lee said:

I believe that at some point in the future computers will be capable of resolving all the ambiguities inherent in PG e-texts, but that day is not yet here, and until then the software is going to require some human help.

well, my computer routines can already resolve _most_ ambiguities, as i pointed out in the blog entry. i've even offered to do this for p.g., providing p.g. makes a commitment to stay consistent in the future... but there seemed to me no recognition for the need for consistency, let alone any desire to make a commitment to attain it... *** michael said:

Can't it just lay there, out of the process, and just let me read?

sure, it could. but sometimes -- in the course of reading, and even outside of it -- there are things you want to know, or find out, or have the computer do for you, or figure out for you. take my headings example, for instance. it's nice if the computer can figure out the headings for you, because then it can produce a nice "table of contents" menu, which you can look at to get a quick overview on the e-text, or use to jump directly to the "dance of the quadrille" chapter (even if you hadn't yet known that there was such a chapter)... or, as lee has remarked, if the program knows the headers, it can do nice things like start a chapter on a new screen, and make the header big and bold. these nice touches are... nice. or take my text-wrapping example, as yet another instance. sometimes you want to reflow the text to a narrow window. if the non-rewrap lines have been clearly indicated -- e.g., with the leading space that i suggested -- then the computer can do the rewrap for you quickly and easily, with no errors... (and this goes beyond "a nice touch" into basic functionality.) consistency also goes a _long_ way in making _conversions_. surely you must realize that many of your e-texts are finding their highest popularity as a result of some sort of conversion, whether over at blackmask.com or manytexts.com or wherever. i think it behooves you to groom your texts for such conversions, whether you do those conversions or someone else does them... (heck, the time that has been spent doing .html conversions alone could have been reduced _significantly_ by improving consistency and then depending upon automatic .html generation by computer. and then all of the .html versions would have been consistent too!) unless you have a _commitment_ to removing the inconsistencies, though, you won't understand the depth of the processes required. for instance, staying with the rewrap example, you wouldn't realize that if you're creating a book of poetry, where _none_ of the lines should be rewrapped, you should preface _all_ lines with a space. other examples abound. if footnotes are marked consistently, the computer can be programmed to treat them appropriately. a "table of illustrations" can become a more-useful hotlinked list, or the launching point for a slideshow of all the book's pictures... basically, it means thinking in terms of the _library_, not the _book_. consistency is the foundation that can allow _all_kinds_ of neat new features, limited only by the imaginations of programmers. the reason you haven't seen this exhibited already is because programmers have been flustered by massive inconsistencies. even your own p.g. people can't produce the best possible tools to help them do their jobs because of all the parsing difficulties. *** so yeah, the computer could just lay there. but why not put it to work? -bowerbird