jon said:
>   Well, I have written over 100,000 lines of code (Fortran)
>   over the years. I've also written some scripts.
>   I've edited and compiled some C code.
>   I've written a bunch of GWBasic programs.
>   And I have a couple associates in the XML world
>   who are programming wizards and who I often
>   consult with regarding what can and can't be done.

great!  then i'm really looking forward to your program, jon...
like i always say, the proof is in the pudding.  deliver pudding.


>   Btw, the tk3 example you gave in the other email
>   you just sent (and I just read), the replacement for it,
>   SOPHIE, will be *XML-based*. The developer of tk3,
>   Bob Stein, is the major player of SOPHIE. He's been
>   around for years and years -- his partner is very experienced.

i brought up tk3 because david rothman mentioned it in his blog,
so i took a fresh look at it.  and since the topic was annotations,
and tk3 is one of the programs with good annotation capabilities,
it seemed appropriate.  now, as you'll note in comments i made
over on david's blog, i know tk3 -- and bob stein -- very well.
(not personally, but i've followed his work since voyager days.)

i've talked to bob, and steve riggins (and steve's wife) as well.
i've even dropped some of my e-book programs on them, and
they've been impressed.  tell 'em to watch out for me!     :+)

but even after having visited the website you listed, i am puzzled.

"sophie" is actually the name of an e-book viewer-app written by
_richard_gaskin_, of fourth-world, another l.a.-based programmer.
see it at: http://www.fourthworld.com/products/sophie/index.html

so this makes me wonder if gaskin and stein are now teaming up?
that would be sweet.  i've been looking for a worthy competitor
in the e-book viewer-program realm, and openreader has been a
huge vapor bust so far, so a stein/gaskin product might be the one!

but i don't see anything on either website to indicate a merger?...

(after reading the .pdf, i see now that there's probably no merger.
riggins works in small-talk, while gaskin uses run-time revolution.
so it appears that this is just an unfortunate program-name crash,
all revolving around programmers who've been on the left coast.)


>   Gee, I wonder why they will now change gears
>   and embrace XML? They are *experienced* developers
>   with a lot of knowledge of the tk3 product (over 15 years),
>   and *they* are switching to XML.

well, wonder no more, jon, because i can tell you why.
they're going for some hefty venture-capital bucks, and
x.m.l. is the trend-word of the decade.  if i was looking
for an investor sugar-daddy, i'd be spouting x.m.l. too!


>   You better hurry and convince Bob Stein he needs to
>   get rid of XML and embrace plain text!

again, you think i have something against x.m.l.  i don't.
if x.m.l. gave me useful tools, and hid all the complicated
file-formatting under the hood, i'd be happy to embrace it.

what i _do_ have something against is _vaporware_.

and that's _especially_ true in regard to electronic-books,
which have stagnated through cycle after cycle of _hype_
because nobody -- except for adobe -- has made it easy to
_author_ electronic-books that work well on all platforms.

read the "sophie" website you listed, and their .pdf, and
you will find that they both say the very exact same thing:
we need easy authoring-tools to make a revolution happen.

but instead of delivering honest-to-goodness, simple-to-use
authoring-tools, we've wasted the time fiddling with formats!

and when someone comes and asks a "how do i do this?"
question, we snow them with a bogus vaporware answer.

and then we wonder why nothing ever gets accomplished.


>   You better hurry and convince Bob Stein he needs to
>   get rid of XML and embrace plain text! Hurry,
>   before it is too late! Your programming experience
>   should convince them of the folly of their ways.

nah.  i'll let bob burn through that investor cash instead;
he's already run tk3 through a couple rounds of funding.
(and got another quarter-of-a-million from u.s.c. recently.
man, i wonder what p.g. could do with a cool $250,000!)
yep, i _like_ to see the venture capitalists fall on their ass
chasing the trend-word of the decade, i really do...    :+)

-bowerbird