I appreciate the elegance and economy of having one master format, but it does seem that there would be a great deal of benefit to having three or four. Before the book is put though the DP process, or approved for an independent preparer, how about sorting it into one of several categories: RST -- uncomplicated fiction and non-fiction. Everyone here seems to agree that RST works for most texts. LaTeX - math books. This is standard for math. TEI -- complicated fiction and non-fiction Perhaps XHTML if someone can argue convincingly that it's necessary too. But I do fear that HTML tempts people into hand-tweaking for the nicest appearance on a particular ereader. Different workflows for each format. A few post-processors and whitewashers could specialize in the more esoteric formats, and everyone else could work in RST. This seems more practical than demanding that everything be stored in a format that few know how to prepare OR that difficult texts be mutilated to remove everything that RST can't handle. The effort to define the one true master format seems like the effort to define the one true DTD. If the one true DTD handles everything, it's too unwieldy to use. Better to have different DTDs (or schemas) for different tasks. You'd have to have a different suite of tools for each format, for converting it into the various end-user formats, but that would be easier, in the long run, than forcing everything into the one true format. -- Karen Lofstrom only a gamma geek, but practical