travis said:

I'm not saying labeling buttons couldn't be done later, but I am saying that if you ignore possible accessibility issues now, you'll wind up with a product that is (at best) a pain to use for those who need accessible applications, and (at worst) a completely useless piece of software, because their screen reader won't work with it, or they can't resize text, or something else that is dead simple to incorporate at the start, but nearly impossible to reverse engineer into the product when it's complete.

if you see something that is dead simple to incorporate at the start, but nearly impossible to put in at a later time, do let me know about that, because i do want to avoid that. but, as you said, labeling buttons doesn't fall in that category.

Is there really a need to do all that? Not complaining, only wondering myself.  Screen readers don't generally take well to upper ascii characters. 

here, too, we're only displaying functionality, for those who _want_ such a thing. curly-quotes and "proper" em-dashes will not be _forced_ on anyone who don't want to have them.

Which (I thought) was exactly what xml was supposed to be used for. (not complaining about the use of zml, only pointing out that other options already exist.'

except those "other options" do _not_ "already exist", not in a form project gutenberg can use to facilitate its workflow... and if you think you can develop such a thing, then please do, because project gutenberg has been seeking you for a decade. nobody else has been able to create such a solution for them.

Which a simple nl2br would solve nicely if this were php. :) Again, not finding fault, simply pointing out another method. I've never tackled something of this complexity, but perhaps a  second app written in php would be a good way to compare and contrast different ways of doing things. Of course, it could wind up being an exercise in futility, but heck, I'm always willing to help, and php is what I know, so ...

another version of this written in php would be totally cool, and an excellent example of the type of collaboration that i am looking for. i will be happy to provide code fragments that help you when you get stuck, and give general guidance to help keep you from getting stuck much in the first place... i myself have done a version of this in perl, and i'm sure that doing one in python would be quite simple as well, so i invite you to jump in with your php too -- the water's fine... -bowerbird