paul flo said:

And yet it is so difficult to have these ASCII files work for readers.

light-markup converts well to any format you want. i'm in the process of demonstrating that, right now. ***

to show that more people would rather work in XHTML than ZML, I'd only have to find two XHTML people.

xhtml? as far as i can read what the wc3 has declared, xhtml is a dead-end. even .epub is leaving it behind. light-markup, on the other hand, has been on a sharp upward slope for years now... even with trendy geeks... heck, _most_especially_ with the trendiest of the geeks. markdown, in particular, is _exploding_ at the moment. but, you know, use what _you_ like the best, eh? :+) *** you know that one of the _output_ formats for markdown is xhtml, right? but the point is, nobody wants to _write_ in an xhtml environment. not any _real_writers_, anyway. real writers want the-words-and-nothing-but-the-words. even the main .epub programmers use asciidoc to _write_. but use whatever you like! what _do_ you use, by the way? -bowerbird