bob said:
>   1. Is there an obvious reason not to use:

well, that won't work on a kindle...

at least it wouldn't a year ago, but
i haven't checked to verify it lately.

and what works on those old kindles
-- some funky "width" statement --
won't work on anything else, which is
why i view all of the "conversions" as
ok-now-but-maybe-not-next-week
_temporary_ solutions.

i think it's a mistake to try to aim for
some write-once-read-everywhere
solution, because it's probably _not_
even possible, especially since we're
aiming at many different targets that
are moving even as we shoot at them.

of course, my z.m.l. approach is able
to accommodate such a workflow, as
it is maximally flexible and extensible.

***

jana said:
>   None that I know of.
>   Some of us do just that,
>   for the reason you state. (;

poetry markup is just one of the many
topics on this list's merry-go-round...

and it seemed to me that it musta been
very close to exactly one year ago that
we were discussing it, since it was when
i was coding an online text-to-html tool
(which is another perennial topic here).

so i looked it up, and yes, indeed, it was
february 24th when jana recommended
that i look at her work on p.g. #35312...

>   http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-February/007565.html

>   http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35312

i did, and was surprised to find that it
was full of flaws, in my humble opinion,
not just in the .mobi and the .epub, but
even in the .html displayed in a browser,
and so i shared my description of them.

and i just looked at the file again, to see if
jana had fixed the flaws.  nope; still there.

oh well.  perhaps they'll be fixed by the time
y'all discuss this same topic _next_ february.

-bowerbird