The problem was to build a system where we could both contribute to a single text while each maintaining our own unique work flows. I suggested three rules that would allow us to do just that if we both agreed to the rules.
I don't believe that was the project statement. What I believe Greg was putting forth was a system where there *was not* a single text format, or rather there is still the HMTL and txt70 formats, but contributors are allowed to also submit epub or mobi or what have you which have been "hand tweaked." We've just had a year+ of "conversations" on this forum where there is widespread disagreement of what an input format should look like, the two most common variations being some flavor of XML-like, and the other flavor some kind of troff/BB/txt70-like, and then you just want to throw out a set of rules and declare victory? There is no victory unless a ton of people actually agree to your suggestions and further they actually submit books to your suggestions, and realistically the only place where that ton of people could come from is DP. Realistically the greatest current point of convergence in the DP/PG community is that markup language DP uses prior to sending the texts to PP, but that markup language is so loosely defined as to be unusable directly as a source language, so if you want to try to come up with an agreement of what "the" source language should look like then you efforts should be directed at DP, not at the people on this forum. If you can get DP to agree to markup more rigorously in something much closer to XML, such that an automated tool can be run at those files without heroic effort, and such that multiple flavors of tools can be run at those files -- when you have won DP support for such an idea -- then I will stop laughing and start supporting. And you still would be stuck with this little nagging issue of 30,000+ files which don't support your ideas of how things *ought* to be done.