jim said:
In general, if derived formats including ePUB and MOBI from HTML, also HTML from txt, also unwrapping txt from wrapped txt, are to work “correctly” then there needs to be *some* degree of expectation on the formatting of the incoming texts. Otherwise these tasks cannot be successfully automated.
that's true. but i'm not talking just about "derivative formats", because there's no need to create a "derivative" if you'd rather just use the .txt file itself to drive the display, a la "eucalyptus". however, the .txt file does have to be formatted "correctly" if it is to be _displayed_ correctly. that's what's driving my motivation...
Going the other way, the automated wrapping of txt is has built-in support by most (all?) modern text tools, including web browsers, e-book readers, text editors, etc.
stop trying to derail the thread, jim. there's no way that project gutenberg is going to mount files that don't have mid-paragraph hard linebreaks... _no_way_... so that's not what we're talking about here. and we aren't _going_ to talk about that here, no matter how many times you try to bring it up. so stop trying. what we _are_ talking about now is formatting the .txt files _correctly_, so that they can be unwrapped automatically... -bowerbird