oh geez, how could marcello make it any more clear that
he doesn't know jack shit about distributed proofreaders?

***

jon said:
>   In Word, format the whole caboodle fairly nicely, illustrations
>   and all. Use all the nice features, including programmability, for
>   editing etc.  BB doesn't like the result of course, and i can see why

hey, wait, don't put words into my mouth, jon.
lots of times i would like a .doc file very much.
it'd be much more useful than an .html file or
a butchered .txt version, that's for sure...


>   Nice chapter headings, page numbering etc. Also tables of contents,
>   whatever is free or nearly. It helps with the editing anyway, so why not?

indeed.

but then, of course, if you used one of my editing tools instead,
you'd find that you get all of those things "free" with it, as well...


>   So I do a conversion to "filtered" HTML. Hard work that. 
>   Takes dozens of keystrokes. Well, more than a dozen anyway.

the conversion from .zml to .html takes just one button-click.


>   Ahaaah! Gotcha! PG doesn't like Word HTM either!

the .html from the .zml conversion is just fine, according to p.g.


>   HTMLKit convert a Word file so easily to clean HTML that
>   I don't bother to keep backups except of the DOC.

sounds good.

except, of course, that your .html files differ in their makeup
from other post-processor's .html files, so -- down the line --
it will be absolutely impossible for someone to understand the
various ripples underlying all of your different .html variants,
which means they won't be able to _maintain_ those .html files.

so instead, the person(s) maintaining the library will turn to the
.txt versions, and do the little bit of work necessary so that those
.txt versions can serve as the master from which .html is created.

which is what you should have done in the first place...

this all means you've all basically created something temporary,
instead of something that is able to be maintained a long time...


>   I realise that BB and a few others have better ways of doing it,
>   but every time I get tempted to sniff down those alleys, I go
>   and lie down for six seconds till the feeling passes.

i do have a better way.  but if you want to keep doing it in your
clumsy way, it's ok.  that's the way most people do most things,
and the world didn't fall apart because of it.  (the world fell apart
because of greedy bankers.)  just so long as you realize that your
work on the .html files will be thrown out down the line, and you
are ok with that, everything's fine.  thanks for your generosity in
volunteering your time and energy to the cause of digitizing books.

-bowerbird