On Wed, 9 Sep 2009, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
jim said:
I don’t see how one “elicits beauty” from something that isn’t there. Plain text doesn’t have enough power to encode even simple mainstream texts, which frequently include the use of italic, for example.
italics are indicated by surrounding _underscores_...
Yes, one can fake it, but then its not plain text anymore.
you have an archaic and incorrect notion of "plain text"...
If we had an unambiguous encoding which captures authors intent, then it would be easy to go the other direction and “throw away” author’s intent when it doesn’t fit into plain jane text mode.
why would you want to "throw away" the author's intent?
-bowerbird
Most of the authors I have interviewed on this subject, perhaps all, told me they never wrote in italics, bold or underscore, that this is only a publisher artifact, nothing to do with "author's intent." Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of ebooks