Custom Search Parameters

[Woodssi]

Ok folks, question for the Devs or the super users of the application.

Is it possible to set up a custom search?

To outline...
When reading, I absolutely hate punctuation marks that are italicised
(this is a personal quirk, so no discussion or comment required please).

When editing my books, is there a way to have Sigil search for
:-
<span class="italic"> any punctuation mark </span>

My expertise level of using Sigil is such that I only ever use the 'Find' box, and I've just started reading a title that has quite a few whole chapters (letters written by a character) that are fully in italics.

It would save me an enormous amount of time if I could search in the manner I have described.

Thanks in advance.

[KevinH]

It is called regular expression find and replace. And Sigil can do that already. Check out the sticky thread about regular expressions and of course there is help in the Sigil User's guide as well.

[Woodssi]

Much obliged, Kevin.

I think I found one that suits my purpose <span class="italics">[^<]*\s.*</span>

But... How do I use this?
I've never done anything like it before.

Can you point me in right direction, please.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Woodssi

When reading, I absolutely hate punctuation marks that are italicised

When editing my books, is there a way to have Sigil search for
:-
<span class="italic"> any punctuation mark </span>

This is the regular expression I use:

Find: ([;’”,\)\]\.—])</span>
Replace: </span>\1

What it does is:

• Find any of the punctuation listed inside the parentheses (before the </span>)
• Shoves it OUTSIDE the </span>

So it would take something like this:

This is a <span class="italics">A Book Title.</span>
“What did you say to me you piece of <span class="italics">crap?”</span>

and converts it into:

This is a <span class="italics">A Book Title</span>.
“What did you say to me you piece of <span class="italics">crap</span>?”

You can also tweak it to whatever tags are needed, like one which will:

Find all Italics Ending Punctuation

Find: ([;’”,\)\]\.—])</i>
Replace: </i>\1

or:

Find all Italics Beginning Punctuation

Find: <i>([‘“\(—])
Replace: \1<i>

This will help correct things like:

<i>“Example Book</i> by First Last was the greatest book <em>ever!”</em>

by changing it to the correct:

“<i>Example Book</i> by First Last was the greatest book <em>ever</em>!”

- - -

Side Note: For more info, see my posts in:

• 2021: "Italics and Bold"
• 2023: "Semantic markup question!"
  
  • Especially the "Do I Put Spaces Inside Italics/Emphasis?" + "Does Punctuation Go Inside the <i> or <em>?" parts.
    

If you need even more regex cleanup tips, see my posts in:

• 2022: "False paragraph breaks & RegEx"

and if you need even more, type this into your favorite search engine:

Tex2002ans regex site:mobileread.com
Tex2002ans regular expression site:mobileread.com

I've given hundred of topics of examples, even lots with color-coded, step-by-step explanations.

[KevinH]

Check out the Find and Replace chapter in the Sigil User's Guide. There is also a Tutorial chapter on Advanced Find there as well.

You can download the Sigil User's guide as an epub from:

https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/sigil...guide/releases

[DiapDealer]

I find using the Unicode categories much easier/cleaner.

Any punctuation character can be matched with \p{P}

\p{P} or \p{Punctuation}: any kind of punctuation character.
\p{Pd} or \p{Dash_Punctuation}: any kind of hyphen or dash.
\p{Ps} or \p{Open_Punctuation}: any kind of opening bracket.
\p{Pe} or \p{Close_Punctuation}: any kind of closing bracket.
\p{Pi} or \p{Initial_Punctuation}: any kind of opening quote.
\p{Pf} or \p{Final_Punctuation}: any kind of closing quote.
\p{Pc} or \p{Connector_Punctuation}: a punctuation character such as an underscore that connects words.
\p{Po} or \p{Other_Punctuation}: any kind of punctuation character that is not a dash, bracket, quote or connector.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

This is the regular expression I use:...

How about regex that will take...
<i>"some, stuff? with, punctuation"</i>
and convert it to...
"<i>some, stuff</i>? <i>with</i>, <i>punctuation</i>"

[DiapDealer]

Regex ain't magic.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Regex ain't magic.

An iterative application of a regex search and replace could pull all punctuation outside of a certain tag, but not like his example, since there are commas both inside and outside of the tag in the end result.

That said, tags tend to have semantic value, so any fully automated system will definitely get it wrong at times. <em></em> used like quotes around a thought should follow the same rules as quotation marks, so punctuation goes inside. Emphasizing just a word or phrase shouldn't have the tags include starting and ending punctuation.

Getting these right is by far the most time-consuming part of my fix of CSS from commercial eBooks.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How about regex that will take...
<i>"some, stuff? with, punctuation"</i>
and convert it to...
"<i>some, stuff</i>? <i>with</i>, <i>punctuation</i>"

Spoiler:

lol....If I didn't know you were kidding I'd be hurling all over the floor!!


I totally agree however... who cares whether punctuation is inside or outside the italics?!?! Honestly, if you are worried about that nitnoid stuff you are WAY more advanced than me....I just don't have the time to worry about that.



Luckily the OP said "this is a personal quirk, so no discussion or comment required please." Now I feel comfortable in NOT commenting on it...


Cheers!

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Regex ain't magic.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How about regex that will take...
<i>"some, stuff? with, punctuation"</i>
and convert it to...
"<i>some, stuff</i>? <i>with</i>, <i>punctuation</i>"

Then you run those 2 I listed to take care of the easy cases.

Then you can use the fantastic functionality added in recent Sigil versions to get "Italic Lists", which can list everything between two:

• <i></i>

From there, you can do whatever extra tweaks are needed.

For more info on that, see my fantastic descriptions of the workflow back in:

• 2023: "Semantic markup question!"
  
  • Follow the "Do I Put Spaces Inside Italics/Emphasis?" + "Does Punctuation Go Inside the <i> or <em>?" + especially the "What's This Text? <i> or <em>?", where I linked to my:
    
    • "Spellcheck List for Search" idea
      
    • Note: Since that 2021 brainstorming post, KevinH has added such functionality into Sigil!
      

That allows you to quickly list all HTML that matches your regex into a simple to understand/search/sort list.

I described how that can be used to quickly map all:

• italics <-> emphasis
• acronyms/ALL CAPS <-> smallcaps
• editing/marking dialogue tags

or many other helpful "mass editing" workflows.

The second you sort into a list, the huge ones with lots of punctuation will instantly stand out like a sore thumb:

<i>Enciclopedia Italiana</i>
<i>New York Times</i>
<i>This sentence is very long? And has lots, and lots, and lots of punctuation inside?</i>
<i>Wall Street Journal</i>
<i>Washington Post</i>
<i>individual</i>
<i>laissez-faire</i>
<i>negative</i>