jim said:

In the case of this book, the answer was more than 1000 "losses" -- or an average of about 3 losses per page.  And this is NOT counting about an addition 1000 losses in representation of emphasis.

what was the book? i'd like to compare the versions myself. the question is, "why are you having _any_ losses in the .txt files?" the answer, i am sure, will once again be, "you're doing it wrong". it sucks, yeah, but it will be important to fix your broken workflow. seriously, if you are stripping out emphasis, you're making a mistake. (unless the "emphasis" had no meaning, and was simply ornate decor.) in the meantime, if you do things intentionally that harm the .txt file, then yes, the .txt file is going to seem awfully incapable to you, so it's not a big surprise that you keep wanting to insist that such is the case. -bowerbird