Sigil

Sigil is a multi-platform WYSIWYG eBook editor. It is designed to edit books in ePub format. It now has its own web page http://sigil-ebook.com/

Overview

Now what does it have to offer...

• Free and open source software under GPLv3
• Multi-platform: runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS X
• Full Unicode support: everything you see in Sigil is in UTF-16
• Full EPUB spec support
• WYSIWYG editing of simple items in Book view but for extensive changes use CODE view.
• Multiple Views: Book View and Code View
• Metadata editor with full support for all possible metadata entries (more than 200) with full descriptions for each
• Table Of Contents creator and editor
• Multi-level TOC support
• Book View fully supports the display of any XHTML document possible under the OPS spec
• SVG support
• Advanced automatic conversion of all imported documents to Unicode
• Currently imports TXT, HTML and EPUB files
• Saves as EPUB.
• Embedded HTML Tidy; all imported documents are optionally thoroughly cleaned; changing views cleans the document so no matter how much you screw up your code, it will fix it (usually). This can be disabled.
• PCRE Regular expressions search and replace.
• A save checks the structure and will not save a bad ePub without telling you.
• An actually usable user interface
• dictionary support.
• Native C++ application
• Sigil supports a number of plugins that enhance and extend Sigil.
• And a lot more...

It is released under:

• Code license: GNU General Public License v3
• Content license: Creative Commons 3.0 BY-SA

Getting Started

• There is a new option that will begin with a blank document.
• You can open an (X}HTML file as a starting point.
• You can open an existing ePub file.
• You can import (X)HTML files to add existing data to the ePub.

If you open an HTML file the metadata in the header will be used to build the initial metadata section of the ePub. An example:

<meta content="Mrs. Lirripers værelser" name="DC.title" />
<meta content="Dickens, Charles" name="DC.creator.aut" />
<meta content="2012-03-05" name="DC.date.publication" scheme="ISO8601" />
<meta content="978-87-7979-237-1" name="DC.identifier.ISBN" />
<meta content="eBibliotek 1800" name="DC.publisher" />
<meta content="eBibliotek 1800" name="DC.rights" />
<meta content="Kim N. Jensen" name="DC.contributor.edt" />
<meta content="Foreligger ikke oplyst i forlæg (ant. Ludvig Moltke, 1805-1872) 
 "name="DC.contributor.trl" />

If you open or import the the first HTML file and it contains a CSS file they will be imported as well and the CSS reference will be corrected if need be. Images will also be imported if they are referenced in the HTML file.

Opening an existing ePub file will restructure (rearrange) the contents to conform the Sigil conventions and folder structure. This should not hurt the document.

Plugins

The latest Sigil can support plugins.

• there is a plugin available for 0.8.2 version or later that can convert an ePub 2 to ePub 3. Eventually this capability will be in the basic product.
• list of all Sigil plugins

Sigil plugins in this wiki:

• EPub Tidy
• EPub Optimizer

For more information

• Product home page now moved to Github Sigil
• Online Documentation can be read on their wiki.
• MobileRead dedicated forum for Sigil
• Regexp explanation
• Portable app version
• http://sigil-ebook.com/ new home page.