Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
this is "version 'a', the ascii version"... [snip] this is "version 'h', the .html version"... [snip] and this is "version 'k', the kindlegen version"...
There is no ASCII version; that was showing how the poem looks in the original book. I produce an XHTML master version, which suffices for web and EPUB use. I'm then suggesting that feeding this straight through kindlegen can turn some structures to mush. The key point is really that it is possible to help kindlegen out with some programmatic changes to the original XHTML. I edit the XHTML and push a button to convert, just as you'd edit your zml, and push a button to convert.
p.s. does the following look a bit strange to you?
[snip]
it should. what i have done is duplicated the verse. it's pretty easy to tell that that's what i've done when the text is in a nice clean unobstructed zen format.
but it's not quite as obvious when you have all that .html gobbledygook surrounding the text, which is probably why you didn't notice that you seem to have accidentally duplicated the verse in your .html versions.
The duplication was deliberate, as I wanted to show two verses with a gap between them. I did mess up the actual transformations that were needed to make kindlegen produce a decent result though. A better picture of the intended appearance is here: http://books.hisdeedsaredust.com/test/poetry.png I'd be interested to see how you markup and transform poetry in a way that copes with different font sizes and screen with zml and your tool.