Am 18.10.2011 um 20:45 schrieb Jim Adcock:
HTML does have the problem of not being perfectly matched to what we want to do -- it has many featured that arguably shouldn't be used in coding books -- but are -- and it is missing other features necessary to do the job well, most notably (to me) its weaknesses in coding poetry. HTML, actually today others very fine control of the output. By "do the job well" do you mean ease of use and effort or what individuals produce due to lack of competence!
BUT, a more serious problem is that PG "coders" don't agree on what should or shouldn't be coded. You can't create a better standard until there is much better agreement about what should be coded -- and what shouldn't be. "PG coders" will never agree on a standard, their wants are far to diverse.
What you need is a group that defines the standard and controls it. This group must be knowledgable in computer science foremost and have a good understanding of layout and feeling for literature.
Finally, authors and publishers do things in books where it isn't at all clear (to me at least) why they did what they did -- and how do you code those things, other than literally? Not to mention the problem of figuring out how to code that which appears to be coming from an incompetent original typesetter.
The most important rule when working effectively with a computer system is not asking why, but what do I to get the result I want. Like I mentioned you have to encode as close to the original without interpretation, and later change or ignore it during further processing. regards Keith.