jim said:
>   I don’t see how one “elicits beauty” from something that isn’t there. 
>   Plain text doesn’t have enough power to encode even
>   simple mainstream texts, which frequently include
>   the use of italic, for example. 

italics are indicated by surrounding _underscores_...


>   Yes, one can fake it, but then its not plain text anymore.

you have an archaic and incorrect notion of "plain text"...  


>   If we had an unambiguous encoding which captures authors intent,
>   then it would be easy to go the other direction and “throw away”
>   author’s intent when it doesn’t fit into plain jane text mode.

why would you want to "throw away" the author's intent?

-bowerbird