Some of your facts are ok, but I think you might put them together a little more constructively. There's a legitimate argument that, if we hope many people are going to be involved proofing a text, the instructions need to be clear, simple, and few; and they should be matching the image, plus as little markup as possible to capture the essential semantics (to be defined.) Few would expect DP proofers to be applying complex formal markup like TEI, ReST, or latex. ZML is the only markup that anyone has suggested might have a chance, but it has other issues. So positive suggestions, and especially working examples, should be welcome. --------------------------- On the other hand, once the handwork is done, a version of the text that is exhaustively constructed with all the essential semantics (to be defined) clearly identified and located would, it is supposed, make it possible to write mapping modules to generate formatted texts that convey the structure and meaning of texts clearly and attractively. We have few examples of such a "master text" that has proven capable of providing the source for clear and attractive ebooks in various formats. --------------------------- I think no one is advocating any form of text that serves both purposes simultaneously, so that apparently leaves another step in the process - converting proofed text into some master text. Not many have offered to discuss how this would be done. Which leaves the suspicion that some might expect the DP "post-proofer" volunteers to fill this role. That seems an unlikely scenario to me. But however it is accomplished, it would probably (it seems to me) to depend heavily on the path provided by the essential semantics (to be defined.) -------------------------- I mentioned the McGuffey text as a possible test case for a discussion with real examples of alternatives. I thank Lee Passey for picking up the cue. I find it tedious to endure advocates who only discuss their own ideas, so this will have at least two of us for a while, anyway. I'm currently using the McGuffey text, and learning from how Lee has applied XHTML as markup, presumably as an example of text format #2 above; and I'm building a list of candidates for "essential semantics". It will be interesting to me to see how Lee views his construction from the same perspective. In the meantime, I'm using the resources of the WordPress installation on readingroo.ms see how much of the semantic content of McGuffey is available (as bowerbird would like it to be) inherently in the plain text, and how much needs to be added, by constructing views that allow different versions of text to be viewed in parallel, and edited. The host has the essential capabilities of a linux server, including utilities for I think all the formats commonly mentioned (except ZML), so if anyone thinks their preference would be interesting and helpful, I think that could be pretty easily accommodated. But two of us is enough for me to start. On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 12:52 PM, James Adcock <jimad@msn.com> wrote:
All that has happened is that Lee has once-again confirmed that there are two camps of belief among readers of this forum.
One group believes that they can simply do semantic markup "of everything" and then someone else can apply the formatting decisions later and everything will just "magically work."
The other group doesn't believe this works, that on the contrary someone needs to make good "engineering judgment" decisions on formatting now rather than expecting someone else to do it later, and that in general there is not a limited set of semantic markups that can be uniformly applied such that the problem can be well-divided and the "engineering judgment" decisions about formatting can be made later.
This second group says: "Hey, if the first group cannot even show good 'engineering judgment' about displaying their own semantic markup in an attractive and sensible way using ONE set of formatting decisions -- namely their own -- then how likely is it that their semantic markup is going to prove to be useful to someone else implementing a different set of formatting decisions at some latter date?"
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