Folks, I actually am up to the back teeth with the about it and abouting. A lot of intelligent people (sincerely meant, no sarcasm) saying mainly intelligent things about material problems and objectives and yet... SO I was going to shut up. ME!!! I'll try to make up for it by being short and to beside the point. As a long-time hands-on, low-level, DP support and development man, I understand the importance of TXT files. Really I do. Anyway, as a reader with a PC, I can represent the TXT files fairly comfortably, even for reading big books, where Dick and Jane meet in Whore and Piece. As a user of PCs that are mere years old, I understand the importance of more convenient formats. Trust me, I do. As either I shall not argue the point. If you seek the reason why, circumspice! Now, I am no major contributor to PG, but I have contributed some quick-and-dirty digitisations, using modest facilities. I use M$oft under protest, because nowadays as a user (read: bottom-feeder!) I don't have the time to learn decent stuff and instead I put up with all the triviality and inelegance. Upshot: * Scan the book (Actually, nowadays my scanner lies idle. Mainly I use my digital camera: faster, often better, far more flexible, more portable; (I can use it in libraries etc) and less harmful to the books too. That is nice!) * After having for some years used the perfectly useful crippleware version that came in the cereal box with my scanner I bought a decent omniscan on a $100 on-line special. That too is nice. *Feed the output into Word. (I actually have certain reservations about this, but note that Word has certain useful aspects: It deals fairly nicely with TXT AND with HTM. And it is programmable. I don't have to work with Courier or FTM Arial all the time.Useful font, but neither restful, nor comfortable for speed reading.) In fact, though I have not yet done anything with it, I am fairly sure that I have enough facilities at hand to produce PDF as well if I choose. But here the same prejudice that makes me appreciate TXT kicks in: If I lose my software or get stuck with moderately damaged files, I can easily edit HTM to make it readable, but I'll be blowed if I bother to learn more opaque formats. To be sure, the PG TXT format is, whatever its merits, not nice, but if that is what they want... *In Word, format the whole caboodle fairly nicely, illustrations and all. Use all the nice features, including programmability, for editing etc. BB doesn't like the result of course, and i can see why, but I have only one life, and not much more of that, so...Nice chapter headings, page numbering etc. Also tables of contents, whatever is free or nearly. It helps with the editing anyway, so why not? *What? PG doesn't like DOC? Tsk Tsk! So I do a conversion to "filtered" HTML. Hard work that. Takes dozens of keystrokes. Well, more than a dozen anyway. *Ahaaah! Gotcha! PG doesn't like Word HTM either! How do you like that my buck??? Big deal! Someone steered me in the direction of HTMLKit! Now THERE is a useful product. May the commercial users make the company stinking rich! They deserve it big time. HTMLKit convert a Word file so easily to clean HTML that I don't bother to keep backups except of the DOC. There I have a working HTML with figures, tables, the full catastrophe. *But what about TXT? Here is where word comes in useful. again. I steadfastly resist any hyphenation except where words are too long for the line, or where a word is hyphenated. This, apart from other virtues, make it trivial to break lines with the help of a macro or two. (Actually, I have used other convenient TXT processors to break lines, but that is a matter of ad hoc convenience). *Then there are the GUTCHKs and so on, bless their writers' hearts. Actually I use them before the HTML production to trap errors that slip through other processors. By the time I have done with the HTML, I usually have finished with the TXT as well. Pictures? No problem. If anyone wants them they can get them from the HTM version. *Seems a long way round? Maybe. But I already had most of the tools for other purposes, and knew how to use them. Apart from the necessary basic effort all it takes is largely automated document production and conversion. Two steps for two files when you come down to it. *I realise that BB and a few others have better ways of doing it, but every time I get tempted to sniff down those alleys, I go and lie down for six seconds till the feeling passes. I'll re-evaluate new options as soon as everyone else agrees on all of them. By that time books and computers both will be passe. Cheers, Jon