Tony Baechler wrote:
So, does this mean that I now not only have to download the master xml file, the css, and a set of conversion tools? You must be kidding, right? If it came to that, I would rather have the plain text and forget the page numbers. It is already inconvenient to use "lynx -dump -nolist filename.htm." Why in the world would I want to run it through a conversion tool and still have to do that anyway? OK, so a plain text file can be output directly from the xml. I still have to go through at least one extra conversion step that I wouldn't have to otherwise.
Why? The whole idea behind PG moving to XML is not to complicate things, it's to give more flexibility while retaining simplicity. How about this situation:
Apparently context was lost here. The "why" is that, according to what Joshua was saying, the page numbers are not available anywhere in the plain text because they would look ugly. OK, I understand that and I myself might not even want them most of the time. However, if I decide that for a particular file I want them, I have to go to the master xml document and do my own conversion. The PG supplied plain text won't help me, and the html won't work correctly in Lynx or IE. Therefore, I have to redo the conversion to get the information I want in the plain text file or whatever other format. This does not seem simpler to me.
Why must _you_ do it? If the information's available, then it would be TRIVIAL to add an option to the TXT or HTML converter which says "check here if you want page numbers included." We're really arguing over features in a system which hasn't been built yet, where even the form of the system isn't even set yet. _I_ can envision a system where we have the standard TXT and HTML files generated in the same format as we have them now but where there's a simple web page where you can configure the version you want. Want Page Numbers? Tick a box. Want each chapter in a separate file? Tick a box. So, whereas before, you had to have the standard TXT or HTML versions because that was all that was available, now we can actually talk about making customised versions as people want them. Maybe the settings could even be stored as a Cookie so you choose which settings you want once then every time you look at a text on PG, the text will be created as _you_ like it. We can only do cool stuff like this _because_ we're creating this new super-format which contains information far beyond what was previously available in the TXT and HTML versions. Cheers, Holden