Bowerbird wrote:
do you notice how the key points are studiously ignored?
if it is "implausible" plain-text is sufficient to express the structure making up a book, then how was david moynihan over at blackmask.com ever able to take all the project gutenberg e-texts and -- _singlehandedly_ -- convert 'em to 6 formats?
This is an invalid argument. One can convert just about anything into the six formats. But the question is the quality of presentation, the flexibility of styling, etc. And is the core format of suitable structure and markup quality to enable other important features in a digital library? And let's not forget accessibility requirements. The analogy is music. Certainly one can use a horn like they did in 1900 and acoustically record wax cylinders of extremely low-fidelity. And one can even digitally transfer those wax cylinders today. But they are still low-fidelity no matter how one tries to restore the sound, since there's nothing there to restore. I think most music listeners today would prefer the sound of their high-fidelity CDs over the extremely low-fi of early 20th century acoustic recordings. If someone today tried to offer acoustically recorded music (other than for novelty purposes), I don't think there'd be much of a market. Just because David Moynihan can convert his core format into other formats does not necessarily mean the level of structuring of his texts is sufficient for PG's and DP's future goals. Most PGers and DPers are looking at the bigger picture, and not restricting themselves only to low-fi visual presentation. Jon Noring