs needs a valid ncx or nav but not all epubs properly use heading tags (unfortunately). Have you built an ncx or nav? Access Aide is meant to be run on almost finished epubs to add accessibility features.

When you said Access-Aide did what I wanted, which was to populate the title tags from the h1 tags, I gave it a try before I did anything with the ToC. I will certainly use it on the epub once all the other steps are done. I guess for now, I'll manually fill in the title tags while I work on a plugin.

Thanks again for the info.

[KevinH]

FWIW, because the ncx and nav are built from heading tags h1, h2, etc, it effectively does copy h1 tags into the title. It just does that after the epub content chapters are set, not during. Building a TOC from the headings is trivial in Sigil using the Create TOC.

In fact, because of joining and splitting files, I tend to always leave the title tag empty until after the epub files and content have been determined and a ncx or nav exists because Access-Aide will not overwrite existing title tags, just fill in empty tags.

[User_Z]

Hello.

This topic turned out to be the closest in every sense to my proposal (only on the 2nd page out of 156).

The offer is the following:
- Add to the Sigil code editor the ability to open files in tabs in two different areas. It's like in the Notepad++ editor, when the screen can be divided into two areas, in each of which I can open the files I need in tabs and edit them at the same time, independently of each other.

A very useful and necessary feature for a modern editor. You can list many options for using this mode.

What do you think?

[DiapDealer]

That's not really feasible in my opinion. Creating multiple active CodeView widgets would create a nightmare of signals to map and manage. And as mentioned before: we're not interested in turning Sigil/CodeView into a full-featured xhtml IDE. If you need that sort of functionality, that's what the two External Editor features are for.

People keep saying "Modern Editor" when what they mean full-featured. Sigil's not ever going to be a full-featured "modern" xhtml editor. We're not interested in reinventing that particular wheel.

[KevinH]

Or move to macOS and open two independent MainWindows and copy and paste between them till your heart is content.

I am in full agreement with DiapDealer in this. Sigil's CodeView has enough features. Trying to keep up with the editor of the day is not going to happen. That is why "Open With" was invented.