now you have examined our current sample book:
>   http://zenmarkuplanguage.com/grapes008.txt

i've used the ".txt" extension on that file, but really
it has been marked-up to satisfy the rules of z.m.l.
-- also known as "zen markup language", my baby.

one common aspect of text-files is that paragraphs
are separated by blank lines.  z.m.l. takes it farther,
mandating _all_ structural elements be so bounded.

this makes it easy for you, as a user, to "grok" how
text will be handled in z.m.l. automatic processing.

every "chunk" which is surrounded by blank lines is
treated as a distinct unit that's virtually independent.

here's a script that converts our sample to html5:
>   http://zenmagiclove.com/tday2011.py

to make it easy to see the distinct "chunks" of the text,
the script alternates background-color for each chunk.

it also numbers the chunks, and shows a visual display
of the .html coding which it has inserted into the text,
to give you an idea about the processing that it's doing.

it shouldn't be too hard for you to figure out what this
script has done, and how you would replicate the code.

but if you have questions, please feel free to ask them...

if you examine this html-book, you'll see that it contains
everything we'd expect, plus a few things we might not...

for instance, in addition to the linked table-of-contents,
chapter-headers also link back to the table-of-contents.

there is also, above each chapter-header, a pair of links
which navigate to the previous chapter and the next one.

i consider these navigational capabilities to be essential,
but i think they are not present on any p.g. html versions.

the book also has curly-quotes, typographic em-dashes,
indented paragraphs, among other customized settings.

tomorrow we will begin ramping up the difficulty-level,
with the strategy of introducing one structural element
each day, until we are handling everything we will need.

this gradual build will show how _easy_ this task can be,
if we just approach it the right way with a good mindset.

to that end, if you'd like me to use any particular book
you believe will present some "challenge" to my system,
go ahead and post a message pointing me to that book.

this approach will serve to dispense the silly nonsense
that z.m.l. can only be used to handle "simple" books...

-bowerbird