Future Release To-Do Items

[DiapDealer]

I don't think setting tab orders make a lot of sense in MainWindow. All toolbars and dock widgets are moveable and can be stacked or tabified.

We should definitely look into setting sane tab orders on other non-customizable widgets, though.

There's other main window toolbars that are in the tab order, but most of them do seem to be exempt from the tab cycle for some reason.

[BetterRed]

The solution BeckyEbook has already provided, in response to my request, is working perfectly for me. Any built in feature that offered less would be disappointing.

For me, the ↑↓ 'buttons' on spin boxes etc are only visual indicators, press space to pop the list, press the arrow keys to get to the required value, press Enter to select.

However, what the visible border has revealed to me is that the Tab/BackTab key will eventually take focus away from the last item in the current 'panel' (e.g. F&R->Count all) and give it to another panel e.g. (Book Browser or CodeView).

I don't know if this was by-design, but if it was… why has no one complained about having to press Tab multiple times to shift focus between panels, e.g. three times to get from F&R->CountAll into the Book Browser panel.

The recent addition of the Give focus to xxxxxx feature obviates the 'necessity' for this aberrant behaviour of the Tab/Backtab key when it's being used to navigate the UI. If it were my call I would get rid of it… you already have a far better solution.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

. . .
I also come across an interesting issue in Windows, when I switch windows via the Tab key, the focus also switches to the toolbar, but only to one – Automation Lists.

Perhaps it's because Automation Lists can only be accessed via toolbar buttons or shortcuts, I can't see any access to that feature via the menus.

BR

[luka]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Bulk delete has previously existed for use by Merge but now will be used in more cases.

There is no easy way to speed up the "Add Existing" of huge numbers (thousands) of files as that requires creating thousands of internal Sigil resource objects and loading their contents into QTextDocuments for speed of editing, then constantly editing and reediting the opf thousands of times to create the proper opf manifest, not to mention file copying and reading times.

You would be better off using a standalone tool or python script to create a rough opf from those thousands of files and using the FolderIn plugin to load it or even use a create a simple epub from those files and start from that.

Obviously using a fast ssd based drive and staying far away from slower network drives helps too.

Literally epubs with thousands of images or thousands of files is an extreme use case.

Exactly which types of epubs have file counts like that?

Even a stats/math textbook that could have thousands of equations as separate images (because it does not properly use mathml) still typically only has less than 100 chapter files of text.

Sorry to bother you, I'm from China. I want to make an epub file of an online novel. The online novels here have millions of words, and there are thousands of chapters of novels or collections. Deleting things or setting up the cover function will freeze for a long time, which is quite laborious every time.
Seeing that you have optimized the speed of batch renaming, I built a new version and it has been greatly improved, so I found the forum to ask if there will be any optimization in this regard.
Thank you very much for your reply.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

I also come across an interesting issue in Windows, when I switch windows via the Tab key, the focus also switches to the toolbar, but only to one – Automation Lists.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Perhaps it's because Automation Lists can only be accessed via toolbar buttons or shortcuts, I can't see any access to that feature via the menus.

BR

I suspect that for some reason, only the QToolButton items on the toolbars are receiving focus via tab/shift+tab. The three Automation ones, the Change Heading, one and the Change Case one (EDIT: it seems to depend on which toolbars they're on as to which will receive focus. Weird.)

For the record, the border focus doesn't really adversely affect looks of my Sigil theme on Linux.

[BetterRed]

I just noticed the following:

If the Automation toolbar is shown, when I Tab out of F&R->CountAll the focus goes to Run Automate List 1, Tab again goes Run Automate List 2, Tab again goes Run Automate List 3, two more Tabs goes to Book Browser. If the Automation toolbar is not shown, 4 Tab presses will take me to the Book Browser.

When I Tab out of Book browser the focus goes to the Font size slider bar, Tab again goes to the '+' button, Tab again goes to the '-' button', 2 more Tabs goes to Codeview.

All of which suggests Tab presses are shifting the focus to hidden objects.

BR

[KevinH]

I have not started playing around with Tab to shift focus yet. @BetterRed did you see my post with screencaps for doubling cursor width earlier in this thread?

Would that be useful or not? I think it would be but want to hear from others.

[DNSB]

I think that the ability to change the cursor width would be useful.

[Jaco]

First, congrats. I am a lover of Sigil and a fanatic apostle of it. I am translating your manual into Spanish but it will take me some time (too much work in my life, as everybody. I am a professional editor).

Second, I would like to do 2 request:

a) A portable version of Sigil.
Yesterday I had an exam of HTML / CSS and I miss a portable version of Sigil to carry in a USB pendrive. I had to use Notepad++.

b) A Sigil-web-editor
I discovered that Sigil is easier to use than VisualCode for editing webs. Other good tool was BlueGriffon but... it is dead (http://www.bluegriffon.org/). Why? Because Sigil has:

—A viewer on fly that shows me what I am doing just in time and I don't need to refresh it. The best for a newbie!
—Buttons for all (for making list, for inserting images, etc.)

Could be possible to adapt Sigil as a web editor? I guess the only thing it needs are two things:

—A feature 'export as...' (web page, web site or whatever, not only EPUB).
—Automatic closing of tags, for avoiding to write too much (I mean: a word automatic completion of a tag and also to put the closing tag without using ctrl+. ).

Thanks in advance and apologizes for my English (I am quite better EN-SP).

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

@BetterRed did you see my post with screencaps for doubling cursor width earlier in this thread?

Would that be useful or not? I think it would be but want to hear from others.

Silence is golden.



BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I have not started playing around with Tab to shift focus yet.

I'll make my position clear - when it is being used to navigate within the main window the Tab/BackTab key should NOT shift keyboard focus away from the current control group (e.g. F&R, Book Browser, ToC, Clips, Preview etc) to another control group. Tab should wrap around within the group, like a dialogue box does.

Toolbars should never get keyboard focus. Nor perhaps should the Font size control group, if one doesn't want to use the mouse there are items in the View Menu or settable shortcut keys.

If focus is given to Preview the Tab key should cycle through the buttons i.e. Inspect, Select all . . . Print. A Tab in the text should be ignored. At the moment it leaps into F&R… if it's showing, otherwise the CodeView tab bar gets focus.

---

This is what I get when I right click (or press equivalent keys) on any of the Run Automate List buttons, I was hoping to get access to Edit Automate List feature:



Ah-hah, scratch that - I see I get that when I right click any toolbar button - a quick access menu sort of.

I suggest flyout menus be provided for Run Automation Lists and Edit Automation Lists - maybe allow for more than three. I also suggest a toolbar be created for the Give Focus to xxxxx menu items.

BR

PS: Post #49 hasn't had any response.

[KevinH]

@BetterRed
I will take your views under advisement as I am not sure how much I can control given all QDockWidgets are children of the MainWindow.

As for a toolbar for the Focus On xxxx actions. That is a "no" since clicking on the QDockWidget itself or using a short cut key works.

The gui is already overly busy so not everything needs a toolbar button, and a menu, and a tab stop, and a shortcut key. My rule is one mouse way (toolbar button, menu, sometimes both) and one keyboard way (menu accelerator and arrow keys or shortcut key).

[KevinH]

@BeckyEbook,

I just can not find a viable solution for the horrible buttons when using the focus qss on QComboBox and QSpinner that will actually work on macOS which mixes in native popup menus.

If I restrict it to QTreeView, QListView, QTableView, QLineEdit, QPlainTextEdit, QTextEdit, QScrollArea it seems to do a decent job of coverage. The macOS style already has its own highlight focus that works well for QMessageBox buttons, QComboBoxes, and QSpinBoxes.

We can of course adjust that list be platform specific.

If you get a chance, would you try that list in your qt_styles.qss and let me know what you think.

So something like:

QTextView:focus, QPlainTextEdit:focus, ... { border: 1px solid red; }

If you think I should add other classes, just let me know.

Update:

Since macOS already has focus rectangles on just about all of their buttons and fields in a blue color, it is jarring to see the red border at times.

So I think we can make that qss take a value passed in for the color of the Focus Highlight that is specific to each system.

On macOS, this turns out to be #2B5FFE which is a blue of some sort.


I would love to know the system focus highlight color for Windows so we can use it on Windows, and possibly something for Linux.

Luckily the focus highlight color on macOS only changes slightly from Light to Dark mode so picking a single color for the border works just fine.

Hopefully that is true for Windows as well.

I will check out Linux (Manjaro under KDE Plasma 5 tomorrow).

If needed we can choose the QPalette::Highlight color from the system palatte as it seems to be quite close on macOS as well.


Thanks!

[BetterRed]

In Windows dark mode, yellow works better for me than red; red's okay in Light mode. See attachment.

In dark mode I sometimes find the default colour (blue) hard to see. The MS response would be: "Turn on High contrast". It's notable that MS have switched to bright white for Dark mode, and pitch black in Light mode in some of their software (Settings, Office, Edge etc).

---

If I undock a child window (e.g. Book Browser, Clips etc) it will never get keyboard focus via a Tab - those child windows will only get focus via a Tab if they are docked.

BR

[KevinH]

Okay my experiments have reached a point I think they might be useable to others on other platforms.

And no, I haven't started on any of the tab order nonsense yet.

I have pushed changes to master that do the following:

1. refined the Highlight Focus Widget stuff and tried to enable platform
specific highlight colors, added in highlighting for Preview and CodeView

2. added in the double width cursor code (with no Sigil preferences setting yet)
To enable it set the following environment variable:

SIGIL_DOUBLE_TEXTCURSOR_WIDTH

it is checked once at Sigil startup only

3. Specific to macOS - all of the QDockWidget code was basically broken on macOS under dark mode themes as the titlebar of the QDockWidgets were never updated and if updated, the titlebar close and float buttons were unreadable as they were designed
to be useful only under light mode.

I have added workarounds for all of this including new macstyle dockwidget buttons in svg fixed so that they work under both light and dark and new stylesheet to use them.

I have pushed this so that others who build their own might be able to test the new Focus Highlight setting, and set the environment variable to double the cursor width.

Please let me know of any difficulties you run into.

I will start to play around with tab order to see what if anything can be done.

When testing the focus highlight code, please remove BeckyEbook's qss code that does that from your qt_styles.qss file first so that we can test what the final version can do and what is missing.

All feedback on these changes welcome.