jim said:

yet-another round of an escalating war of fiddling, unfiddling, and re-fiddling.

no, jim, you're not going to evade the issue with doubletalk. and, just so it's clear, when you discuss the problems with using .html, you are only _weakening_ your base position... just in case you didn't notice that particular little reversal... *** jim said:

If I remember BB, you were trying to convince people why they should

i'm not surprised you can't remember what's happening, because you confused yourself with your reversals and evasions and doubletalk and side-road explorations... so i will remind you. first of all, let's dispense with the notion that i am "trying" to "convince" anyone of anything. this is a very common misconception that i have cleared up time and time again, but nonetheless people keep regenerating it spontaneously. i'm not trying to "convince" anybody of anything. i don't give a rat's ass what anybody does, including p.g. yes, i do say that "p.g. should do such-and-such", but that's just another way of saying "the best practice to do so-and-so is to do such-and-such". what p.g. _actually_ does is up to p.g. so it's exactly like when i say "the u.s. should get out of iraq". i'm not running for president in order to implement that, and i'm under no illusions that i can influence u.s. foreign policy, and in the end it makes no difference to me what happens, i'm just airing my voice to tell the world what i see as truth... the same thing here. just airing my voice to speak my truth. it's all just intellectual dialog. make of it what you will. dig? *** now, let's get back to jim, because this is all about you, jim... so let's remind people what you said, jim... jim said that p.g. should make .html its master-format. that's a ridiculous position, with which i take serious issue. jim said this is because people want to download e-books and just have them work the way they want, and not have to "fiddle" with them. this position, on the other hand, is one that i actually agree with... until, that is, jim appends that .html is the format that will best serve this purpose, which again transports his position into the land of the ridiculous. so that's what we're talking about here, jim. i'm showing the world that your position, on making .html the master-format for p.g., is ridiculous. it is unworkable. i'm also showing that .html will _not_ create a world where p.g. end-users can simply "download an e-book that works the way that they want it to", for a wide variety of reasons... those are the things we're talking about jim. and i'm gonna keep talking about them until everyone here on this listserve recognizes that you have no clue about what you're talking about. in the past, i've let you slip away without being pinned down, but then you just pop up months later with the same tripe, so this time, we're gonna end your nonsense once and for all.

Do I like HTML?  No, not particularly.  Then why use it?  Because a large number of PG "authors" CAN write in it, using any of a very large variety of tools, and have the results more-or-less readable on a very large variety of machines

yeah, you're not gonna slip out of the pin by watering down your arguments, either, because then you only have a watered-down position... yes, it's true that a large number of p.g. digitizers _can_ create .html, and that they use a large variety of tools... that's part of the problem... indeed, that is probably the _biggest_ part of the problem. because there are so many different ways to do something in .html, especially if we consider all the different "versions" of .html, some of which are the xhtml variants, and which are inconsistent with the other ways of doing .html, there will be _inconsistencies_ among the various practitioners. it's those inconsistencies which make it impossible to do anything useful with the files. all your attempts to "solve" this problem just introduce more problems into the mix, and you cannot solve those _either_... i can only imagine that you don't know this already because you've never really tried to do anything useful with the files. the other thing is that you've watered down your position where now the e-books are just "more or less readable", instead of the big brave talk where the files would work "the way the end-user wants". the truth of the matter is, you ignore any end-users who don't fit in your pattern... if they don't want .mobi or .epub, or your "master" .html, you simply ignore them, as if they didn't matter one bit... further, if they have any specific preferences, tough luck. if the book comes as justified, but they want ragged-right, and the e-book viewer-program won't let 'em change that, tough luck. if the quotes are curly but they like 'em straight, and the e-book viewer-program won't let 'em change that, tough luck. if they want block-paragraphs versus indented, and the e-book viewer-program won't let 'em change that, tough luck. in other words, if "the way you want the files" happens to match the way jim likes his files, then it's fine. otherwise, it's tough luck. that's no way to treat the users. and let's be frank. a lot of these .epub viewer-programs _will_not_ let you change these important variables, _or_ any number of _other_ important preference variables... and it's even worse than that, because a lot of these .epub viewer-programs have bugs inconsistent with each other. so we're reliving the nightmare of "browser inconsistencies" that has plagued us for the last decade (and still does today, if we consider things like the battles over the video codec)... so even if you put out a consistent .epub -- and remember, you won't, because your base .html files are inconsistent -- but even if you _did_ put out a consistent .epub, it wouldn't get rendered consistently across your end-user population. these are some of the problems, jim. and this is why your position is ludicrous. and we're going to drill that home... -bowerbird