SIGIL, free ePub editor

[Curt]

I wanted to test Sigil, but felt even more unsure than normal, so I searched our forum for Sigil, and found nothing. Then I searched for epub editor and finally for ebook editor, but still found nothing! This is quite a surprise to me; I really expected someone had said something about these subjects. But it seems not. http://code.google.com/p/sigil/




Well, I still know very little about Sigil, but I can tell that it is an ePub ebook editor, for all major operating systems. It is free. They have a fine user's manual. And the editor is merely in version 0.2 ...


SIGIL, free ePub editor

Sigil is a multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor. It is designed to edit books in ePub format.

Now what does it have to offer...

    * Free and open source software under GPLv3
    * Multi-platform: runs on Windows, Linux and Mac
    * Full Unicode support: everything you see in Sigil is in UTF-16
    * Full EPUB spec support
    * WYSIWYG editing

    * Multiple Views: Book View, Code View and Split View
    * Metadata editor with full support for all possible metadata entries (more than 200) with full descriptions for each
    * Table Of Contents editor
    * Multi-level TOC support
    * Book View fully supports the display of any XHTML document possible under the OPS spec

    * SVG support
    * Basic XPGT support
    * Advanced automatic conversion of all imported documents to Unicode
    * Currently imports TXT, HTML and EPUB files; more will be added with time
    * Embedded HTML Tidy; all imported documents are thoroughly cleaned; changing views cleans the document so no matter how much you screw up your code, it will fix it (usually)

    * An actually usable user interface
    * Native C++ application
    * Bugs
    * And a lot more...

SIGIL, free ePub editor

Don't forget to read the online manual!.
If you wish to discuss Sigil, feel free to do so on the Sigil subforum on MobileRead.
Also check out the wiki pages, especially the installation instructions.

For those who want more up-to-date information on Sigil's development, you can always take a look at the live ChangeLog. That file is linked directly from the repository, and it is updated as bugs are fixed and features are added.

You can also subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds.
If you found a bug or want to request a feature, read the ReportingIssues wiki page.
Also feel free to check out Sigil's development blog.

SIGIL, free ePub editor

[Gothi[c]]

That looks like a neat app. Nice find.
I've been using lyx for that type of stuff, and have since been hooked on the WYSIWYM concept instead over WYSIWYG - but I definitively plan to give this one a try

[Curt]

-your words made me once more try to test LyX + TeX. I think this was the fifth time! As usual I was given the "TeX was not fully installed, would you like to run the installer again? Hey, the folder is not empty; I cannot do anything!" stupid talk, but this time I persevered. And finally after an hour or so, I could admire this output:




Quite frankly I think LyX + La/MikTeX-whatever is based on a neardish almost stupid installer system. But seeing this output I can for the first time begin to understand why some swear to LyX & TeX. All the other times that I've tried to test the combination, one or the other didn't install properly.

[rxantos]

There is a portable version of lyx/tex

http://code.google.com/p/lytex/

This makes installing both easier.

[ewemoa]

Thanks for posting about Sigil.  I've been trying it out and though it seems a bit rough around the edges, it seems to be coming along ok. 

(Just wish there were a way to provide feedback to the developer without having to "sign in" to Google -- may be there is a way and I haven't found it...)

[Eóin]

Curt, when starting from a clean install MikTeX + LyX is quite easy. But when it comes to recovering from an old or failed install the MikTeX installer leaves a lot to be desired.

[Curt]

-yes, but  IIRC  back then I could only test LyX if I also installed MikTeX. This limitation has now gone - at least, I had no problems when I tested LyX just a few weeks ago.

[Curt]

from "Making epub happen. The development blog of Sigil, the epub editor"

http://sigildev.blog...and-uh-bit-more.html
excerpt:

An analysis of EPUB3 (and, uh, a bit more)

... In EPUB2, JavaScript execution was under RFC2119 “SHOULD NOT”; for all intents and purposes, this means forbidden. It’s not a “MUST NOT”, but still.

In EPUB3, JS support is now optional. This means you can start using JS in your epub books, yippee! You can now go all Web 2.0 on you e-books. I’ll talk about why this is bad in a moment, but first I’ll like to give credit where credit is due and note that the spec text explicitly mentions  that content creators should avoid using JS if at all possible. Here’s a quote:

   >> Scripting consequently should be used only when essential to the User experience, as it greatly increases the likelihood that content will not be portable across all Reading Systems and creates barriers to accessibility and content reusability. <<

Sadly, no one will listen to this. But at least the IDPF has this warning, even though it won't do shit. Now that JS support has moved from "should not" to "optional", people will go out of their way to redefine "essential to the user experience" so that it includes JS. This will break horribly. We'll get epub books created solely for iBooks and all other Reading Systems can go to hell.

Progressive enhancement? We will never see it. The people who create epub books are not web developers, they work in publishing. They have no idea what writing code for the web looks like (or writing code at all for that matter), so we'll see hacks upon hacks that work on iBooks pretty much by accident and on nothing else. I've always said that the day that the epub specs start mandating JS support is the day those same specs jump the shark. We're not quite there yet, but the gates of Hell are now slightly ajar.

This is what will happen:
   1. EPUB3 brings "optional" JS support.

   2. Publishers start adding crappy JS to their books hoping it will make them "stand out", "embrace the future", "fuck goats" or whatever.

   3. We now have thousands of books with JS scripts in them that are absolutely useless but whose execution is nevertheless required, otherwise reading the book is impossible. You know, things like special navigation menus, buttons to expand example source code, footnotes in "tooltip" style windows or similar "brilliant design ideas" that stop working when you don't run the book's JS.

   4. EPUB4 now demands JS support. I mean really, you can't expect publishers to go over all those crappy epubs and rework them with progressive enhancement in mind, do you? No, no, no. They'll just lobby the IDPF to make JS support mandatory, and they'll succeed.

   5. Welcome to the web circa 2000! Ah, what a fun place that was. ...

-sigildev

[ewemoa]

Thanks for sharing this bit about epub and JS.

[ewemoa]

From Sigil's Spiritual Successor @ Making epub happen:

At this point Sigil is no longer being actively developed. Moving development to Github has netted a few contributions but they were one offs and fairly minor. With Sigil development being stalled, Kovid (of calibre) starting making the tweak epub functionality in calibre into a full editor.

calibre's editor at this point is stable and has many of the features, though not all (yet), that are present in Sigil. Like Sigil, calibre's editor is open source and unlike Sigil is being actively developed. I've known Kovid for quite some time (though calibre) and I'm confident that the calibre editor is the way forward.

For people using Sigil, keep using it as long as it works for you. If you find it's not meeting your needs or if you want to see what else is out there I recommend checking out cailbre's editor. While it doesn't use any of Sigil's code I consider it Sigil's spiritual successor.

On *NIX, the successor in question appears to be called "ebook-edit".

A quick spin showed that it doesn't appear to be WYSIWIG -- ended up writing raw XHTML.  Functionality tested included: modifying a table of contents and adding a new page.

[Renegade]

From Sigil's Spiritual Successor @ Making epub happen:

-ewemoa (September 01, 2014, 11:27 PM)

That's too bad. Sigil was really good.

[ewemoa]

If it's any consolation, the latest version is still usable (at least for some things) -- and there's at least a WinPenPack portable version (works under WINE too).