paul flo said:
There is no ASCII version; that was showing how the poem looks in the original book.
well, i certainly hope you will forgive me for being pedantic when i point out that that most certainly is an ascii version, as you "digitized it" in the process of typing it into an e-mail. and it's somewhat ironic, when you think about it, isn't it?, that it's so easy -- using ascii -- to "show what it looks like". to indent, you press the spacebar the right number of times. (or maybe you used the tab key, i dunno -- it's all the same.) but i grok what you are saying. you make no text version. which is fine, except the discussion here revolves around a workflow project gutenberg might use, and p.g. requires a text version, so you can understand what i was thinking... (see, there's even a "pg" in the subject of your e-mail.) your personal workflow will find interest here, on this list, but _more_ so if it could be adopted by a large cyberlibrary, of the type exemplified by project gutenberg or archive.org. it is difficult to find volunteers to staff such a cyberlibrary, and it would be even more so if we had to expect them to be able to work with text whilst it is embedded in (x)html, so your workflow -- "i produce an xhtml master version" -- won't ultimately find much relevance in such a cyberlibrary. your point -- that one can modify xhtml for kindlegen -- is a good one. but only provided one already _has_ xhtml. if, on the other hand, one turns light-markup into (x)html, using a script, then one might just as well use that script to create something directly from light-markup for kindlegen. which is what i do. i fly directly, instead of doing a layover. i see the value of your point in the context of your workflow. so, do you see the value of my point in the context of mine? if so, then we have reached a mutual understanding. :+)
I edit the XHTML and push a button to convert, just as you'd edit your zml,
well, if you mean to imply that you can edit your xhtml just as _easily_ as i can edit my .zml, i'd need evidence. because i have a lot of skill zooming around a text-file. as we say in the programming world, i'm at bare metal. but you and i are not the real parties of interest, are we? the people who will be doing the work are the volunteers who donate their time and energy to our cyberlibrary, and i am firmly convinced that _they_ can edit my .zml _much_ more easily than they could ever hope to edit your xhtml... if you want to say otherwise, you'll need a _lot_ of evidence.
I'd be interested to see how you markup and transform poetry in a way that copes with different font sizes and screen with zml and your tool.
the markup that my routine ends up sending to kindlegen probably looks very similar to the markup that you send it. indeed, i could make it be _exactly_ identical if i wanted to. i did some work on poetry in the early months of this year, when i showcased an online app to do these conversions... were you subscribed then? if not, i can dig all of that out... but it basically involves pushing in the overall left-indent for a line (in the case that it will need to get wrapped), and then giving the line an outdent (so it starts where it should). there's really not much rocket science to it... but if you can come up with something to do the job better, i'll "borrow" it. by the way, as a poet, it warms my heart to see that so many of you people out there are digitizing poetry. good for you! -bowerbird