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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