Steve Thomas wrote:
Basically, Anne is right -- who cares about this stuff?
That is the exact same answer Tim Berners-Lee got when he first presented his stuff. :-) "I can view a text file with "more", I just hit the space bar until I get to the right page. With your new-fangled format I need a -- what? -- browser? I don't have one. Why should I need a `browser' just to read some text?"
Only the few enthusiasts on this list. Most users of PG don't go around grumbling about the lack of XML or the ability to output as PDF. They're just stoked to be able to find the text online.
I can assure you that some do. Many start their own projects to markup PG texts, most of them dont go very far, though. One example: http://gutenberg.hwg.org/
And on the subject of PDF, I agree with Anne -- it sucks.
The only format we have today to bring mathematics to the unsophisticated user. If you don't want to install TeX, PDF is the only way. PDF is not so bad. It is widely accepted, well documented, free tools exist to generate PDFs. It has all the limitations of paper books, though. You cannot resize a printed book, or change the font, etc. Well same limitations for PDF. It hasn't stopped people from buying paper books. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org