Sigil (application)

Sigil
Original author(s)	Strahinja Val Marković
Developer(s)	Kevin Hendricks and Doug Massay
Initial release	1 August 2009; 15 years ago
Stable release	2.3.1 / 6 September 2024
Repository	github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil ;
Written in	C++ (Qt)
Operating system	Windows, macOS and Linux
Available in	English
Type	Desktop publishing software
License	GPL-3.0-or-later
Website	sigil-ebook.com

Sigil is free, open-source editing software for e-books in the EPUB format.

As a cross-platform application, Sigil is distributed for the Windows, macOS, Haiku and Linux platforms under the GNU GPL license. Sigil supports code-based editing of EPUB files, as well as the import of HTML and plain text files.^[2]^[3] A companion application, PageEdit, allows WYSIWYG editing of EPUB files.

Sigil has been developed by Strahinja Val Marković and others since 2009. From July 2011 to June 2015 John Schember was the lead developer.^[4] In June 2015, development of Sigil was taken over by Kevin Hendricks and Doug Massay.^[5]

Features

Sigil's features include:^[6]

Full UTF-16 and EPUB 2 specification support
Multiple views: book, code and preview view
Table of contents generator with multi-level heading support
Metadata editor with full support for all metadata entries
Hunspell based spell checking with default and user configurable dictionaries
Full regular expression (PCRE) support for find and replace
Supports import of EPUB and HTML files, images, and style sheets
Integrated API to external HTML and graphics editors
FlightCrew validator for EPUB standard compliance validation (separate plugin)

Sigil has full EPUB 2 specifications support, but only limited EPUB 3 support. Since version 0.9.3 of January 2016, the developers have been focusing on "improving Sigil’s ability to work with and generate epub3 ebooks without losing any of its epub2 capabilities".^[7]

WYSIWYG editing in book view was discontinued in 2019 and moved to a separate application, PageEdit.^[8]

References

^ "Release 2.3.1". 6 September 2024. Retrieved 26 September 2024.
^ Benthin, Falko (4 August 2009). "Freier epub-Editor Sigil erschienen". Pro-Linux.de (in German). Retrieved 15 May 2021.
^ Diedrich, Oliver (2009). "Der kleine E-Autor: E-Books im Epub-Format selbst erstellen". c't (in German). Vol. 25. p. 146. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
^ Schember, John. "Taking Over Sigil". Sigil development blog. Archived from the original on 23 December 2017. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
^ "About". 7 February 2015. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
^ von Eitzen, Chris (31 October 2012). "Sigil EPUB ebook editor 0.6.0 released". The H. Archived from the original on 4 April 2013. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
^ "Sigil-0.9.3 is Released". 31 January 2016. Archived from the original on 21 June 2017. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
^ "Yes Book View is really gone". GitHub. Retrieved 15 May 2021.