because, you know, if this kind of text-to-html thing
really _was_ "impossible" -- like you were once told --
then it seems we're now doing something "impossible".

and you should be asking questions, like "how did you
do that?", and "what kind of magic are you using there?"

but i think we all know that this isn't really "impossible".

and it never was.

ok, i suppose before .html was invented, people would
have looked at you strange if you would have told them
that they could "convert" plain-text to "html", but still...

***

indeed, you know that #013 post i sent out this morning?

it had this in it:
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/triskaidekaphobia

now, i didn't specify that u.r.l. as a link.  i didn't create
any "markup" around it, or anything, i just copied it in.

but take a look at that message on the pglaf website:
>   http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-December/008447.html

what you will see is that the u.r.l. to the wikipedia page
was turned into a link.  you can click on it, and it'll work.

that is, [a href=] anchor markup was inserted around it,
so that your web-browser would treat it as an active link.

so _that_ is an example of a text-to-html conversion!

indeed, the entire plain-text contents of that e-mail
to this listserve were converted from text into .html,
so that it could be mounted on the web.  imagine that!

and not only that, but the entire plain-text message of
_every_ e-mail to this listserve are _routinely_ converted
into .html, so the post can be mounted in the archive...

do you want to have to code your e-mail in .html format?

heck no!

but do you want clickable links?  heck yes!

do you want archives available on the web?  heck yes!

and -- ever since august 2004 -- the archives _have_
been available on the web...  (due to some sloppiness,
the archives between 2006 and 2009 were _lost_, but
e-mail during that time had been converted to .html.)

the package which does this conversion is "pipermail"
(the mailman edition), and it's open-source software.

pipermail includes other "conversion" routines too...

>   for instance, because of the right angle-brackets
>   that precede each line here, these lines will be
>   rendered in italics, because the conversion routine
>   presumes this should be treated as a blockquote,
>   because that's a common convention in e-mail apps.

so it's not as if this is some exotic new capability which
has only recently become manifest in our consciousness.

on this very listserve, where people were insisting that
conversion from plain-text into .html was "impossible",
_the_archive_itself_ proved those people were _stupid_,
and it used their own ignorant e-mails as its "pudding".

so yeah, i think that all of this is fairly _obvious_, if you
just think about it for half-a-second or so, but _really_,
if you have _any_ questions, do feel free to ask them, ok?

-bowerbird

p.s.  if you're interested in a rst-2-epub converter, try:
>   https://github.com/mattharrison/rst2epub2