Marking Bold in text files
In November 2004 there were several threads dealing with marking bold text in text files ("Marking bold & italic in .txt"). One of those messages, dated Nov 12, 2004, indicated that the PG FAQ's would be updated to indicate the use of asterisks (*) to mark bold text, similar to PG's FAQ V.94's standard of using underscores to indicate italicized text. Was this update ever done? FYI - I checked the Distributed Proofing site's FAQ's, but the only reference I can find of bold text says to use the HTML <B> and </B> tags. In the absence of a PG standard, is it OK for me to use asterisks to indicate bold text within a document? (Note that I'd only be doing this for bold text inside paragraphs, not for things like headings that might be bolded as part of some automatic formatting process.) Al
On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 11:09:08AM -0800, Al Haines (shaw) wrote:
FYI - I checked the Distributed Proofing site's FAQ's, but the only reference I can find of bold text says to use the HTML <B> and </B> tags.
Personally I would prefer that italics also be done as <I> and </I>; then it would be easy to strip them out with software. The _ character usually indicates a mistake in the conversion process. Jonathan -- Puritan: Purity of faith, Purity of doctrine. Sola Scriptura! Eukleia: Jonathan Walther Address: 12706 99 Ave, Surrey, BC V3V2P8 (Canada) Contact: 604-582-9308 (between 7am and 11pm, PST) Website: http://reactor-core.org/ Patriarchy, Polygamy, Slavery === Fatherhood, Husbandry, Mastery Matriarchy, Monogamy, Prisons === Wickedness, Stupidity, Buggery It's not true unless it makes you laugh, but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.
One of those messages, dated Nov 12, 2004, indicated that the PG FAQ's would be updated to indicate the use of asterisks (*) to mark bold text, similar to PG's FAQ V.94's standard of using underscores to indicate italicized text. Was this update ever done?
I can't help but notice that this is the exact opposite of the Markdown syntax and format used by many "wiki" forums and online web applications. Any particular reason for reinventing this wheel again? Why not reuse one of the existing systems for plain-text markup, that is ultimately easier to parse out for further conversion back to any other format (bbcode, Markdown, wikitext). Just my 0.02 Euros. David A. Desrosiers desrod@gnu-designs.com http://gnu-designs.com
On Friday 21 January 2005 02:09 pm, Al Haines (shaw) wrote:
One of those messages, dated Nov 12, 2004, indicated that the PG FAQ's would be updated to indicate the use of asterisks (*) to mark bold text, similar to PG's FAQ V.94's standard of using underscores to indicate italicized text. Was this update ever done?
Why would PG decide to use a character commonly used to denote an OCR error as the bold type marker in ASCII files? Even gutcheck flags this as a possible error, and with it used that way, the WW and others will have to wade through a bunch of false positives from the output, or jim (poor guy) would have to add even more parsing to the gutcheck routines to try to reduce these false positives. Guess what's more likely to happen? I realize that (*) as bold was practice in the historical days of usenet, irc, etc., but it doesn't make any sense to me to use asterisk (*) in this fashion in an ebook. I've been seeing and usually use plus-sign (+) to indicate boldface. David
participants (4)
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Al Haines (shaw) -
D Garcia -
David A. Desrosiers -
Jonathan Walther