Sigil, the open source editor for epub files, is not be developed any more, German IT news site Heise reports. John Schember, who has been Sigil’s maintainer since 2011, is taking stock after a few months: he had been hoping for a revival in the cross-platform editor’s development after moving Sigil’s code to Github in September 2013. However, there have only been a few commits which also mostly concerned minor matters. However, the most recent version of Sigil – 0.7.4 of October 2013 – can still continue to be used as long as it still works.
As an alternative to Sigil Schember is recommending the open source Calibre e-book manager, which has also incorporated an e-book editor in the meantime. Calibre is stable and already comprises many, but not all of the functions provided by Sigil. Calibre’s editor is also being actively developed. Although Calibre’s e-book editor is not using any of Sigil’s code, Schember nevertheless views it as Sigil’s spiritual successor.