On 12/7/2011 4:47 PM, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
on this very listserve, where people were insisting that conversion from plain-text into .html was "impossible",
1. All z.m.l. can be easily converted to HTML 2. All z.m.l. is plain text Therefore: 3. All plain text can easily be converted to HTML 1. Socrates is a man 2. All men are mortal Therefore: 3. All men are Socrates Same, same. Even if I admit BowerBird's second postulate (which I do not), he has still constructed a logical fallacy. Now I don't claim that it is impossible to convert all of PG's e-texts to meaningful HTML. It is, however, very, very difficult probably requiring a Watson-like computer system (hardware + software). All BowerBird has done is demonstrate that one markup system can be converted to another markup system if the systems are "close enough" (the question of whether z.m.l. is "close enough" to HTML is left as an exercise for the reader). Here's my challenge to anyone who thinks this is an easy nut to crack. I will take a moderately complex e-book (containing at least as much markup as PG 31103, which BowerBird seems to have a great deal of respect for) but also containing lists and tables (I'm thinking maybe the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, or maybe Pudd'n'head Wilson). I will mark those books up with ReStructured Text, Markdown, and z.m.l. (just to keep the playing field level, I will start with identical HTML in all cases, and do an automated conversion). I will pay $100 to the first person who can come up with a computer program that can reconstruct substantially identical HTML from those three text formats plus the Project Gutenberg version, without knowing which file is which and without human intervention. When you have your program in a form that can be run by an independent third party, I will provide the files for testing.