Sigil's Future

crutledge · 07-14-2011, 10:35 AM

I may be "whistling by the graveyard" but I have become concerned about the future of Sigil. I would really hate to see it go the way of Book Designer.

It would seem to me that at least for a couple of years Sigil will need heavy support and a clear vision of where it should go and in what sequence. This will require a heavy commitment from someone. I believe this will require one of the professional houses with the resources. Charging a fee for such effort would be reasonable. It would become an in-house tool made available to the great unwashed.

Without a central clearing house for enhancements, additions, and changes, versions of Sigil could proliferate bringing chaos and failure.

So, is there truly a user base out there to justify and maintain such an effort? Does anyone have any idea?

I believe that a discussion of ideas and problems would be beneficial.

Hitch · 07-14-2011, 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crutledge

I may be "whistling by the graveyard" but I have become concerned about the future of Sigil. I would really hate to see it go the way of Book Designer.

It would seem to me that at least for a couple of years Sigil will need heavy support and a clear vision of where it should go and in what sequence. This will require a heavy commitment from someone. I believe this will require one of the professional houses with the resources. Charging a fee for such effort would be reasonable. It would become an in-house tool made available to the great unwashed.

Without a central clearing house for enhancements, additions, and changes, versions of Sigil could proliferate bringing chaos and failure.

So, is there truly a user base out there to justify and maintain such an effort? Does anyone have any idea?

I believe that a discussion of ideas and problems would be beneficial.

Charlie:

I've been having the same discussion with Valloric privately. We're (Booknook.biz) considering adding a maintainer in-house, as we use it extensively, and we're a pretty large producer these days; obviously Valloric wants to see it stay widely available....you're not the only one thinking about this.

I don't know if there's a commercial market for the product, on any type of scale (lots of folks who want to use it if it's free, natch), so it's taking a lot of thought on my part, with regard to the financial commitment.

Hitch

AnemicOak · 07-14-2011, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

I don't know if there's a commercial market for the product, on any type of scale (lots of folks who want to use it if it's free, natch), so it's taking a lot of thought on my part, with regard to the financial commitment.

There's at least one similar looking product in development that will test the commercial market although I have no idea what the cost will be.

http://bluegriffon.org/post/2011/07/...n-EPUB-Edition
http://bluegriffon.org/post/2011/07/...on%2C-progress

Hitch · 07-14-2011, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

There's at least one similar looking product in development that will test the commercial market although I have no idea what the cost will be.

http://bluegriffon.org/post/2011/07/...n-EPUB-Edition
http://bluegriffon.org/post/2011/07/...on%2C-progress

Oh, terrific. I have absolutely no desire to be somebody else's alpha tester. Sigil works perfectly well. It would be brilliant if 0.4 could be a little less buggy (the file-palce-swapping weirdness worked out), but even 0.3.x is damned good. If and when the other works, if Sigil has gone the way of the dodo, fine, but we produce books commercially, and I'll go back to just doing them in NoteTab Pro in final before I'll throw myself on someone's else sword--particularly with a price attached.

JMHO, natch.

Hitch

crutledge · 07-14-2011, 07:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

Charlie:

I've been having the same discussion with Valloric privately. We're (Booknook.biz) considering adding a maintainer in-house, as we use it extensively, and we're a pretty large producer these days; obviously Valloric wants to see it stay widely available....you're not the only one thinking about this.
Hitch

Just checked out your web site, Impressive

. May you become the annointed one.

Hitch · 07-14-2011, 09:25 PM

WAIT, Charlie. I said I was raising the same question with Valloric. I didn't say that we were trying to be the maintainer, I don't think I have anyone in-house with enough talent on that specific coding front...but I've started discussing it with my Crew(s).

I certainly do NOT want to see Sigil die, even if I folded my tents tomorrow. I'll pitch in, contribute, etc., if someone else (QUALIFIED) takes over, and I'm contemplating all the possible outcomes. I'm just a bit old and cynical about what happens to OS software when its original creator goes elsewhere.

Best,
Hitch

Jabby · 07-14-2011, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crutledge

I may be "whistling by the graveyard" but I have become concerned about the future of Sigil. I would really hate to see it go the way of Book Designer.

It would seem to me that at least for a couple of years Sigil will need heavy support and a clear vision of where it should go and in what sequence. This will require a heavy commitment from someone. I believe this will require one of the professional houses with the resources. Charging a fee for such effort would be reasonable. It would become an in-house tool made available to the great unwashed.

Without a central clearing house for enhancements, additions, and changes, versions of Sigil could proliferate bringing chaos and failure.

So, is there truly a user base out there to justify and maintain such an effort? Does anyone have any idea?

I believe that a discussion of ideas and problems would be beneficial.

Hi Charlie-

Has anyone thought abut approaching Kovid Goyal and his guys over at Calibre. They certainty have the talent and the manpower. As well, there is a great deal of synergy.

Just a thought. Regards - John

LGN · 07-15-2011, 01:16 AM

I hope that even a (big?) commercial ebook producer(s) would take over, they would keep it open source so that the potentially coders community would have a chance to grow.

Sigil has a specific target audience and might be unknown to the masses. While the people having ereaders and other devices will continue to grow, as well as the number of publications available I think Sigil already earned its place.

I know many publishers will export an ePub from say their commercial pipeline like indesign, the resulting ePubs aren't perfect. Also the ability for people to export to epub from, say Open Office / Libre Office is possible, or even a plain Calibre conversion, but in many cases it's desirable to improve the results to ensure you have the best ePUB an ePUB can be.

I certainly hope Sigil will be with us for a long time. There is a need for this kind of tool.

bobcdy · 07-15-2011, 01:45 AM

I think that Sigil 0.4 is really very close to being commercially viable, and was a bit surprised when Valloric announced his departure from Sigil. Even with his departure, he indicated he would work on it until starting his new job, and I had hoped for a commercially-viable version at that time. I use v 0.4.0 all the time, with only occasional use of v0.3.4; and although it has a few problems they aren't enough for me to stop using it. I would think in the hands of a competent programmer it could be sold commercially with only a few changes to get it to the previous version's quality. After all, a commercial version need not be perfect, as I well remember with the first versions of Windows.

Bob

EowynCarter · 07-15-2011, 04:20 AM

Well, I'm not that much worried.
Sigil have reached a point where it's pretty mature. It have almost anything needed.
It's open source, so, as long as there are people willing to work on it, there not much preventing it.

Why insist on selling sigil ? I like it the FOSS way ! And IMHO, closing the source would be the fastest way to kill sigil.

Hitch · 07-15-2011, 05:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Well, I'm not that much worried.
Sigil have reached a point where it's pretty mature. It have almost anything needed.
It's open source, so, as long as there are people willing to work on it, there not much preventing it.

Why insist on selling sigil ? I like it the FOSS way ! And IMHO, closing the source would be the fastest way to kill sigil.

I think you misunderstand, Eowyn. No one is "insisting" on selling Sigil. Those of us who've been around OS long enough know that you need fairly massive user communities to keep OS going when its initiator/designer leaves, and we're worried that with Valloric leaving, that driving force will not be present. It's all well and good to say that it's nearly perfect now, but epub standards are evolving incredibly rapidly, as are the devices upon which they are read--just take a look at html5 and epub3. It's not Chicken-Little-ing to be concerned that Valloric's departure could be the death of Sigil as we know it. It might be a slow and lingering death; but death nonetheless.

"Everyone" likes software FOSS. That's great when you have someone like Valloric who is willing to be the unpaid slave Maintainer (for his doctorate). It works far less well when one has an exceedingly small user community and no willing unpaid (or nominally-paid) Maintainer indentured servant. Kovid does well off his donations because he has thousands of users, because any doofus can use Calibre and "make" an ebook. Not so with Sigil. I don't think it's an unreasonable concern that Sigil could struggle post-Valloric.

JMHO, of course...but I remember all too well great FOSS projects, like evo-Articles, that was before its time, never developed a huge user community and died. Or Feng Office; a similar situation. Or, or or....there are thousands of projects just like this one that had larger user communities than Sigil that just didn't make it when the innovater left.

Hell, let's look at it this way: we know how many contributions have been made to Calibre by persons who aren't Kovid--precisely how many Sigil contributions have there been by THIS community? How many FOSS contributors that have already added value and usefulness to Sigil? Stand up and be counted, folks; everyone who made a contribution, in code, to Sigil. Show of hands?

Hitch

EowynCarter · 07-15-2011, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Hell, let's look at it this way: we know how many contributions have been made to Calibre by persons who aren't Kovid--precisely how many Sigil contributions have there been by THIS community? How many FOSS contributors that have already added value and usefulness to Sigil? Stand up and be counted, folks; everyone who made a contribution, in code, to Sigil. Show of hands?

Because Valoric was there to do the job. Maybe it's to do that.

Now everything will be up to us. But as long as we are willing and able to improve sigil, no problem.

I can't work on sigil full time, but what if all the people having a bit of time works on it together ?

LGN · 07-15-2011, 11:10 AM

I think the biggest problem is the difference of users versus developers. There are many developers around, but usually they aren't ebook producers and visa versa. So chances are not that high that there are many developers in this forum. Calibre has support for scripting, that makes it easier to add things without being a full blown coder.

If only a university, small company or even google could help with the future developement. Heck even through Google summer of code. And keep Sigil under GPL.

EowynCarter · 07-15-2011, 11:25 AM

Quote:

There are many developers around, but usually they aren't ebook producers and visa versa

True.
Save for the few like me, dev for a living and interested in e-books. But because i don't use sigil for professional reasons, my expectations aren't the same.

kiwidude · 07-16-2011, 04:45 AM

I think people are right to be concerned about Sigil's future IMHO. There are a lot of good things about it which is why it has been a welcome tool, but it has some really serious issues. For a start, it is and has always been very buggy. I don't mean minor annoyance bugs of which there are many, I mean the most dangerous kind of bugs that lose book content or ignore changes. These made me lose any confidence in the software. I haven't used 0.4 yet, which Valloric himself has admitted is "buggy as hell" on these forums. Of course we hope he can do something about the most serious ones before he leaves, but that is a legacy I don't want to take on. Unfortunately many of these bugs are of the extremely intermittent difficult to repeat kind, which are horrible to try to fix without intimate knowledge of the code.

My other main issue is the choice of C++ as a language for an oss application. It reduces your pool of potential developers as less are enthused to work on such an app in their free time. I didn't know Python before I started work on Calibre, but I had enough interest to learn it to do enough to contribute to that. It has a far lower barrier to entry for temporary contributors. I am not saying that I in any way like developing in python btw or that it should have been Vallorics choice, just that as a combination for Calibre it worked.

The other thing that Python enabled over C++ was the plugin architecture that Calibre has. As a contributor I could make my initial contributions as standalone isolated pieces of code. It didn't matter that my Python was not up to main codebase standard. I could add a menu item of functionality or whatever without impacting anyone else or depriving the main app developer of their time to code review or rewrite it.

The other thorn for contribution is the challenge of cross platform. Apart from Qt just being filth to work with, how many developers out there have the resources of a Mac as well as a Linux and windows boxes, plus the will to test everything three times?

I did take a local copy of Sigil at one point and make some changes to it for features I wanted, intending to publish some of them back. However calibre plugin development vamped all of my spare time and will continue to do so. Hence I have no bandwidth to learn yet another codebase in intimate detail, particularly in C++. I suspect other developers are in a similar boat. An application like this requires that you learn the whole thing inside and out and while the original developer of course has interest for a while in doing that, picking up someone else's codebase for an app as big as Sigil with all it's issues and Valloric posting he is intending to completely step away is an intimidating task for someone to take on for zero return as a hobby project.

Personally I have given passing thought a few times to writing an alternative, as Sigil development had gone feature wise in a direction of interest to Valloric as is entirely his right, but that has continued to delay with his limited dev time a stable release of ncx mgmt and of course still no spell checking. For my own needs I could care less about flight check stuff etc, as I just want something to split and merge, regex and wysiwyg spell checking. I know others out there enjoy the other feature and cross platform support, I'm just speaking as a user who wants to clean up his own books for his personal library. However as I said above Calibre took over all my time and there is a tremendous amount of dev involved in an app like this as typified by the several years Sigil has taken to get to this point.

Sorry if the post sounds negative, but unless those who can afford to pay someone to develop this further I am not confident this will go anywhere after Valloric. I hope that there is a gifted C++ developer out there who fancies a challenge to prove those of us who share these concerns wrong, it would be a shame to see this die.

07-14-2011, 10:35 AM	#1
crutledge eBook FANatic Posts: 18,301 Karma: 16071131 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Alabama, USA Device: HP ipac RX5915 Wife's Kindle	Sigil's Future I may be "whistling by the graveyard" but I have become concerned about the future of Sigil. I would really hate to see it go the way of Book Designer. It would seem to me that at least for a couple of years Sigil will need heavy support and a clear vision of where it should go and in what sequence. This will require a heavy commitment from someone. I believe this will require one of the professional houses with the resources. Charging a fee for such effort would be reasonable. It would become an in-house tool made available to the great unwashed. Without a central clearing house for enhancements, additions, and changes, versions of Sigil could proliferate bringing chaos and failure. So, is there truly a user base out there to justify and maintain such an effort? Does anyone have any idea? I believe that a discussion of ideas and problems would be beneficial.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
How to donate to Sigil's development	Valloric	Sigil	11	05-29-2012 09:33 PM
Back to Our Future	Hamlet53	Lounge	1	03-23-2011 09:09 AM
Think of the Future!	TGS	Apple Devices	1	11-24-2010 11:53 AM
Classic BN future	Falcao	Barnes & Noble NOOK	0	09-21-2010 01:35 PM
Weird signs in Sigil's menu	Logseman	Sigil	7	08-26-2010 07:30 PM

07-14-2011, 09:25 PM	#6
Hitch Bookmaker & Cat Slave Posts: 11,495 Karma: 158448243 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Phoenix, AZ Device: K2, iPad, KFire, PPW, Voyage, NookColor. 2 Droid, Oasis, Boox Note2	WAIT, Charlie. I said I was raising the same question with Valloric. I didn't say that we were trying to be the maintainer, I don't think I have anyone in-house with enough talent on that specific coding front...but I've started discussing it with my Crew(s). I certainly do NOT want to see Sigil die, even if I folded my tents tomorrow. I'll pitch in, contribute, etc., if someone else (QUALIFIED) takes over, and I'm contemplating all the possible outcomes. I'm just a bit old and cynical about what happens to OS software when its original creator goes elsewhere. Best, Hitch

07-15-2011, 01:16 AM	#8
LGN Connoisseur Posts: 88 Karma: 60 Join Date: Oct 2010 Device: ProMedia eReader, Sony PRS-600	I hope that even a (big?) commercial ebook producer(s) would take over, they would keep it open source so that the potentially coders community would have a chance to grow. Sigil has a specific target audience and might be unknown to the masses. While the people having ereaders and other devices will continue to grow, as well as the number of publications available I think Sigil already earned its place. I know many publishers will export an ePub from say their commercial pipeline like indesign, the resulting ePubs aren't perfect. Also the ability for people to export to epub from, say Open Office / Libre Office is possible, or even a plain Calibre conversion, but in many cases it's desirable to improve the results to ensure you have the best ePUB an ePUB can be. I certainly hope Sigil will be with us for a long time. There is a need for this kind of tool.

07-15-2011, 01:45 AM	#9
bobcdy Fanatic Posts: 527 Karma: 1048576 Join Date: May 2009 Device: bebook; prs-950; nook simple touch; HTC Jetstream tablet	I think that Sigil 0.4 is really very close to being commercially viable, and was a bit surprised when Valloric announced his departure from Sigil. Even with his departure, he indicated he would work on it until starting his new job, and I had hoped for a commercially-viable version at that time. I use v 0.4.0 all the time, with only occasional use of v0.3.4; and although it has a few problems they aren't enough for me to stop using it. I would think in the hands of a competent programmer it could be sold commercially with only a few changes to get it to the previous version's quality. After all, a commercial version need not be perfect, as I well remember with the first versions of Windows. Bob

07-15-2011, 04:20 AM	#10
EowynCarter Wizard Posts: 4,334 Karma: 4000000 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Paris Device: Cybooks; Sony PRS-T1	Well, I'm not that much worried. Sigil have reached a point where it's pretty mature. It have almost anything needed. It's open source, so, as long as there are people willing to work on it, there not much preventing it. Why insist on selling sigil ? I like it the FOSS way ! And IMHO, closing the source would be the fastest way to kill sigil.

07-15-2011, 11:10 AM	#13
LGN Connoisseur Posts: 88 Karma: 60 Join Date: Oct 2010 Device: ProMedia eReader, Sony PRS-600	I think the biggest problem is the difference of users versus developers. There are many developers around, but usually they aren't ebook producers and visa versa. So chances are not that high that there are many developers in this forum. Calibre has support for scripting, that makes it easier to add things without being a full blown coder. If only a university, small company or even google could help with the future developement. Heck even through Google summer of code. And keep Sigil under GPL.

07-16-2011, 04:45 AM	#15
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,688 Karma: 2162246 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	I think people are right to be concerned about Sigil's future IMHO. There are a lot of good things about it which is why it has been a welcome tool, but it has some really serious issues. For a start, it is and has always been very buggy. I don't mean minor annoyance bugs of which there are many, I mean the most dangerous kind of bugs that lose book content or ignore changes. These made me lose any confidence in the software. I haven't used 0.4 yet, which Valloric himself has admitted is "buggy as hell" on these forums. Of course we hope he can do something about the most serious ones before he leaves, but that is a legacy I don't want to take on. Unfortunately many of these bugs are of the extremely intermittent difficult to repeat kind, which are horrible to try to fix without intimate knowledge of the code. My other main issue is the choice of C++ as a language for an oss application. It reduces your pool of potential developers as less are enthused to work on such an app in their free time. I didn't know Python before I started work on Calibre, but I had enough interest to learn it to do enough to contribute to that. It has a far lower barrier to entry for temporary contributors. I am not saying that I in any way like developing in python btw or that it should have been Vallorics choice, just that as a combination for Calibre it worked. The other thing that Python enabled over C++ was the plugin architecture that Calibre has. As a contributor I could make my initial contributions as standalone isolated pieces of code. It didn't matter that my Python was not up to main codebase standard. I could add a menu item of functionality or whatever without impacting anyone else or depriving the main app developer of their time to code review or rewrite it. The other thorn for contribution is the challenge of cross platform. Apart from Qt just being filth to work with, how many developers out there have the resources of a Mac as well as a Linux and windows boxes, plus the will to test everything three times? I did take a local copy of Sigil at one point and make some changes to it for features I wanted, intending to publish some of them back. However calibre plugin development vamped all of my spare time and will continue to do so. Hence I have no bandwidth to learn yet another codebase in intimate detail, particularly in C++. I suspect other developers are in a similar boat. An application like this requires that you learn the whole thing inside and out and while the original developer of course has interest for a while in doing that, picking up someone else's codebase for an app as big as Sigil with all it's issues and Valloric posting he is intending to completely step away is an intimidating task for someone to take on for zero return as a hobby project. Personally I have given passing thought a few times to writing an alternative, as Sigil development had gone feature wise in a direction of interest to Valloric as is entirely his right, but that has continued to delay with his limited dev time a stable release of ncx mgmt and of course still no spell checking. For my own needs I could care less about flight check stuff etc, as I just want something to split and merge, regex and wysiwyg spell checking. I know others out there enjoy the other feature and cross platform support, I'm just speaking as a user who wants to clean up his own books for his personal library. However as I said above Calibre took over all my time and there is a tremendous amount of dev involved in an app like this as typified by the several years Sigil has taken to get to this point. Sorry if the post sounds negative, but unless those who can afford to pay someone to develop this further I am not confident this will go anywhere after Valloric. I hope that there is a gifted C++ developer out there who fancies a challenge to prove those of us who share these concerns wrong, it would be a shame to see this die.

Advert

Advert