What I don't understand is why PG continues to be wedded to plain-text as an *input* encoding format demanded of people submitting texts to PG. Plain-text is too constrained to do the job well.
I find that you are generally correct in everything you have said to date. But the reality is that PG <em>does</em> continue to be wedded to plain (impoverished) text.
I have heard reasonable rational (whether one agrees or not) why PG remains wedded to PG TXT format as an OUTPUT file format. I have not heard a reasonable rational why PG REQUIRES me to submit BOTH an HTML AND a PG TXT file if what I as a volunteer really want to submit is just an HTML file. If I were allowed to just submit an HTML file then I could reasonably encode MOST of what I as a transcriber would like to transcribe, and I could avoid the abuse that I currently receive from Bowerbird when I don't put in the extraneous marks and spaces and smiley faces not found in the author's work but which Bowerbird would like to see in the PG TXT in order to support his pet theories about how the input file format and the rendered file format need to be one and the same thing. In turn Bowerbird could use his time and energies in a positive manner transcribing my HTML input format file into any particular flavor of PG TXT output file format that Bowerbird likes and can and will in turn pat himself on the back for, rather than abusing me of efforts that I didn't want to have to do in the first place.
For PG to adopt such a scheme, however, would require that PG adopt a set of Standards...
How about a VOLUNTARY set of "suggested" standards for HTML, such that when a volunteer voluntarily codes to those HTML standards the results can be translated and displayed on a larger class of machines successfully? Certainly PG in practice already enforces a number of standards on submitted input files which if you don't follow your files don't get accepted -- even though those standards aren't really written down so one ends up having to rework one's submissions not infrequently in order to get them accepted -- surprise!
I have concluded that Project Gutenberg is impervious to improvement.
I would suggest, rather, perfecting your HTML file, uploading it to the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/create/) and then
I don't think its impervious to improvement, it's just that changes are very slow to come and very hard won. Certainly from my point of view the recent decision to support, or at least partially support, EPUB and MOBI has made my life much more enjoyable. posting a message here indicating where it can be found if any other volunteer wants to create a degraded version of your master copy. Sigh -- I would hate to think that I have to "route around damage" -- again.