But mere "suggestions" are inadequate. As a programmer, I can't deal with suggestions, I can only deal with rules. I don't care what the rules are, I just need to know.
As a programmer presumably you recognize that any text which doesn't follow your rules when processed by your tools will result in something being broken. You also realize that when a volunteer submission, perhaps already prepared from another location, walks in the front door, and which doesn't magically follow your set of rules, because guess what even if hypothetically PG/DP volunteers buy into your rules no one else will, then PG will have no way to accept that "freebie" and that text will be lost. You also realize that any of the 40,000 existing texts that are not converted to your rules with not be able to be processed by your tools, and then will become "lost to the world" or "dead sea scrolls" or whatever you want to call them. Again, I suggest you think of your rules as being suggestions, in which case they have a greater chance of being accepted positively. I do think that there is room for someone who understands just how difficult the task is, and how much is actually involved, to make a contribution. Again, start by taking a hard look at the existing texts, new and old, the tools being used currently to generate those files, the commonalities used in currently coding those texts, and the large, knowledgeable, and vibrant volunteer community at DP. As a simple example: I have spent some months trying to convince people at PG and DP to change ONE line of code by 26% in order to remove 90% of the problems I see with the code generated by PG which is consumed by about 30% of its customers. But to no avail, in part because there are factions at DP and PG who do not want PG customers to have a positive reading experience.